The latest issue of Strings magazine is online, at least parts of it are, including a couple of articles by yours truly. Unless you’re a string player, you probably won’t feel compelled to read my piece all about spiccato, but please do take a look at my interview with Kim Kashkashian, today’s leading viola soloist; among other things, she discusses her new recording of lyrical Hispanic pieces.
This press release just arrived; it sounds like an interesting experiment, although it's scheduled at a time that's convenient mainly for students and retirees:
The UA School of Music will present The Philadelphia Orchestra in a live concert multicast at Crowder Hall, Friday October 12, 2007 at 10:45 a.m. The School of Music is one of a select number of music schools at major research universities invited to participate in the pilot phase of the Philadelphia Orchestra's Global Concert Series. The Philadelphia Orchestra is the first major orchestra to transmit live concerts to multiple large-screen venues.
The concert presentation on the UA campus is made possible through a collaboration between the Philadelphia Orchestra and the UA School of Music in conjunction with Internet2. Internet2 is a non-profit consortium of over 200 universities connected by a high-speed advanced network that allows advanced applications and technologies for research and higher education.
The concert features the Philadelphia Orchestra in three works conducted by Peter Oundjian. The all-Beethoven program includes the "Coriolan" Overture, Mr. Oundjian's transcription of the String Quartet No. 14 and the mighty Symphony No. 5. Audience members will be invited to participate in a survey about their experience.
The University of Arizona's participation in this pilot program is made possible in part by the James E. Rogers Conducting Institute at the School of Music with assistance from the Treistman Center for New Media at the College of Fine Arts.
In the newest Tucson Weekly I contribute a little preview of a new local production of an old standard:
Putting on a musical is always some sort of a gamble, literally so when the show is Guys and Dolls, about professional gamblers and the women they love.You can find the full article here.
Redondo Music Theatre's Hal Hundley is hedging his bets, though, by casting the show mainly with actors he's worked with many times in the past, in some cases going back to his days in charge of the Southern Arizona Light Opera Company (SALOC) in the '70s and '80s, and even before that to his association with Playbox Community Theatre.
Does the Arizona Daily Star employ copy editors anymore? Here’s the lede from a wire story in today’s edition:
An elderly man is struck by a hit-and-run driver and as he lie there dying, thieves were making off with his groceries.“Man is struck” … “thieves were making off”? So the action starts in the present tense but before the sentence ends it was sliding into past imperfect? (Note to the humorless: I did that intentionally.) And then there’s “as he lie there dying.” Looks like somebody has been scolded too often about not knowing the difference between “lie” and “lay,” and has now eliminated the latter even from its proper usage.
Top Hat Theatre Club doesn't invite critics to its performances, because when it was starting out its artistic director decided that the company's growing pains needn't be documented online for all to see, forever. So I haven't been keeping up with what Top Hat does, but a friend of mine, a savvy theatergoer, has returned from its new production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion with this report:
This play is much more than the play which inspired My Fair Lady. IMHO Bernard Shaw set the standard for theater and music criticism. He liked what he called "a well made play," and when he wrote plays he followed his own admonitions. Pygmalion is decidedly well made, and fun, too, and the actors do it justice. James Gooden, artistic director of Top Hat Theatre, respects and admires Shaw, and it shows in this production and in his performance as Henry Higgins. Tony Eckstat turns in one of his best performances, as Pickering; and Bruce Bieszki was born to be Alfred Doolittle. Nell Summers does Eliza proud. (Even knowing what was coming I jumped when Alfred startles Eliza by appearing where and when she least expects him.) Elizabeth Gooden is a convincingly proper housekeeper for Higgins; and Sarah MacMillan as his mother, convinces us that she love and respects him, but views with some justified alarm the prospect of his presence at her "at home." Mike Saxon is a good surprise as Freddy. Allison Allison Bauer and Char Purrington, as Freddy's sister and mother, fulfill their roles. Edgar Burton and Bruce Purrington as Covent Garden stall keepers help establish English class society well. The actors do well by English accents, too. Americans tend to work too hard at this and talk too fast; in this production they suggest the accents without being unintelligible. The Top Hat production of Pygmalion is a treat.
A reader sent this addendum/correction to my review of last week's Tucson Symphony concert:
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra Chorus is NOT a paid group. There are approximately 4 people per voice part who receive $500 per season to serve as section leaders with almost a hundred contacts of at least 2.5 hours per contact. That would be 16 out of 80 people, the rest are volunteers who are doing this solely for the love and joy of the music and of performing. All the singers are given a bottle of water for every performance. The soloists were paid NOTHING. You do the math. The administration and publicity department of the TSO does very little for the chorus as you could tell by what was and wasn't in the program.Well, from the very beginning the TSO folks have been touting this as a paid, professional chorus, and because money changes hands, there's a degree of truth in my statement that it's a paid group. Still, the information from my correspondent suggests that the TSO itself has been stretching the truth about the "professional" (that is, paid, not volunteer/amateur) nature of the chorus.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
