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Troublegum At 25: An Oral History Of The Therapy? Classic
On the 25th anniversary of the million-selling Troublegum, Therapy? remember making their punk-metal classic.
In 1993, Northern Irish three-piece Therapy? were touring their major-label debut album Nurse to ferocious crowds in the USA and Europe, but they couldn't have predicted the success that was yet to come. Troublegum, their 1994 follow-up, would sell more than a million copies and produce the hit singles Screamager, Nowhere, Turn, and Die Laughing, songs which still elate fans to this day.
They began working with producer Chris Sheldon in 1993, releasing the EPs Shortsharpshock, Face The Strange, and Born In A Crash – records that became Troublegum's foundation. They recorded in bursts between gigs using four studios, but the album remains a focussed and finessed collection mixing metallic riffs, punkish melody and a boatload of high-energy introspection inspired by singer Andy Cairns' love of Husker Du, the Buzzcocks and Joy Division.
'I was nervous,' says producer Sheldon. 'I loved Nurse and Teethgrinder, but I was so worried that people were going to say, what has this idiot done? I was so worried that it was such a radical departure that people would say I'd ruined the band. But of course, people loved it.'
Twenty five years to the day since starting Troublegum, Therapy? would rejoin Sheldon to make last year's victorious Cleave. But for now, join Andy Cairns and Michael McKeegan as they reflect on the record that brought Therapy? to worldwide acclaim, a Mercury nomination, and a Record of the Year prize at the very first Kerrang! Awards…
Andy: The music was written first, and what I basically did was, I was listening to [Elvis'] Jailhouse Rock over and over. For some reason I flipped it back to front. This is the kind of thing I got up to whenever I started writing songs. If I ever needed inspiration, I would pick an oboe part in a movie orchestra and try to play it on guitar. I was listening to loads of Big Black at the time, and if you take away the chuggy rock chorus, Knives could be something like Texas, or Cables.
Michael: There's a lot that we all felt really good playing, and I know Knives is one of those ones. Just dynamically it all made sense, even before there'd been any vocals or lyrics on it. And when we did the original demo, I thought, 'Oh my god, this is going to be fantastic.' It was just screaming out to be the album's opener.
Chris: It's almost like Andy's breathing in your ear, sort of whispering, 'My girlfriend says...' It was like, 'Who's this scary motherfucker? He's got knives! I don't want to be in the studio with this guy.' But that's exactly what we wanted. I remember I double-tracked Andy's vocals, so when you're listening on headphones, suddenly he's drilling into you like the scary bastard you do not want to meet.
Screamager
Andy: I had the riff before I was even part of the band. I'd written it, I think, when I was 16 or 17, on bass. In the various bands I'd been in I'd never had the chance to use it. When we wrote a song called SWT, it was a riff at the end. We recorded that in a studio in Lurgan. The guy had a Fender Twin and I was completely obsessed with Bob Mould's guitar tone. I said, 'Look: here's the closest I can get to Bob Mould. Can you help me out with this?' I always thought, 'This riff doesn't go on enough.' I'm a bit of a pop guy; I always think if you've got something really melodic it should feature prominently at least a couple of times.
Michael: Screamager was a case of just getting things a bit more direct, with the Helmet thing on the main chords. We loved Strap It On, and Meantime had just come out at that time, so it kind of made sense. But, the progression itself is a lot more melodic than maybe a Helmet track would have been. So it was a good happy medium, where we didn't just try to shoehorn a Helmet vibe onto what was a really good song. It kind of just toughened it up and made the chorus bigger and and sweeter-sounding and also kept the grit in the verse, which is exactly what we wanted.
Chris: When we did Screamager, a normal reel of tape was 24 tracks. I didn't even fill it up. It was it was just drums, bass and three tracks of guitar because we worked out a sound that we liked. Maybe there was a solo guitar, a lead vocal, and a harmony vocal. That was it. Boom. Done.
Andy: So the stabs; da da da, da da da, we got that from Helmet – we were huge fans – but we still needed something else. I remembered the SWT lead guitar track was over the same chord progression. So I just said, 'Can we try this?' And Fyfe Ewing [then-drummer] and Michael said, 'But that's SWT. That's another song.' And I said, yeah, but I think we could appropriate our own music for this track. We all said, 'Yep, that's fine: let's do it.' Chris loved the riff, and it ended up being the main thing about Screamager.
Hellbelly
Andy: With Hellbelly, and Lunacy Booth and to a certain extent Unbeliever, my reading material was Flannery O'Connor. I was completely obsessed with O'Connor and that Southern Gothic style. With Hellbelly I had the lines, 'Jesus without the suffering' and 'Dead crow on a fence is your style'. I had the lyrics before I actually had the music.
The music was inspired by the Pixies album with Planet Of Sound on it, Trompe Le Monde. It didn't really go down as well with a lot of the hardcore fans as their earlier material, but I really liked Planet Of Sound. With Hellbelly, I was trying to write a Pixies-esque, slightly bizarre, off-kilter riff.
So it starts off with this kind of Metallica chug, goes into the Black Flag bit, and the lyrics had that Flannery O'Connor 'Ulster Noir', with ideas of Protestantism and 'suffering is an artform' and all the things that really ardent Christianity, growing up in Northern Ireland, can hide. Like child abuse, money laundering, things like that.
Stop It You're Killing Me
Andy: Body OD was an early and very rough version of the song, and with Stop It You're Killing Me, I had written the verse and chorus on an acoustic guitar. It was very similar in terms of the chord progression. Again, we decided, 'Well, we could actually make this a lot tougher.'
Michael: Andy's a bit of a master of feedback, and there's a very distinctive rich-with-harmonic-overtones feedback that Andy does at the start of Stop It You're Killing Me.
Chris: I remember, we were at Chipping Norton and there was a part where it was supposed to be, like, a solo or something. I'd sit at the desk working with Andy behind me, playing guitar. And then suddenly there was this unbelievable noise and crazy racket. I turned around and he's holding the whammy bar and just bouncing the guitar up and down. Which is not normal behaviour. I fully support that. I love it.
Andy: Initially we just tried to record Body OD as it was, and it sounded a bit unfinished, if truth be told. So we added a few more riffs, we made the harmonic Morse Code bit in the intro and verse more prominent, and we gave the double-time in the chorus a lot more urgency. The outro is still the same, although the outro on Troublegum isn't as Butthole Surfers as outro on the original demo was.
Michael: Get your head around this: Andy was in a band called Catweazle, which was kind of running in conjunction with the start of Therapy?. It was Andy playing guitar and singing, Paul Chapman playing bass and singing, and my brother Charlie on drums. I think they actually supported Quicksand quite early on, in about 1991 in Belfast. But they had a song called Unbeliever, which the chorus, 'Unbeliever! Unbeliever!', is kind of the same chorus as Nowhere.
Andy: I'll be the first to admit, it's one of the most hackneyed chord progressions in the world of rock'n'roll. It's Another Girl Another Planet, it's Just What I Needed by The Cars, it's Someone Like You by Adele, it's With Or Without You by U2. But I had it from whenever I was young, and I always thought it was really catchy. But I always felt guilty. Whenever Therapy? started I'd never even dare bring it into the rehearsal studio. When we were doing Babyteeth, I would never have dared play Michael and Fyfe something like Nowhere.
Chris: I remember very distinctly, when we were doing Nowhere, which has this two-note sort of siren, Andy had bought a delay pedal with a sampler built into it. We'd be practicing, he would play and stop and it'd keep going and he'd be able to play rhythm underneath it. We were doing all these things to try to sketch it out, and work out the arrangements. He's very clever, Andy, a lot of Bob Mould influence. He's much cleverer musically than people give him credit for. He taught me a lot, actually, in production. We were learning from each other. A lot of people I work with now say, 'Yeah: I learned to play guitar to Troublegum.'
Chris: It's a great melody. It took me a while to get used to; I was thinking, 'Is this right?' It goes to that very odd middle eight where it goes to double time, and I was quite concerned about it for a while because you have this great riff and a really cool groove and it was just the right tempo. But we worked hard on the transition going back into the chorus, and again, the little things you remember: there's a part where we got Andy to follow the drums down. Those are the exciting little moments that you want to capture.
Andy: With Die Laughing, we had the demo version, which we liked, and had played live quite a few times. I think when we wrote Die Laughing everyone agreed it was completely Fugazi; that swing with playing the fifths on guitar from G down to Em and palm-muting them, it had that real Fugazi feel to it, which we were huge fans of.
Michael: You know I think we even did Die Laughing, which was previously known as Reality Fuck, for a radio set or an RTE session quite early on. And probably every band goes through it, when people perceive you as drifting away from your roots or whatever, but we were playing these songs at our second gig.
Unbeliever
Andy: In 1993 we'd done some shows with Helmet in America, and I'd said to Page Hamilton a few nights over beers, 'I'd love you to play on one of our tracks.' Initially we were going to put a sample in there, a dialogue, I think off Wiseblood, the John Houston film based on the Flannery O'Connor short story, but we thought, 'Well, it'll be a bit anomalous putting a sample on a record where there aren't any others apart from the beginning of Isolation.' I tried a solo, but again, my soloing, it's either too gonzo and to the left and bizarre-looking and sounds quite freakish – or it's a bit too trad. Chris said, 'Why don't we ask Page Hamilton himself?'
Chris: I saw Helmet at pretty much their first UK show, at the Underworld. I went to see them a couple of times. I was blown away. It was the loudest thing I've ever heard – and I've been to a lot of loud shows. Fucking hell, that was loud.
Michael: We were working on songs on tour, and that's when stuff like Unbeliever came about. Helmet played in that drop-d tuning, and we'd an acoustic guitar on the bus and I remember Andy playing the riff. By the 14th of July we were in the studio in Chipping Norton and spent 10 or 12 days doing the basic tracks. In that time we asked Page if he would do the solo.
Trigger Inside
Andy: I got an awful lot of criticism in the press for Trigger Inside. I was reading at the time The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, about the Jeffrey Dahmer case in Milwaukee, by Brian Masters. And this is going to sound very convoluted, but there's a bit whenever he was young – I'm paraphrasing here – that he brought a present to a teacher at school. The teacher thanked him for the present, and as he left the he saw the teacher put his present in the bin. I actually had exactly the same experience at Ballyclare Primary school, whenever I was really young, of giving the teacher a gift and seeing her put it in the bin. With Jeffrey Dahmer, his reaction is all part of an enormous complexity in the guy's character or whatever, but the line 'I know Jeffrey Dahmer feels' came from me relating to that incident. Not relating to his killing spree, but relating how you can feel, even at the age of eight or nine years, as if your whole world has been a lie when someone does that to you. We had a penchant for writing about serial killers in the early days, and Trigger Inside became a companion piece for Knives, or Dancin' With Manson, things like that. What does it take to push someone from feeling abject by being rejected by an authority figure like a primary school teacher to become what Jeffrey Dahmer became? In my case the gift was that my Mum had made little cakes and put them in my lunchbox saying, 'You might like to give one to Mrs Such-and-such.' As I walked out I saw her putting them in the bin. They were Rice Crispy cakes.
Lunacy Booth
Andy: The 'lunacy booth' was the title we gave, from the very first days of the band, to the vocal booth. We would have recorded music for Skyward, or the music for Potato Junkie, or the music for Teethgrinder, and one of us would then say, 'Right: time for the lunacy booth.' The song deals with religion, and it's a riff on the confession box as well.
Chris: We got Leslie Rankine from Silverfish doing backing vocals, and that was an interesting thing – we got a few sort of 'celebrity cameos' across Troublegum, and Leslie was great. She was fantastic.
Michael: Sometimes people think Troublegum is all Nowhere; that style of uptempo melodic chuggy punk. But it's really not. If we sat down and looked at it we probably would have been tempted into thinking that we needed more songs in the same ballpark. But then, we probably wouldn't have songs like Lunacy Booth or Unrequited.
Michael: The original has that ornate high keyboard, and it's possibly one of Joy Division's less ominous-sounding songs. But we were approaching it from the standpoint of 'Joy Division do ominous'. The bassline, there's a lower bass overdub down an octave which you can hear on big speakers. The original Martin Hannett production is so influential, and we had a lot of fun mixing it – that's the joy of a cover.
Andy: In recent years Joy Division has been retrospectively analysed, but I think we were still close enough to the original time. A band covering Joy Division in the last 10 years would have been big news, but when we did it, it sounded so different from the original that it made sense. Richey from the Manics didn't like our version when he first heard it. But my history is as a bass player – when I started playing rock music I started as a bassist – and I was playing the bassline from Isolation on a guitar. A bit like Diane on Infernal Love, it came from a jam session. We took a bit of time and care with it, and aesthetically it sat with the rest of the album.
Andy: There's one part of Turn which I'm a completely red-faced about. I was trying to write something like early period R.E.M, of which I'm a huge fan; Reckoning, and Murmur. I'd come up with this little riff. We'd built it into a big huge chorus on top. I was reading Storming Heaven by Jay Stevens, and one of the chapters was called 'Turn and face the strange'. Which, at the time, I did not know was a David Bowie lyric, from Changes.
Michael: I didn't know it either. I just thought it was just a cool line. Then obviously I heard it later, and it was something I'd obviously heard before, but it hadn't really sunk in. The Bowie version had been around forever, but I hadn't consciously heard it, if you know what I mean.
Andy: I took it naïvely, and god bless him, in 1996 we played the Werchter Festival and Bowie was headlining. We were on the same day. I thought, 'He's never going to have heard of us. I might have gotten away with this.' We're three songs in, in front of 40,000 people. And I look around to my right to the monitor desk and Bowie is standing there watching. I thought, 'Oh my God. Oh my God.' I look over two songs later, before we play Turn, and he's gone. I went up after to the monitor guy and asked, 'Was that Bowie? Did he say anything?' The guy said yeah, that was him, and all he said was, 'Great band. Lots of energy.'
Femtex
Andy: It's very simple, and it wrote itself. The germ of the song, though, came from the right place. One of the first proper tours we did was opening for Babes In Toyland, and we'd come back to London most nights and stay in a house in Wood Green. I would do a lot of the driving, and Lori Barbero would drive too; she was living in London. We did then a lot of shows with Silverfish. Leslie was such a brilliant person and such an inspiration. We toured with Hole, and Daisy Chainsaw.
Quite a lot of the people in the world of alternative rock were intelligent, brilliant females, and we saw first-hand how people talking down to them, patronising them – whether it be a bus driver, local people, or people at gigs. We were always very much aware of the of the unfairness of situations in the world of rock – especially for female musicians and songwriters. Then the 'Femtex' title, that was just such an easy goal especially given the name Troublegum, which we had decided at that point, being from Ulster, 'Femtex' and 'semtex'. It's a bit daft, really, and it's very simplistic in its lyrical approach, but it did come from a good place.
Andy: One of the lighting guys that worked with us, Nick, he was really into Peter Gabriel. He had mentioned Peter Gabriel expecting and everyone to shut him down, but I'm a big Peter Gabriel fan – I didn't really like Genesis – but there was a cassette player and Nick brought the first two albums and I brought the third and fourth. We just sat for about five hours solid and tried to convert everyone else in the band. To Peter Gabriel's early work. I've always been a huge fan of the song Salisbury. so unrequited, the main riff, came from me trying to work it out really badly on guitar. The pre chorus riff is me trying to play unrequited in the wrong key with the wrong position on the fretboard.
Michael: Chris Sheldon sings the part at the end; there's a high voice saying, 'I know that you'll understand'.
Brainsaw (Including You Are My Sunshine)
Andy: We had a song called Window Wall which never got recorded, in the early days of the band. It was about houses around the Holylands in Belfast. Some of the houses had concrete windows because they were all bricked up. Whenever we used to rehearse and go up into Belfast and do gigs and hang about we used to say, 'You know, for a city centre, there's too many window walls everywhere.' That song was more or less Brainsaw.
Michael: I think Troublegum was done by about September time. I remember we were going out on a European tour, and Andy bringing like a tape of you know full tracks of the latest stuff we'd finished off. Quite a few of the songs I'd only really heard the guide vocals. And the amazing thing about working with someone like Chris Sheldon was I would hear things in their most basic form, and then Andy would rewrite lyrics, rewrite melodies, and work on different guitar parts. He and Chris would bring that to fruition. And I'd hear the tracks thinking, 'Oh my god. I can't believe this.' It was an amazing time for me, because I was hearing a lot of the stuff for the first time. And it was kinda blowing my mind.
Words: Kiran Acharya
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A Jester's Tale (1964) is a delightful and entertaining period piece that combines live action and animated engravings in an original and ingenious way. A farmer named Petr is happily ploughing his field when a group of soldiers press gang him into joining the king's army. Petr's independent and ironic attitude makes him completely unsuited to army life. As the army marches into battle in the Thirty Years' War, Petr stumbles over rocks and is distracted by forget-me-nots.
Those who are already connoisseurs of the sly humour and sheer inventiveness of Czechoslovak New Wave cinema will not be disappointed with this 1964 instalment, directed by Karel Zeman. The political liberalisation that took place in 1960s Czechoslovakia meant that filmmakers were blessed with an enviable cross between relative artistic freedom and central planning's guaranteed funding and facilities. Directors of the time were particularly keen to make films about everyday life, previously a tricky subject: Socialist Realism prescribed films that glorified a heroic past or looked forward to an ideal future when Communism's contemporary difficulties would be ironed out.
Films by documentary-influenced directors like Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer turned their lens on a contemporary setting, but even historical films like A Jester's Tale had something to say about everyday life. Petr is a perfect example of an individualist who does everything he can to avoid the honourable roles that society attempts to impose on him, because he sees the hollow reality behind the hype.
Zeman makes a mockery of war by representing it through animation. There is something innately irreverent about taking static book illustrations and bringing them to life, and all the more when animation allows unlikely events, like the rank and file soldiers getting their heads blown off in unison. It will remind many viewers of the Monty Python animations by Terry Gilliam, who cites Zeman as one of his influences, along with Polish animator Walerian Borowczyk. Zeman stands out for his ability to combine live action and animation in the same frame, to the magical point where it's hard to tell where the drawings end and reality begins.
In his engaging liner notes, Ian Haydn Smith tantalises us with descriptions of Zeman's early shorts, including a popular series of satirical puppet films and Inspiration, a lyrical animation of glass. At just 81 minutes' running time, A Jester's Tale leaves some spare space on a DVD, so any of these shorts would have been a welcome addition to this release.
The Second Run DVD is presented in a new anamorphic digital transfer and features a new essay on the film by writer and book editor Ian Haydn Smith.
It's easy to see why director Juraj Jakubisko was known as the Slovak Fellini. Birds, Orphans and Fools (1969) instantly sweeps the audience along with a liberated camera that plunges joyfully into the film's carnivalesque world. It has been called a surrealist film, and like other films that fall under this loose designation, Birds, Orphans and Fools focuses less on storyline, more on original images and unpredictable digressions. Unlike some so-called surrealist films which alienate the audience with a lack of structure, Jakubisko's work has a developed sense of timing, keeping the audience engaged by regular changes of scene. Furthermore, these diverse scenes are given meaning and unity by the continued presence of a central trio: Yorick, his girlfriend Marta, and his best friend Andrej, a photographer. They live in a tumbledown barn, presided over by a maudlin old man, with a variety of little birds flying in and out at will. The title comes from the old Slovak saying that God looks after birds, orphans and fools, but the film seems to contradict the proverb with a tragic ending, announced by the director's voice-over during the opening sequence.
The source of the tragedy is jealousy, already present early on when Yorick, Marta and Andrej live together in near-utopian bliss. They enjoy a playful existence, always clowning about, living up to their reputation as fools. But every so often, the men show signs of resentment towards Marta: Andrej sees her as an unwelcome newcomer who disrupts his friendship with Yorick, while Yorick suspects her of unfaithfulness. The men's unkindness and injustice in these moments is emphasized by their regression into anti-Semitic insults. Later, when the characters adopt a more bourgeois lifestyle, feelings of ownership and exclusion become more pronounced, leading to the film's shocking finale.
Completed in 1968 just after the Soviet invasion and banned the year after, Birds, Orphans and Fools is a key example of the lesser-known Slovak side of the Czechoslovak New Wave. With its stylistic experimentation and non-conformist characters, the film recalls Věra Chytilová's Daisies (1966), but is less manic and more pastoral. It also invites comparison with French New Wave masterpieces: its ménage &#224 trois recalls Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962), but its stylistic virtuosity and affinity for youth culture makes it closer in spirit to Godard's Breathless (1960). Jakubisko has a talent all his own when it comes to integrating the contemporary hippie zeitgeist into the traditional Slovak countryside. He emphasizes an organic relationship between modern and traditional lifestyles, rather than taking the more obvious approach of ironic contrast.
In an excellent and wide-ranging essay in the DVD liner notes, Peter Hames traces the film's lineage back to Slovak surrealism, with its characteristic attachment to folk culture. Equally, though, I would suggest that this film has roots in Poetism, a uniquely Czechoslovak version of dada, which emphasized a good-humoured, self-deprecating, playful attitude to life and a powerful attachment to nature.
Much of the merit of Zoltán Huszárik's Szindbád (1971) is likely to be lost on those uninitiated in Hungarian cinema and literature. The film has little narrative to speak of: what story there is centres on the title character Szindbád, who sails, like his namesake, but in a metaphorical sense. Szindbád has spent his life navigating seas of women, without ever quite fathoming the depths of their emotions. Set mainly at the end of this Lothario's life, at the turn of the 20th century, the film follows him as he visits ageing former lovers and recalls his previous conquests in flashbacks, some lasting a few seconds, others several minutes.
The most accessible charm of this film is its aesthetic. Szindbád begins with a series of intriguing extreme close-ups, mainly of objects from the natural world: smouldering wood, a lock of blonde hair, rain dripping from roof tiles, lilies unfurling, all to a haunting soundtrack of dissonant piano notes and a woman's playful laughter. The entire film is punctuated by similarly surreal shots of everyday objects, filmed so close that they become strange. The film's extreme long shots are equally appealing, and capture the lyrical quality of the Central European countryside in every season: mist-wrapped mountains; onion-domed churches watching over lush green meadows; leaf-littered graveyards; snowy tree-lined avenues. Szindbád also benefits from saturated colour photography that emphasises the beauty and variety of the landscape, objects and costumes.
In spite of its surface beauty, there is something rotten at the heart of Szindbád. Scenes from Szindbád's later years are permeated with a tiresome malaise that cannot be attributed to fin-de-sií¨cle decadence. Szindbád's unease comes from the regret of never having formed a meaningful bond with any of the scores of women he encountered: at the end of his life, he is left only with memories of fleeting pleasures. For the women, it is the sickliness of unsatisfied desire, which knows no end: they continue to languish after the unworthy womaniser.
Thankfully, Second Run's new DVD release comes with clear and concise liner notes in which Michael Brooke gives the necessary background information to Szindbád. He explains that it was a daring adaptation of the work of Hungarian modernist Gyula Krúdy, whose Szindbád stories were driven by observations rather than events. The film is also remarkable in terms of its reception: despite being set in a bourgeois turn-of-the century milieu, it was approved by the censors, and despite its artistic ambition, it became a popular success. Even now, it ranks high among the favourites of Hungarian film critics and public alike.
The DVD includes just one special feature, but one so good it is almost all that is necessary. Peter Strickland, director of the Hungary-set Katalin Varga (2009), engages in an 'appreciation' of Szindbád: a discussion of the film's merits that is thoughtful and detailed, yet disarmingly personal and relaxed. If you finish watching Szindbád and aren't convinced that it was worth your while, let Strickland try to change your mind.
Games have been a constituent element of many Czech films, from the improvisation and word play of Voskovec and Werich in the 1930s to the unpredictable inventions of V?ra Chytilová (Daisies) in the 1960s. When Jan Švankmajer made Alice, his first feature film, in 1987, he was already part of a culture in which the game was central. Indeed, one of his early films, in which he 'plays' with stones, forming them into different combinations and Arcimboldo-like faces, was called Game with Stones (1965).
The Czech Surrealist Group, which had remained 'underground' during the years of Stalinism after the Second World War, reconstituted itself in 1968 and Švankmajer became a member in 1970. When they were again forced underground after the Soviet invasion of the country in 1968, they began a whole series of group explorations and games, investigating such areas as touch, fear, eroticism, analogy, interpretation, creativity and, of course, dream, humour, and game itself. Collective games and interpretative experiment form the essential context of Švankmajer's work.
Cruelty - indeed, one might say sado-masochism - was an element of many of his short films, from the competing magicians of The Last Trick (1964) to the self-devouring and destructive heads of Dimensions of Dialogue in 1982. His three films dealing with childhood - Jabberwocky (1971), Down to the Cellar (1982), and Alice (1987) continue to explore this vein. Švankmajer argues that childhood is a time with which he maintains a continuing dialogue but that he remembers it as a 'time of cruelty'. His Jabberwocky (1971), with its references to Carroll's nonsense poem and to the pre-war leader of the Czech surrealists, Vít?zslav Nezval, focused very precisely on the world of children's play. As the then leader of the Surrealist Group, the poet Vratislav Effenberger, put it, the film was a variety show from a child's imagination with its individual 'turns' divided by a wall of bricks repeatedly knocked down by a black cat.
Extras include the first screen adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic, 1903's Alice in Wonderland, the Brothers Quay's Alice-inspired Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married? and Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong without You as well as a 34-page booklet.
This, together with Down to the Cellar (1982), which grew out of the Surrealist Group's exploration into the subject of Fear, were obvious precursors of his work on Alice. Although based on his own experiences of being sent 'down to the cellar' to fetch potatoes, his heroine is a young girl. In this sense, the film recalls both Alice and Little Red Riding Hood, as the girl confronts the unknown. In the cellar, she meets a man who makes a bed out of coal and offers her a place beside him, an old woman who bakes cakes from coal dust, an enormous cat that stalks her, shoes that fight for a piece of bread she is eating, and potatoes that follow a life of their own and escape from her basket.
Like Faust, in Švankmajer's later 'variety collage' of the Faust stories, Alice moves from scene to scene and from world to world and, in this sense, the film also provides a parallel to the earlier Jabberwocky. But, unlike Carroll's original, the characters have become much more explicitly threatening. The principal puppet figures that she meets all have the appearance of old toys - to echo André Breton on the 'magically old' - 'old-fashioned, broken, useless…' The March Hare constantly has to be wound up and have his eye pulled back into place, the Mad Hatter is made of carved and beaten wood and, despite his hollow innards, constantly drinks cups of tea. The White Rabbit continually has to replace his stuffing - a constant resurrection revealing, suggests Brigid Cherry (in Kinoeye), the influence of Gothic horror, and representing the Undead. Undoubtedly, the rabbit is far from reassuring, arrogant, domineering and, armed with his pair of scissors, a 'castrating' figure.
Švankmajer's most nightmarish creations are his 'animals', who pursue her at the White Rabbit's behest after she has escaped from his house. These skeletal monsters - imaginary beasts made largely from bones - first made their appearance independently as part of Švankmajer's sequence of constructions entitled Natural Science Cabinet in the early 1970s. They include a coach pulled by chickens with skull heads, a fish-like skeleton with legs, a skull dragging a bone body, and a skull head that snaps out of a jam pot. This array of visions is far from the antiseptic world of Disney or the reassuring middle-class images of Sir John Tenniel. But, as one Czech critic put it, Alice's confrontations with fear and humiliation are more than compensated by her 'outstanding character and extreme intelligence'.
There will be a screening of Alice on June 16 at the Barbican (London), followed by a Q&A with Jan Švankmajer and Peter Hames.


text: IDA & Affiliates IDA World Congress 2017 in São Paulo offers four days of technical sessions, and a new series of panels, roundtables and workshops. More than 300 abstracts are approved, of which two-thirds will be presented across 28 technical sessions, a record number for IDA World Congress. The sessions will be structured as 15-minute presentations, and five minutes for audience questions and answers.Selected posters will be displayed prominently in the exhibition area, enabling delegates to meet the presenters during the breaks and to engage in detailed explanations of the various topics. The IDA Innovation Theatre, a popular feature of IDA World Congress 2015, in San Diego, US, will again provide water reuse and desalination companies an opportunity to present their latest technology, and products and services. The Federal Government of Brazil is among organisations in Brazil and Latin America that are supporting IDA World Congress 2017. It will partner in organising some of the panels. PAneLs AnD roUnDTABleS IDA has expanded the number of panels and roundtables, broadening the scope of the technical programme. The panels and roundtables extend the range of topics to cover the main interests of industry and academia, and to point out important markets with regional themes. The technical programme includes both plenary panels and parallel roundtables and panels. PLenAry PAneLs Besides the opening plenary session, the technical programme includes three additional plenary panels, to take place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (October 16, 17 and 18, respectively), following the conclusion of the four parallel technical sessions: l Meet the Ceos: Desalination and reuse Projects from A to Z This session will present five cases from different world regions. Prominent CEOs have been invited from the Middle East, China, Australia, Europe and the US, each coming from public utilities or private corporations to provide a 360-degree perspective of projects and planning. Among the distinguished invited panelists are the new governor of Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) in Saudi Arabia, and the water minister of Jordan. l latin American Major Programs and Projects This panel features high level speakers from those Latin American countries currently more committed to desalination and water reuse, such as Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Peru and Argentina. Focused on the public market and industry, mainly mining, and oil and gas, it brings together representatives of companies like Petrobras, Conagua and Codelco, and will provide insight into the upcoming massive infrastructure to be put in place in Latin America. l Water reuse: Drivers, Innovations, and Public Perceptions This session will launch a market research report produced by Water. desalination + reuse, looking at the challenges and opportunities in growing water reuse markets. A panel of industry experts will provide discussion and insight on key market drivers, the latest technology innovations, and leading-edge thinking on project design. PArAllel roUnDTABleS AnD PAneLs In parallel with the four technical sessions, IDA World Congress 2017 will feature a fi h session devoted to different aspects of the industry, to complement the technical presentations. Tuesday, 17 october: l Brazilian Day In partnership with local government, led by the Ministry of Environment, and the National Water Agency (ANA), and water industry organisations (ABES, SABESP, CNI), these three important roundtables will be devoted to the host country: l regulations in Brazil In this panel, coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and the National Water Agency (ANA), federal and state authorities will interact with attendees to discuss public acceptance and expansion of water reuse and desalination as solutions to water scarcity in several states. l Petrobras and the Brazilian oil and Gas Industry Executives from Petrobras, and other oil and gas companies, will comment on how they use desalination and reuse to improve efficiency of production. l Desalination and Water reuse, lessons learned in Brazil High-level representatives of public and private companies will discuss past projects, and how the lessons can help other Latin American countries to improve in developing projects. The Brazilian federal programme, Agua Doce, will be presented as a test case. This day will conclude in the Theatre with the Latin American Panel, followed by the Brazilian Cultural Night celebration. Wednesday, 18 october: l regional and World Bank roundtables The third plenary of IDA World Congress 2017 provides an opportunity for delegates to look at the main markets of the world where water reuse and desalination are playing a major role. l Is MenA redressing the Desalination Strategy? High-level staff of local authorities from Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Morocco and Algeria, have been invited to take part. Participants will discuss the challenges of future projects in the world's largest desalination market, covering procurement methods, regulations and technology. l China Desalination and Water reuse Workshop': IDA's Chinese affiliate, the Membrane Industry Association of China (MIAC), is organising a workshop with IDA. The objective is to give a comprehensive vision of the Chinese market. Chinese authorities, industry players and IDA World Congress 2017 technical programme preview 32 IDA & Affiliates September 2017 Water. desalination + reuse

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


On 03 Aug 15, Lt Cdr Vikash Kumar Narwal was undertaking a check test flight of MiG-29K aircraft (Frame number 802). The aircraft experienced major air frame damage, wherein, the major portionright flap had sheared off, causing excessive loss of control over the aircraft. The Emergency happened at base leg turning point at a height of only 1200 feet, which caused secondary damage to right horizontal stabilizer and right rudder. This further caused difficulty in direction maintenance on finals as well as during initial part of landing. Facing a non-standard emergency at low level, the officer, in the face of impending peril, with exemplary professionalism, exhibited quick presence of mind, accomplished the daunting task of handling the emergency and landed the aircraft safely at INS Hansa, with multiple structural damages onboard.
The officer while handling this grave emergency displayed utmost professional competence and utter disregard to his personal safety by choosing not to eject. The officer through unflinching bravery, stellar devotion to duty and unabating tenacity avoided air crash, thereby averted major catastrophe in the city of Goa and saved lives of numerous civilians in the vicinity of airfield, damage to property and most importantly safety of the fighter aircraft.
Lt Cdr Vikash Kumar Narwal thus displayed courage of exemplary order, conspicuous gallantry and outstanding professionalism with scant regard to the safety of his own life and has therefore been awarded Nau Sena Medal (Gallantry).
Dornier IN-240 had ditched, off Karwar, in Mar 15 and lay at depth of 58m. CCDT(MBI) was tasked for recovery of fuselage as also the mortal remains of the personnel likely to be entrapped therein. Diving to this depth was beyond both the qualification depth of clearance divers, viz, 55m and the equipment available viz 50m. The depth also posed danger of Nitrogen Narcosis that impairs the diver's judgment and imposed bottom time restrictions and decompression penalty. Further, the mangled condition of wreck posed danger of snagging/damaging diver's equipment and was also partially sunk in loose mud that posed problems of extracting the bodies within limited dive time. Sensing the urgency and importance of the task at hand, Veer Singh ,CPO CD-I (122676-k), Squadron Chief, salvage squadron of this unit, led his team by personal example showing raw courage and devotion to purpose. He dived repeatedly for location of the wreck and thereafter for salvage of the wreck even exceeding the stipulated limiting line exposing him to great danger. He personally recovered both the bodies as well as the Flight data recorder (black box) by innovatively gaining access to them through the damaged fuselage by sheer strength and brute force. His courage, grit and determination, quickly percolated to other members of his team leading to successful accomplishment of the task and brought closure to the families of the deceased aircrew and aided investigation through recovery of black box.
The task was a test of his mental aptitude and physical courage required to complete this very difficult task under dangerous conditions. His gallant actions aided in not only handing over the mortal remains to the families of the deceased aircrew but also aided investigation. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the depth he dived posed danger of Nitrogen Narcosis that impairs the diver' judgment and imposed bottom time restrictions and decompression penalty.
The sailor displayed indomitable courage, conspicuous gallantry of a very high order in daring to dive under the most trying circumstances in line of duty and therefore, Veer Singh, CPOCDI (122676-k) has been awarded Nao Sena Medal (Gallantry).


It's October! Fall is here, leaves are changing, and school is in full swing. It's a good time to look at some fun ways to keep kids' minds active and learning during the school day and into the evening. Here are a few fall fun ideas I've learned from art teachers, librarians, and coaches.
Coloring, collecting, painting, designing, cutting, pasting – kids love to be creative. I never cease to be amazed at their imaginations and curiosity when we adults give them free – but supervised – rein.
Hunt for and collect acorns, colorful leaves, pinecones and other collectibles that remind you of fall. Put the acorns in see-through plastic vases for lunch table decorations. Paste the red-yellow-orange-brown-gold leaves to construction paper and hang in kids' rooms.
Autumn is apple time! Visit an apple orchard, pick some, and learn about different kinds of apples. Also try making an apple pie or other apple-related recipe, such as apple chips, apple cider, apple butter or candy apples. Yum! Pumpkin farms are lots of fun, too.
"Leaf peeping" is the season's most popular activity. While you're walking, chat about the changing weather – a science lesson, but don't tell them! Count the number of different trees and colors you see (math), or write a little poem or song about fall (language arts). Take pictures and send them to other relatives.
Plant some bulbs for the spring. Together, use the internet, a friendly neighborhood gardener, or library books to find spring bulbs that need to be planted now. Decide together which you want to plant.
Lots of local farms offer hayrides to schools and families. Do a little research to find one close to you. This could be a good class field trip, too. Talk to your kids' teachers to see if they're interested. Volunteer to organize, fund-raise, and chaperone.
I'm a great fan of family journals, especially when everyone takes part. Every day, ask each person contributes a couple of lines – thoughts, memories, ideas, and poems – or a drawing or photo. By the end of the season, you'll have a family keepsake, either on paper or online.
Homemade costumes are so much more fun (and less expensive) than store-bought ones. Talk about what they want to dress up as – heroes, favorite animals, book or toy characters – and then discuss creative ways to make the costumes. Go trick or treating with the kids for safety and for keeping in touch with other parents.
No sport represents fall better than football. Play touch (or flag) football as a family. Good exercise, good fun, and good togetherness. No rough-housing, though!
Want to be rich? Count your blessings. Talk about them at bedtime, when kids are decompressing from a busy day.


The Mercenaries are NPCs which help you clear dungeons. They aid you in various ways, by attacking monsters that are attacking the player, or by giving buffs to the party or player. In order to summon them you need to have a Mercenary card registered on the Mercenary slot. Basic Mercenary cards can be earned from quests and rarer ones are dropped from dungeons, so it would be a good challenge to try collecting them all.
Trigger 1: Attacks the monster which the player is attacking.
Trigger 2: Attacks the monster which is attacking the user.
Does not attack chests/boxes/gates/traps and etc.
Single Buff - Trigger Buff only applied to the character who summoned the Mercenary under certain conditions.
Ex. Heal HP 500 when the user's HP gets lower than 50%.
All Covenant type mercenaries require a character level of 100, 120, 140, 160 to summon Norman, Rare, Epic and Unique mercenaries respectively.
As every level III quest for Mercenaries requests the same thing, It's suggested to activate all them together. To kill Orca the Destruction, you will have to wait three minutes after the spawn of the first Orca the Origin.
Manticore will drop more than one type of tooth. It's suggested to activate all the level IV quests together.
One Gem of Summons matching the grade of the Mercenary must be in inventory. Gem is consumed when Mercenary is summoned.
Each Mercenary is recognized as a party member, so the users cannot excess the maximum party members 7 including Mercenaries.
Ex. The maximum Mercenary summon number of a 4 party member dungeon play is 3.
Each party member may summon a maximum of 1 mercenary at a time.
Duration of all mercenaries is 900 seconds. The timer can be viewed in your Party Interface.
Once in a dungeon open the Mercenary menu (Hotkey Y).
Right click the Mercenary you wish to use. Alternatively you can drag the Mercenary icon to the skill bar and use it like any other skill.
This page was last edited on 27 November 2017, at 05:46.


Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy relied heavily on CGI to turn Mordor into hell on Earth, complete with a lava-spewing volcano and rivers of molten stone running through a barren wasteland. The same description also applies to parts of Hawaii's Big Island, but the lava is real, and the Kilauea volcano was happy to do the terraforming for free.
A new aerial video from the US Geological Survey, captured during a helicopter flight over the East Rift Zone on Thursday, shows the extent of the devastation caused by the ongoing eruption. The coastline ravaged by the lava flowing from Fissure 8 is about a mile long, and it's turned into a complete wasteland. Rivers of lava continue to flow, and the rock that's left behind is as black and charred as you'd imagine.
The eruption started on May 4th and has been going on for over a month now, with no signs of an end any time soon. The consequences are being felt as far away as the Marshall Islands, which are currently covered in a haze of volcanic smog.


text:
In protests and peace, Western classical music has links to Egypt — but can you help me find which pieces?
Like so many others these days, I find my thoughts turning to the turmoil in Egypt.
It takes a lot of courage to stand up to such powerful and longstanding authority.
I don't know where all the turmoil in Egypt is going to lead, though I have my suspicions that some kind of democratic success will be achieved.
I just hope it isn't replaced by some extremist or fundamentalist Islamist regime. But if that is what the people want, then that is probably what they will get. And we will have to deal with it from there.
So what music would I dedicate to those people trying to find a way to self-determination?
Were I to play music for all those citizens putting themselves on the line for democracy, I would probably choose something by Beethoven – that most of democratic of composers. My guess is probably the "Eroica" Symphony would be the piece.
Another work that comes to mind is Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony, in which he makes the case for musicians to be treated fairly as workers at the Esterhazy court – and wins.
But I am interested to hear what other pieces readers would dedicate to the Egyptian protesters – and protesters in other countries, especially Arab countries, right now.
So, the Hot Line is open: Let me know what pieces of Western classical music would you dedicate to inspire such action and events?
Along similar lines, I got to thinking about all the times that Western classical music has turned to Egypt for inspiration.
There is the hauntingly lovely and dramatic Piano Concerto No. 5 ("The Egyption") by Camille Saint-Saens (below) as well Verdi's opera "Aida" (bottom).
There is Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt" and Johann Strauss' "The Egyptian March." Both Ottorino Respighi and John Harbison composed "The Flight Into Egypt."
I keep thinking Debussy did something about Egypt but I can't recall what.
So readers, please fill me on various pieces of Western classical music inspired by Egypt and provide links to YouTube performances, if you can.
Now seems the right time.
And The Ear wants to hear.
Classical music: Superstar tenor Placido Domingo turns 70. But who is greater — Pavarotti or Domingo?
This past week saw a big birthday to mark.
So, who is the birthday boy?
Take a look and listen:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat/2011/01/happy_birthday_placido.html
You can leave a birthday greeting here under Comments.
I remember a friend saying she thought Placido Domingo was better than the late Luciano Pavarotti (below).
I think I'd give Pavarotti the prize for absolute sound quality, but Domingo the prize for the range of repertoire, acting ability and overall operatic talent as well as general likability.
Classical music news: Lang Lang pleads innocent of White House snub while opera booms in China and Mahler takes Korea by storm (and stress). Carnegie Hall unveils its next and Washington Opera is saved by JFK PAC
Today's news clips offer a mixed bag of local and foreign, groups and individuals.
ITEM: Did superstar pianist Lang Lang (below) use a piece he played to snub the US at the White House dinner for Chinese president Hu?
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/24/133187969/Pianist-Lang-Lang-On-His-Controversial-Music-Pick
ITEM: China -– where everything seems grand and large-scale and getting more so — is enjoying a boom in opera:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/arts/21iht-chinopera21.html?_r=1
ITEM: South Korea -– which has its own reasons for plenty of angst these days — goes crazy for Mahler (below):
http://www.koreaherald.com/entertainment/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110109000286
ITEM: The debt-ridden Washington Opera and Kennedy Center merge:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/washington-national-opera-and-the-kennedy-center-agree-to-merge/?partner=rss&emc=rss
ITEM: Louisville musicians find a way to keep symphonic music in their city despite the bankrupt symphony (below):
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110118/FEATURES/301180070/Musicians+from+Louisville+Orchestra+sched
ITEM: Carnegie Hall announces its new season and a new education center:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/20/arts/music/20carnegie.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1295890843-bPwSHTQzx18RC3P1vo+7+Q
ITEM: SONY classics is partnering with the Metropolitan Opera (below):
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/sony-classical-partners-with-the-metropolitan-opera
Classical music notes: What am I missing in pianist Simone Dinnerstein?
There's no denying it: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein — who is coming to perform in with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in three weeks — is nothing short of a phenomenon.
So, can somebody please help me out and tell me what I am missing?
I just don't get all the superlatives and stupendous (for classical music, anyway) sales figures that greet Dinnerstein (below).
Mind you, I admire how she pioneered and engineered her own career by by-passing the usual routes such as winning a competition and receiving a major-label recording contract. And. what a career it has turned out to be, with lots of concerts, lots of media appearances and chart-topping CDs, as you can see for yourself using this link to her home page:
http://www.simonedinnerstein.com/
And she can certainly play the piano well, as one might expect from a former student at Juilliard of Peter Serkin. Her technique is well developed and she has a good sense of programming, though her liner notes often seem a bit superficial and pretentious.
But what I really don't get are the raves about how her playing—and her Bach in particular – is so poetic and so revelatory that it makes some seasoned listeners weep.
In many places, her playing seems perfectly fine to me — such as in the slow movement of Bach's Concerto No. 5, which seems matched to her sensibility. But it simply does not make me bolt upright or penetrate me the way that playing by, say, Jonathan Biss (below), Yuja Wang or Alice Sarah Ott does.
In places — especially in fast some movements of the third English Suite — I find Dinnerstein's playing heavy-handed and ponderously slow, exaggerated and mannered. It seems overstated in a way I guess some listeners — in fact, many listeners — find poetic. But it just strikes me as overly Romantic, as if she were trying to turn the clock back on the period instrument or early music movement. And I say this as someone who really likes Martha Argerich's Bach (below); who much prefers hearing Bach on the modern piano rather than the harpsichord; and who doesn't mind a bit of the sustaining pedal to add richness and resonance. Still, I also like my Bach light and dance-like at at times.
But too often with Dinnerstein, something somehow goes right by me. Dinnerstein's self-financed breakthrough recording of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations (below) is still in the Amazon Top 100 after two years. I've listened to her recording but do not find it nearly as compelling as either of Glenn Gould's recordings, Andras Schiff's second recording (for ECM) or Murray Perahia's recording. (And I can't wait for Till Felner's "Goldbergs," as his other Bach on the piano – Inventions and Sinfonias, the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 and the French Suite No. 5 – seems to me absolutely superior.)
Now the same language and descriptions – almost mystical and reverential in their tone – greet Dinnerstein's latest album called "Bach: A Strange Beauty" (below), which marks her first concerto recording as well as her best-selling debut on Sony. (Her other albums, including the Goldbergs, "The Berlin Concert" and Beethoven cello sonatas with Zuill Bailey, are also top sellers so she clearly has a lot of fans.)
Dinnerstein has returned to Bach because she likes Bach. And her all-Bach program has a point of view, derived from the English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon, that Bach's great beauty comes from contrast, from his deviations from logic and symmetry. Well, yes and of course, I say, recalling that the word "baroque" comes from the Portuguese for "rough or irregular pearl." Perfect symmetry in any art is boring. Where, I ask, is the deep insight in that so-called "strangeness"?
The recording features three popular modern transcriptions for solo piano (by Busoni, Kempf and Hess) of Bach chorale preludes; the English Suite No. 3; and the well-known keyboard concertos nos. 1 and 5.
Dinnerstein is consistent, I will grant. What I hear on the recording is not unlike what I heard in person during her recital last season of Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Philip Lasser at the Wisconsin Union Theater.
And very soon (Feb. 18-20) she is returning to Madison to perform Beethoven's popular "Emperor" Piano concerto in her debut with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. (Also on the program, under the baton of John DeMain, is Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 and a "Pomp and Circumstance" March — the fifth, not the first that we all graduated to — by Sir Edward Elgar (below).
I am very much looking forward to hearing that performance. The magnificent "Emperor" has its introspective moments – especially in the beautifully lyrical slow second movement. But the concerto is by and large a brash, extroverted and in-your-face kind of composition with martial qualities.
I will be interested to see how Dinnerstein either projects those traditional heroic qualities and forces me to revise my perceptions of her playing; or else how forces me to revise my perceptions of that popular piece by giving a new or unorthodox interpretation.
And in that case, I may end up understanding just what I have been missing in her previous recordings and interpretations.
We will see – and hear, and I am ready to be convinced.
Here is a link to information about that MSO concert along with clips of Dinnerstein on "CBS Sunday Morning" and NPR:
http://www.madisonsymphony.org/dinnerstein
But in the meantime I would love to hear from both Dinnerstein's cult-like fans and those who, like me, find that her much praised profundity of her playing often escapes them.
I find Simone Dinnerstein a very good pianist, but I'm not sure she is a great one. I hope I am wrong. I don't know, maybe it's a question of generational differences in taste. Or maybe she is drawing in a new audience, listeners who don't know a lot of Bach or Bach players. In that case, I say Thank You and Congratulations.
Anyway, let me know what you think, and which album or repertoire of hers you prefer and why.
New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini finally names his Top 10 Classical Music Composers of All Times — Read all the installments from here
Note: Kathleen Dunn and music host Lori Skelton (and no doubt lots of callers!) will be discussing this list on Monday, January 31, at 10 a.m. on Wisconsin Public Radio's Ideas Network.
In case you missed it, this past Sunday veteran New York Times senior music critic Anthony Tommasini (below) announced his Top 10 Composers of All Time.
So, who's Number One?
J.S. Bach (below). No surprise there.
But as for the rest — the other nine and the runners-up — you'll have to find out for yourself.
Here is the link to his final installment with the results:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/arts/music/23composers.html
The project, with help and reaction from readers, has certainly generated a lot of conversation and buzz on the Internet to say nothing about private conversations among friends and families.
To be fair, Tommasini answers some of his critics for not including pre-Bach composers such as Monteverdi (below) or some women.
Yet if you read his stories not just for the final results but for his process of selection, it is a whole lot more interesting and even-handed and thoughtful than it might first appear.
It is also true that reading readers' comments – both positive and negative – help you appreciate the project.
I also thought readers of this blog might find it useful to have links to all the various installments, as best as I could find them. So that's what follows.
It's a lot of reading and horse-trading back and forth, so it should keep you occupied for a while. Read one or two, then close it out and weigh what you think. Then come back and read another installment, and do the same. Eventually, you'll see the whole picture and process.
It will be interesting to see what you have to say.
Anyway: It's on to the TOMMASINI TEN, as I can them:
His Preface and background or genesis of the project:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/arts/music/09composers.html?scp=1&sq=Tommasini&st=cse
The Vienna Four (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven – below — and Schubert) in two parts:
Part 1: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/top-10-composers-the-vienna-four/?scp=2&sq=Tommasini&st=cse
Part 2: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/top-10-composers-the-vienna-four-part-2/?scp=6&sq=Tommasini&st=cse
The 20th century candidates, including Stravinsky and Bartok (below):
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/top-10-composers-which-20th-century-masters-will-make-the-cut/?scp=1&sq=Tommasini%2020th%20century&st=cse
The 19th century opera composers including Verdi (below) and Wagner:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/top-10-composers-hailing-operas-shakespeare-and-its-proust/
The 19th century non-opera composers with a lot of piano music from Chopin (below) and Schumann:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/the-top-10-composers-the-romantics/
And: Why no women?
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/top-10-composers-the-female-factor/
Finally, for a different and non-professional list or ranking, with specific works, try this one art Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/tag/classical%20music/forum/ref=cm_cd_dp_rft_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2O5YQ79OVJBUQ&cdThread=Tx17C28KTDC25C9
What do you think of Tommasini's results?
Of the process?
Of the whole project?
Who are your own personal Top 10?
Classical music datebook: The tempo slows a bit, but the English horn and oboe are highlighted while the Middleton High School choruses raise money with a country breakfast and auction
It's kind of a slow week after a brisk start to the post-Winter Intermission.
But think of it as a way to catch your breath for what is coming next weekend, when Saturday is one of the Great Train Wrecks of the season.
The weekly free Noon Musicale, from 12:15 to 1 p.m., at the First Unitarian Society's Meeting House, 900 University Bay Drive, will offer Scott Ellington, oboe, and Ted Reinke, piano. The program includes music by Paul Hindemith and Eric Ewazen.
For information, call (608) 233-9774.
Later, at 8:00 p.m. in BOTH Morphy and Eastman halls, the UW Faculty Concert Series presents Marc Fink on the English horn (below top). Fink (below bottom) will perform friends including Ina Selvelieva, piano; Eugene Purdue, violin; Sally Chisholm, viola; Karl Lavine, cello; and John Chappell Stowe, organ.
The program includes "Solo de Tristan" by Richard Wagner; "Concertino for English horn and orchestra" (with piano reduction) by Gaetano Donizetti; "English horn sonata" by Alec Wilder; "Quartet for English horn, violin, viola and cello" by Jean Françaix; "Partita for English horn and organ" by Jan Koetsier; and "Variations on 'Amazing Grace'" by Calvin Hampton. The program begins in Morphy Hall and following intermission moves to Eastman Hall to utilize the UW School of Music's 3-manual Austin pipe organ.
The concert is free and open to the public.
The 17th Annual Middleton High School Country Breakfast will be held Sunday, January 30 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Middleton High School Student Center at 2100 Bristol Street.
Under the direction of Tom Mielke, the highlight of the breakfast will be individual student and group performances from the Concert Choir, Cantus, Cardinal Choir, Broadway Bound and Chamber Singers throughout the entire day.
You can enjoy all- you-can-eat pancakes plus ham, eggs, fresh oranges and beverages. Tickets can be purchased for adults for $8 and children (under 10) for $4, and will be available at the door.
Don't miss the silent auction featuring sports memorabilia, handcrafted items, jewelry, restaurant packages, event tickets and much, much more!
This is the Choral Music Program's annual fundraising event sponsored by the MHS Choral Boosters and many local businesses and friends including Sprecher's Restaurant & Pub, Tom & MaryBeth Haunty, Tom & Patty Milliken, SVA Certified Public Accountants, The Stark Collection Agency, James Lord, D.D.S., Middleton Pizza Hut, Villa Dolce Italian Pizzeria & Ristorante/Sofra Family Bistro, State Bank of Cross Plains, Uniek, Inc., Willy Street Co-op, The Printing Place, Inc. and Barriques.
For information, visit: http://mhschoralboosters.org/country_breakfast
From 1 to 3 p.m. in the lecture hall of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the Overture Center, the Madison Opera's general director Allan Naplan (below) will offer a behind-the-scenes, multimedia introduction to upcoming production of Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera" at Opera Up Close: The Threepenny Preview. Admission is $20, free with student ID.
At 4 p.m. in Mills hall, the Independent String Teachers of Madison Benefit Concert will take place with Felicia Moye (below), UW violinist, and Emilio Colón, violoncello. Students will share the stage with world-renowned artists Moye and Colón in a benefit concert.
The concert will showcase Moye and Colón performing with the IST Benefit Orchestra. The IST orchestra is comprised of Madison area string teachers and their advanced students. The program will include Vivaldi's Concerto in B-flat major for Violin and Cello RV 547, Piazolla's "La Muerte del Angel," the Andante Cantabile from Tchaikovsky's String Quartet in D, Op.11 and Praeludium and Allegro by Fritz Kreisler.
In addition to the IST orchestra, area string students of many ages and a variety of levels will perform a mosaic of pieces that showcase their individual instruments, offering works of Lully, Telemann, Rieding, Suzuki and Vivaldi. Chamber works of Dvorak, Borodin and Smetana, will be performed by Brioso Quartet, Quartetto Scalmo and the Aeon String Quartet.
IST is a non-profit organization, formed in 2002 with the purpose of creating educational opportunities for Madison area string students. IST is unique in its mission to offer a forum for independent string teachers in Madison to interact with one another and continue professional development. All concert proceeds will support these endeavors.
The concert is free and open to the public. Donations of $20 per family in support of local string education are encouraged and may be made at the door.
For more information, visit: : http://www.istmadison.org
Classical music news: WYSO founder Marvin Rabin gets award; Madison Opera adds an extra "Threepenny" performance
Today's post is to announce two items of important local news.
WYSO FOUNDER MARVIN RABIN TO RECEIVE MAJOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
The Wisconsin Foundation for School Music has selected Marvin Rabin (below) as only the third recipient ever of its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Rabin, 94, is the founding conductor of Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), which has educated more than 5,000 music students from southcentral Wisconsin, and is professor emeritus of music at UW-Madison.
A recognition reception is planned for Saturday, May 21, and a commissioned work by UW tubist and composer John Stevens will be performed by WYSO at its spring concert on Sunday, May 22, at 7 p.m. The commissioned piece to honor Rabin is for brass and percussion, and is tentatively titled "Fanfare for an Uncommon Man" – in homage to Aaron Copland's famous "Fanfare for the Common Man," which has a similar scoring and duration.
Rabin is also the founding conductor of the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras and is known internationally as a string development specialist. The Marvin J. Rabin Orchestra Library plus a collection of his personal audio and videotapes is housed at the Wisconsin Center for Music Education (below) in Waunakee.
Previous winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award were electric guitar pioneer Les Paul in 2004 and UW band director Michael Leckrone in 2007.
There will be more details about the awards and its events, and more about Rabin and the award both on this blog and in other media in the months to come.
In the meanwhile, The Ear sends Congratulations to the much honored Marvin Rabin (go Google Rabin and see for yourself) and to WYSO.
http://wyso.music.wisc.edu/AboutWYSO.html
http://www.foundation4schoolmusic.org/lifetime_achievement.php
MADISON OPERA ADDS AN EXTRA PERFORMANCE OF 'THREEPENNY OPERA'
Due to popular demand, the Madison Opera has added a performance to its run of "The Threepenny Opera" next month. (The set design of the Opera Omaha production to be used here is below.) The added show will take place on Saturday, Feb. 12, at 2:30 p.m. in The Playhouse of the Overture Center.
Currently, seats are sold-out for the matinees on Sunday, Feb. 6, and Sunday, Feb. 13. Tickets are still available, but are selling fast for all remaining performances on Feb. 4, 5, 11 and 12 at 8 p.m. and Feb.12 at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased by calling (608) 258-4141 or clicking here: http://www.madisonopera.org/tickets/
The Madison Opera's production of the Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's 20th century masterpiece will be directed by Broadway's Dorothy Danner.
James DeVita of (American Players Theatre in Spring Green), Tracy Michelle Arnold, Alicia Berneche and David Barron will star.
http://www.madisonopera.org/performances/threepenny_opera/
Classical music diary: UW alumnus conductor-cellist Kenneth Woods on the road and in rehearsal — Part 3 of 3
What is it like to be a busy professional musician who is in demand and has a lot of far-flung duties to perform and obligations to meet? It is a question that has always intrigued me – especially because I am an amateur pianist who once aspired to a professional performing career but just didn't have the talent or nervous system.
Anyway, I got a good taste of what my life could have been like from a friend I have made through this blog and the University of Wisconsin School of Music: Conductor and cellist Kenneth Woods, who is based in Cardiff, Wales. and has his own great blog ("A View From the Podium").
He offered me this profile of several weeks of his life last spring and summer. And it's not all glamour and fun.
I should have posted it sooner. But things happened – or didn't. Anyway, it seems like particularly good reading right now as I lie here tending to a killer cold or flu and look at the minus 10 winter weather outside.
I hope you agree and enjoy the three-part series. Then maybe you will let me know it you would like to read more first-person accounts from the eye of the classical music storm.
Take it away with the third and final installment, Maestro Ken!
By Kenneth Woods
June 21 – Hereford Symphony Orchestra (below). HSO rehearse on Monday's and I had to dep out rehearsals on the 31st and 14th for Orchestra of the Swan and Cambridge. This is our last working rehearsal before our final concert together on Saturday.
Lovely French program – Berlioz Corsaire Overture (keeps everyone's fingers moving!), Saint-Saens 3rd Violin Concerto and the Franck D minor Symphony. Saint-Saens was no Mahler or Debussy, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do his music. There are some really nice colleagues in the orchestra — I'll miss them, but I'm no longer able to do concerts with these long weekly rehearsal runs.
June 22 – First of two more trips up to Stratford. Festivals to plan, a contract to negotiate.
June 23 – A busy day at home. We've got to organize the family, who are coming with me to America for a month on Sunday. Also, my conducting workshop in Portland is coming up soon. We've got to make final housing arrangements for the students, make sure the orchestra and music are ready to go and that all the faculty have their travel and accommodation sorted. Rose City International Conductor's Workshop (http://www.rosecityworkshop.org), which I've directed since 2005, is the only project I do where I take on administrative responsibilities beyond what a conductor normally does, but its' always worth it.
June 26 – HSO. My final concert with them. We're playing in Leominster Priory, a stunning and vast building of cathedral proportions in a beautiful corner of Herefordshire. Lighting during the day is a problem- sunlight streams in through the front window and tends to blind the players.
There is one unfortunate moment when one player in the wind-brass neighborhood who had brought rehearsal to a standstill on Monday has still not learned two mildly tricky bars in the finale. I stop to work on it and she flatly refuses to play. Not what I wanted on my last day here! I've never actually had this happen to me and am left kind of speechless, but I'm probably clearly unhappy. I don't want her ruining the day for the people sat around her, so I have friendly word to clear up the "miscommunication" and improve the atmosphere at the break and she's as friendly and reasonable as she was rude and crazy in the rehearsal. Another of life's mysteries.
Concert comes and goes (I LOVE the Franck) and I say many goodbyes. Then it's back to Cardiff with a lovely bottle of Scotch from the orchestra.
June 27 – TRAVEL. I got back from HSO just before midnight. At 3 a.m. we have to leave for Heathrow and fly to America for a month. I'm not packed! Also, Suzanne came down with a violent stomach bug Friday night, so she's not packed either, which means the kids aren't packed. So, 12-1 is packing time, 1-2:15 sleeping, then pile the kids in the car. About 30 minutes from home we realize we've forgotten our son's most precious comfort toy. If we go back, we'll miss the flight, but will he cope for a month without it? Will he cope for an hour? Bad news at Heathrow- they've changed visa procedures for Sue and the kids. I have to get on the laptop and apply online. Minutes tick away as I contemplate missing the flight and the first day of UW Music Clinic in Madison, Wisconsin.
Finally, we've got the codes and we're off! Kids good as gold on the flight. Change in Detroit starts well — quickly through customs and all is on time. Just a short hop to Madison. We nip in to a Mexican joint for some lunch, but then it rains for 10 whole minutes.
By the time we've got our chips, our flight and all flights for the next two hours are cancelled and there are lines of hundreds of people around the block at every ironically named "help desk."
After some pointed discussions with Delta staff about locking babies in airports overnight, they get us off to Green Bay on the last flight, where my parents come to meet us. Of course, we have no luggage, and are completely out of baby supplies. Not the most fun end to a transcontinental journey, but the kids have been heroic.
June 28 – UW Madison Summer Music Clinic. (See Mills Hall below.) I've washed out the shirt I flew in and am ready to go. Teaching cello class, orchestra, string master class and a listening class. Cello class is an interesting mix of those who want to learn and those that don't.
So much of one's teaching energies these days are spent getting a student ready to learn rather than teaching them. Teaching in groups makes the dynamic infinitely more complex. Orchestra is HUGE, and so young. Quite a change from Hereford – their longtime concertmaster once called the HSO the Hereford Geriatric Orchestra.
I decide to start with the grand and majestic Prelude to Wagner's "Die Meistersinger." We tune and I give a big upbeat and nothing really happens — they've got the music to the Prelude to Act III, which starts with very soft cellos, instead of the Prelude to the whole opera, which starts with the whole band playing nearly full out. Yikes!
So — we dispatch the library team to find the right Wagner and read our excerpts from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet." It's a great, great string section this year — lots of very gifted and passionate players. "Montagues and Capulets" already sounds very good.
Performance Critique (the string masterclass) gets off to a good start, and after my listening class, I have time to buy some underwear, baby food and a toothbrush on my way home.
After rehearsal, it occurs to me, that at this point, in the last four weeks since May 31st, I've conducted 7 different orchestras in 7 cities on two continents in 7 completely different programs, done a challenging world premiere, played a concerto, conducted one of the most high-pressure gigs of my own life and managed to transport two very little children to America.
Of the 7 orchestras, two (the Clinic orchestra and the Cambridge band) had never played together before. In spite of the vast differences in experience and skill, there were some definite similarities.
There were new beginnings for me — my first concert as a member of the team at Orchestra of the Swan (below) — and endings, as I said goodbye to Hereford. Likewise, I finally got to conduct in Oxford for the first time 6 years after I met them, just days before I completed my Schumann cycle with the SMP, an orchestra with nearly identical demographics to the Ox Sinf. Earliest work performed was Telemann, the latest Joanna Lee's premiere (which was Classical Music Mag's Premiere of the Month!).
A good month's work, to be sure. Of course, as I said, I can't really afford to think in months. The story must continue: Sue, the kids and I are still without luggage. There's a concert to prepare with the Clinic Orchestra and a whole lot of teaching work to be done, and then there's my conducting workshop next week (always the busiest week of the year for me) to get through before vacation.
So, the run continues, but perhaps this blog post ends! For the rest … it's
And here is Woods conducting the UW Symphony Orchestra (NOT the summer clinic group) in Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in the UW-Madison's Mills Hall.
Classical music diary: UW alumnus and conductor-cellist Kenneth Woods on the road and in rehearsal — Part 2 of 3
Anyway, I got a good taste of what my life could have been like from a friend I have made through this blog and the University of Wisconsin School of Music: Conductor and cellist Kenneth Woods (below), who is based in Cardiff, Wales. and has his own great blog ("A View From the Podium").
He offered me this behind-the-scenes profile of several weeks of his life last spring and summer. And it's not all glamour and fun.
Take it away with Part 2, Maestro Ken!
June 2 – My first rehearsal with Oxford Sinfonia (below). I met their director on a gig the day before my wedding in 2004 and he invited me to do a concert then and there. Six years later, here we are at last. Great program: Honegger's rarely-played Symphony No. 4, the Schumann Violin Concerto (also something of a rarity) and Beethoven 7. Good band with especially fine horns (promising for the Beethoven) and cellos. A rehearsal 3 hours from home means a shortened day for practice and study.
June 3 – More practice. Boring for you, dear reader. As it turns out, this shall be my last day of proper practice for the Schumann. See tomorrow. I run the piece 3 times — twice for the recorder and once for Suzanne.
June 4 – Oh, crap. Manchester is one long, miserable drive from Cardiff. Schumann tomorrow is in Manchester, so I didn't want to drive up on the day of the concert and be exhausted.
With that in mind, I scheduled a meeting at the BBC in Manchester to talk about a program proposal. Then, I noticed a change from the tentative to final schedules for Oxford — I have a rehearsal tonight there.
So, instead of a leisurely drive up for an early afternoon meeting followed by some practice and an early night at a friend's house, it's a mad dash to Manchester for a very promising chat, followed by another mad dash across the country in Friday rush-hour traffic to Oxford.
Good rehearsal, although they tend to double dot the main theme in the Schumann — naughty, naughty!!!! Finally, rehearsal ends at 10 p.m. and it's back to Manchester, arriving around 1 a.m., to an uninhabitable hotel room. After schlepping the cello up five flights of stairs, it's back down to the front desk to negotiate for a room humans can sleep in. Negotiations done, I'm finally in my room about 2 a.m.
June 5 – First challenge was to find a nice coffee. This is important. After a 10-minute walk I find a Starbucks and a local place next door to each other. My heart always votes for the local place, but today is no time to take chances, and my coffee radar is sounding notes of concern about the locals. Starbucks it is.
Fortunately, there are no ill effects from the lost day of practice once I've done a slow, careful warm-up in my hotel. It's off to rehearsal. I always say conducting is more tiring than playing the cello on a sheer physical level, but doing both is something else, and I am pooped from Friday's driving. By the end of the rehearsal I feel only half alive. Great program: Telemann's "Don Quioxte" (which I'm leading from the cello facing the orchestra), the Schumann (again, leading from the cello but facing the audience) and Beethoven 6.
I sleep on the floor of my green room for most of the short gap between rehearsal and concert. It's a special week for Schumann (below, in a photo from 1850) – his 200th birthday is on Tuesday, and Bobby S is my main man. In my pre-performance rap, I try to encourage the audience to forget his life story, amazing as it is, and to forget all the crap they've read and just listen. The important thing about Schumann is that he's a musical genius.
Somehow, it goes really, really well, as does the Beethoven. Afterwards, everyone is talking about the fantastic timpanist playing on the Beethoven. Poor violins — they play almost every bar, but it's the timpanist, who plays about 8 notes with style, who gets the solo bow.
June 6- My birthday! Family time!
June 7 – Surrey Mozart Players (below). First rehearsal — great program. Schumann "Manfred" Overture, Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and Brahms 4th Symphony. My first Brahms with them, and possibly my last Schumann – "Manfred" is the finale to a cycle of all the Schumann symphonies, concertos and short orchestral works we've done together.
Generally when I come back to a piece I've done, the changes in my approach are matters of specific details. But I feel like my thinking on the Brahms, especially the last movement, has undergone a pretty vast sea change.
June 8 – Bobby Schumann's 200th birthday. I meant to write a blog post about it. I still mean to write a blog post about it.Radio 3 celebrates with a broadcast of the Violin Concerto, and Sir Colin Davis has the orchestra double-dotting through the whole first movement. I can only hope nobody in Oxford is listening. I know he's Sir Colin, but Schumann knew how to double-dot.
June 9 – Oxford Sinfonia. We're making progress, to be sure. Very intense work on the 1st two movements of the Beethoven.
The Honegger is lovely to listen to, but a little dull to work on. There's not a lot of detail in the score about what he wants, and there lots of long passages that are more about atmosphere than direction. I have to remember the piece from a listener's point of view — on that level it works.
June 10 – Orchestra of the Swan (below). A long day of planning sessions in Stratford. Great stuff, but more driving!
June 11 – Oxford Sinfonia. Need to get in some more serious work on the Schumann tonight as well as cover most of the Beethoven. The 7th is not massive like a Mahler symphony, but it is one of the most tiring pieces in the repertoire. We don't want to spend too much time on it tomorrow.
After rehearsal, I drive back to Hereford, where my family are staying at grandma's for a few days since I'm hardly home anyway. It adds 6 hours driving in a busy week, but gives me two hours of time with the kids in a weekend I might miss them altogether.
June 12 – Oxford Sinfonia. Never been to the center of Oxford before- it looks like the all the movies set there. Rather astounding. Most UK orchestras have dress rehearsal at 2:30 and concert at 7:30. Here it is 1 and 8, which means a much longer day for me, and a few extra hours wandering the streets between rehearsal and show.
Alexandra Wood (below) is the soloist in the Schumann — we did the piece as part of the SMP cycle a year or so back, and she's as wonderful as I remember. This time, we're able to dig even deeper.
Afterwards, I get lots of comments from orchestra and audience about the Schumann along the lines of "but it's one of the greatest violin concertos I've ever heard! Why is it never done?" I know! People always love Schumann when it's played well, and hate it when they read snooty program notes about his orchestration.
Honegger works! Lovely — as long as I stay patient and let the right kind of nothing happen. I love the fact I've done Beethoven 6 plus the Schumann Cello Concerto and the Violin Concerto and LvB 7 in consecutive weeks. Beethoven 7 is fab — for once, the horns nail it! Rarr!!
Afterwards, one of them says he's never been so tired after a concert. Good. I've managed to frame Bobby's birthday with his two great string concertos — the Violin Concerto is so visionary, the slow movement so deeply moving. To think it was lost for decades…
June 13 – Surrey Mozart Players. After the Ox Sin concert it was back to Hereford for a few more precious hours with the family. I got in about 1 a.m., then about 11 a.m. it's off to Surrey for more Brahms, Schumann and Tchaik. "Manfred," all 12 minutes of it, is so much harder than the whole rest of the program put together. After rehearsal, it's straight off to Cambridge (about 2½ hours away) where tomorrow, I conduct the world's greatest string orchestra.
June 14 – World's Greatest String Orchestra. A day I could write a book about! I'm conducting a charity concert for Motor Neuron Disease research. The orchestra is made up entirely of soloists and chamber musicians who have had great instruments bought for them by Nigel Brown and the Stradivari trust.
The Endellion, Fitzwilliam and Doric quartets are all represented, as is the Leopold Trio, leaders of the BBC Symphony (below) and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The rest are merely soloists with recording contracts and busy schedules.
The cello section (5 players) are playing in 7 million pounds (about $11 million) worth of instruments. Generally, everyone's heart is in the right place, but it's an orchestra with many leaders and no followers. They make a great noise, but the rehearsal (only one, less that two hours) is surprisingly intense. There is so much talent, wealth, power and mojo around all day that it feels like a year in a few hours. Of course, there's pressure on all of us, and everyone shows some nerves at one time or another during the day. The concert isn't perfect, but I'll never forget that string sound. Wow.
June 15 – I say goodbyes to Nigel (my host and the founder of the Stradivari Trust) and everyone in Cambridge. I like the idea of conducting in Oxford and Cambridge in the same weekend. What a life! Nigel has offered me a glorious concert in November that conflicts with recording sessions for my new CD with Orchestra of the Swan. Argh! I leave hoping that my inability to do November doesn't mean I'm done in Cambridge. Any time you say no in this business you know you might not get another chance to say yes.
June 16 – Surrey Mozart Players. I've got a good feeling about the Brahms. SMP understand Schumann better than almost any group of I've done him with after the last 4 years, but Manfred is pushing us all to the limit. It's not a hard piece to fake, but to do justice to it?
June 18 – Surrey Mozart Players. As with Oxford last week, there's a need to mix doing the last proper rehearsing with doing some large chunks of things so we don't have to play too much at the dress rehearsal tomorrow. Afterwards, it's back to Cardiff for a morning with the family, even though I have to be at the hall again tomorrow by 2.
June 19 – Surrey Mozart Players. SMP dress rehearsals are always made more intense by the fact that it is the first and only time I get to work with the trumpets, trombones and timps. They're generally good to very good players, but if our regulars aren't available, things can get sketchy. This week we have the A-team.
Since they are only there for the one rehearsal, we need to cover pretty much the whole program- experience has taught me the danger of trusting too much that someone knows how things go.
Our soloist for the Tchaik is Alexander Sitkovetsky (below), a marvelous young player and supremely nice guy. Again, our only rehearsal with him. Lots to do in one 3-hour rehearsal. The concert goes marvelously well. The Tchaik is just about spot on, and Sascha nailed the whole thing. Brahms worked really well, as well. I was worried about the Schumann — the dress was not good, but somehow, it comes to life. So ends our Schumann cycle and my Schumann birthday month — in stark and bleak E-flat minor. That seems appropriate.
Classical music diary: Life on the road and in rehearsal as lived by UW alumnus and conductor-cellist Kenneth Woods — Part 1 of 3.
Take it away, Maestro Ken!
Jake Stockinger at The Well-Tempered Ear recently invited me to do a guest slot on his excellent blog. His suggestion was that I write a summary of my working month of June. I thought it was a great idea — I love reading my old teacher (below) Leonard Slatkin's monthly messages on his blog, and these sort of "my month" columns were an interesting mainstay of Gramophone for a long time.
My only challenge is that I, like many musicians, don't think in months and weeks. We think in concerts and runs of concerts. Ask a musician what they did on the weekend, and you're likely to get an eye roll. They probably drove 600 miles and played 3 concerts. Tuesdays are more likely to be a family day for many of us (which doesn't work so well once your kids are in school).
Likewise, I find my own work tends to organize itself into runs of several concerts that fall one after the other — such runs tend to be about 3-5 weeks long and are usually bracketed by nice breaks where I can reintroduce myself to my family.
From that perspective, this run of work most certainly began on May 19th when I flew over to Boston to meet my colleagues in Ensemble Epomeo (below) for concerts at the Newburyport festival and a radio concert in New Hampshire.
It was a fun trip, but intense – one of my colleagues has angered the gods of Vulcan and was stranded by volcanic ash, so we had to put together the premiere of Kile Smith's marvelous new string trio on one rehearsal. Then American Airlines smashed my spare cello on the way home — nice work, guys. I had a rehearsal the night I got in to Heathrow and wasn't in the finest mood.
However, it seems a stretch to start a "my month of June" post with discussions of May 19-23 (although I just did, didn't I?), so I'll start almost in June…
May 31 – Orchestra of the Swan (below). My first concert with them since being appointed Principal Guest Conductor. We've got one rehearsal (four-hour call) to put together Joanna Lee's incredibly tricky new work, "The Chronicles of Archy" and "Walton's Façade." "Archy" is a tall order — wicked rhythms, dense and complicated textures, extended techniques and lots of wit.
It's about 28 minutes long. Normally you'd get 3 rehearsals, but this is part of a busy festival week (Spring Sounds, the orchestra's annual new music festival), so we have to get the job done. Our biggest challenge is the acoustic: marble floors, walls and ceiling mean the percussion and trumpet are impossibly loud in spite of the musician's great skill and delicacy.
"Façade" is full of the same problems — the spoken text is always hard to hear, but nearly impossibly so in this space. The orchestra is virtuosic, flexible, patient and heroic — I'm really looking forward to working with them. After putting together "Archy," we only had 50 minutes to put together 45 minutes of Walton, and they nailed it to the wall.
June 1 – No rehearsals, but lots of scores to learn and cello to practice. I will play the Schumann Concerto with Lancashire Chamber Orchestra (below) on Saturday. I'm often asked things like "What do you do all week between rehearsals?" These days fly by — a few hours of practice, a few hours of score study (a vast amount of music this month to conduct), answer some emails and look after the kids and I've put in a 15-hour day.
In addition to preparing the Concerto itself, I'm still adjusting from my now-smashed spare cello to my Italian one. Lots of careful intonation work to be done. Since I'm conducting and playing, the memorization process is a little more intense, as both cello part and score have to be memorized cold.


The awards were based on the millions of reviews and ratings for hotels, restaurants and attractions left on TripAdvisor's site over a twelve month period.
Though London and Edinburgh took the top two spots, smaller destinations Llandudno and Torquay took third and fourth place respectively, beating Liverpool, Belfast and York.
Keswick, a market town in the Lake District, is a newcomer to the top ten this year ranking ninth ahead of Glasgow.
In sixth position Blackpool was the cheapest destination on the list, with an average room costing £76.21 a night, less than half the cost of a room in London (£162.25).
TripAdvisor spokesperson James Kay said: "In the UK, the competition is fierce, with great value destinations like Llandudno and Blackpool more than holding their own against larger city rivals."
London fell from third to sixth place in the world rankings, but remained in the top ten for five years running.


With a new deregulatory Republican majority preparing to take the reins at the Federal Communications Commission under a President Donald Trump, the National Association of Broadcasters has petitioned the FCC to rethink its quadrennial media ownership review, which a divided FCC approved in August.
"After seven years of evaluating the rapidly changing media marketplace, the Federal Communications Commission recently adopted an order that remarkably retained—and in some cases made more stringent—its long-standing broadcast ownership rules," NAB said in the petition. "Because these rules are divorced from current competitive realities, are based on faulty premises or misunderstandings of the law, lack evidentiary support and prevent local broadcasters from competing and serving their local communities effectively, the National Association of Broadcasters urges the Commission to reconsider major aspects of its Order."