The over-hyped arrival of an overrated junk-food chain at El Con Mall has prompted much local discussion about whether or not anything can save the faltering mall. My suggestion: Tear the thing down and put up a resort hotel, the one thing sure to make money in Tucson these days. Oh, wait … what demolished landmark on that site was the mall named after?
Well, one out of three isn’t too bad:
There's one excellent reason to see the Catalina Players' trilogy of one-act plays about immigrants: Silviana Wood's And Where Was Pancho Villa When You Really Needed Him? It boasts a quality of writing and acting, and a love and understanding of very real people, that its two companion pieces can't match.You can read my entire review in the latest Tucson Weekly.
Many Tucson Hispanics of a certain age will recognize as their own the situation in Where Was Pancho Villa. It's an anecdote about an elementary school class, not too many decades ago, in which a well-meaning teacher tries to turn her lively little Mexican-American students into nice little Anglo kids. First, she Anglicizes their names, because she can't pronounce the Spanish originals. … Then she goes after their pronunciation, their lunches, every evidence of their Mexicanness.
Naturally, the kids find much of this humiliating. Some is necessary, like an all-out assault on head lice, but it's the manner in which everything is carried out that grinds them down, from the incessant pronunciation drills to the way the school nurse handles them like lepers.
Will the kids find a way to fight back? Well, whatever happens, you can tell from the way the adults who play them are costumed that they won't all live happily ever after.
I’ve held off linking to this until the series was complete; what suspense! Violist Charles Noble auditions for a job with the Seattle Symphony, and lets us in on what it’s really like, musically and psychologically, to try out for an important orchestra (or any orchestra, really). This great read begins here, continues here and here, and concludes here.
Too busy for blogging, or even first-person pronouns, so for a couple of days you’ll have to settle for links to interesting material found elsewhere. Here’s a fascinating article about an utterly forgotten West Indian conductor, who was the first black guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, among other major ensembles. Ever heard of Rudolph Dunbar? Why haven’t we?
OK, I’m confused:
What, exactly, is The Who's rock opera Tommy really trying to tell us? The UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre is putting on a very good production of the show, but in the end, in trying to figure out what writer-composer Pete Townshend's social point may be, I feel as deaf, dumb and blind as the musical's title character.Read all about it here, in the latest Tucson Weekly.
Tommy is more mess than message, and no wonder. It started out in the late 1960s as a loose-knit concept album with a clearly anti-establishment finale. In the mid 1970s, Ken Russell turned it into one of his typical cinematic acid trips, and while the story got fleshed out, certain essential plot details were changed along the way. Finally, in the early 1990s, Townshend collaborated with stage director Des McAnuff on a Broadway version that thoroughly muddled whatever themes Tommy may have had in its earlier incarnations. …
In short, despite its ambiguous attitude toward narcissism and the cult of celebrity, Tommy now heartily embraces Reagan-Thatcher social ideals. Preserve the nuclear family; just say no to drugs.
An amazing journey, indeed.
Good audio is on the way out, because standards are being set by vast herds of consumers who can’t tell the difference between high fidelity and low, or who maybe can detect a little difference but just don’t care. This has compromised audiophile efforts for decades. Remember the RIAA curve, which made music sound better on low-fi equipment but worse on hi-fis and was applied to most commercial LPs? Remember the decapitation of the frequency range in the early CD specs? Now we’re stuck with iPods and iTunes, which provide quality comparable to what was available in 1928. Shouldn’t standards be set by people of taste and discernment so that they may be satisfied, and giving the less sensitive a chance to elevate their taste? What purpose can any of us have if, instead of aspiring to a higher level in all things, we are content to wallow in mediocrity?
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
