Liquorice has a sweet and intense taste. Popular with chocolate and fresh fruits, it also enhances leek fondue, scallops and duck breast.
Discover this gift set for making lollipops. These lollipops are easy to make and truly delicious. This kit includes: 1 reusable mould for 5 lollipops + 15 sticks + 200 g of milk chocolate.
"These short and stubby" cakes, as Marcel Proust called them, have been revisited by Fay Maison.
Marlette has made these tasty mixes using organic ingredients. Just a few additional ingredients, a quick oven bake and Marlette granola reveals the flavours of its blend of walnuts, hazelnuts and seeds. A fun, delicious recipe for a crunchy breakfast.
Marlette has used organic ingredients to make this simple, tasty preparation for chocolate cookies with hazelnut chips. Just add a few ingredients, bake quickly and, once cooled, these cookies can be enjoyed by the whole family.
Recipe Organic mix for raspberry muffins with fleur de sel from Ile de Ré.
This fondant allows you to create icing on desserts and chocolate eclairs.
Marlette has made these tasty mixes from organic flours. For this Madeleine recipe, the Joubert sisters selected products from their region of Ile de Ré. Just add a few ingredients and bake for a few minutes to obtain delicious Madeleines.
Try cocoa nibs with game, beef bourguignon, chocolate mousse and chocolate macaroons to add some flavour and crunch to your dishes.
Powder mix. Coconut blancmange is a light, fresh delight dessert served in Réunion Island and the Antilles. It can be topped with exotic fruit coulis or sprinkled with coconut shavings.
A crisp and tasty praline, prepared with almonds and pieces of caramelised hazelnuts.
For a simple brunch, Marlette has selected three delicious mixtures for recipes made with quality, organic products: English scones, carrot cake, pancakes and waffles. Just add a few ingredients, cook quickly and a delicious brunch is served!
These halved vanilla pods will be ideal in cream, milk for flans or in your sugar. Their seeds can also be used in cooking.


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Colson Whitehead Exhumes The Past In 'The Nickel Boys' "I didn't talk about it for 50-some years," said Charlie Fudge, a former inmate at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. "We were threatened to never tell anyone about what happened there."
We talked with Fudge, reporter Ben Montgomery and author Colson Whitehead about the Dozier School, the real-life basis for Whitehead's latest novel, The Nickel Boys.
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Colson Whitehead Exhumes The Past In 'The Nickel Boys'
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Boys climbing trees at the School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. STATE ARCHIVES OF FLORIDA / PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK 1.0 hide caption
STATE ARCHIVES OF FLORIDA / PUBLIC DOMAIN MARK 1.0
Boys climbing trees at the School for Boys in Marianna, Florida.
1960s Florida. The Jim Crow South.
That's the setting for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead's new book, The Nickel Boys.
It was a time when the civil rights movement was spurring change, but progress was slow and certainly didn't infiltrate the book's fictional Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school for boys where much of the story takes place.
The Nickel Academy is based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where adults abused their charges systematically and brutally. For decades.
Boys endured beatings at a notorious structure known as "The White House." And in recent years, those boys — now men — have banded together to form a group they call the White House Boys.
We spoke with one of those former White House Boys, a reporter who has written on the Dozier School and an author whose new book is based on the school.
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Religion and the Gaza Strip Incursion
Okay, the headline does include the word religion but is that an appropriate statement concerning the latest Israel and Hamas conflict in Gaza?
It is appropriate but not in a way that most people would think. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, namely Arabs have been going on for centuries but is religion the cause? Here we are, in the 21st century and we still ask why these conflicts continue. One would think that after awhile, neither Israel nor the so called state of Palestine would still exist today considering all the bloodshed throughout the years.
Therefore, the question remains. Is religion a sole part of these conflicts? The answer is yes and no but that depends on how the situation is viewed and from what side that view is from.
The first question remains and has been a debatable issue going back many years and that is, who are the Palestinians and did the land of Palestine actually exist?
The answer to that is no, the state of Palestine as it is asserted today never existed. That area was ruled at one time or another by five separate entities. Rome originally ruled that area followed by the Islamic and Christians Crusaders, the Ottoman Empire as well as the British, shortly after World War I. Contrary to what modern day Arabs and even those in the liberal media state, Arabs never ruled that area as a separate nation Palestinian people do not exist.
That area by the Arabs is considered to be an area to continue a strategic initiative to wipe Israel off the map and displace the Jewish people outside their homeland, the land that God gave to the Jewish people in the first place. The religious aspect for Israel in this conflict stops there.
But, did the nation of Palestine ever exist?
Back in 1977, a Dutch newspaper, Trouw published an interview with the PLO executive committee member, Zahir Musein and guess what Zahir stated?
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan Palestinian people do not exist." The radical Islamic extremists have been stating many things over the years
Know them by their words but is completely ignored as the historic truths are thrown into the dust bin of world history.
Therefore, with that said by the PLO executive committee Zahir Musein, how does religion play in this conflict? No where except from the Islamic Jihad groups who use Islam to destroy its enemy, Israel. Moreover, the religion of Islam is also a political system, something that most people either don't know about or just ignore. Islamic extremists use both religious extremes and politics to conquer as they please and yet, the international community will criticize Israel for its self-defense actions.
How can the naysayers say Israel has no right to defend itself from a violent religious-political system when other nations have defended themselves against aggression and then state it is nothing more than a religious war?
Islam and its extremists can literally be viewed as a micro-country on its own merits. Many people state that religion cause much bloodshed and there may be some truth to that over the centuries but today, the only bloodshed being spilt is by Islamic extremists and a religion that is bent on conquering land that was never theirs to begin with.
This conflict and all of the previous conflicts in Gaza is about hatred of the Jewish people and Israel as a whole as well as power and conversion to Islam. Someday, the western world will realize that hatred exists in Islam and is perpetrated by extremists and not use the excuse of religion as the reason for conflicts in the Holy Land.
As for the Palestinian people, they have a homeland and it is not in Israel but in the neighboring countries, specifically Jordan. Unfortunately for them, they are used as pawns for the Islamic world.
Once people realize the magnitude of these conflicts, and that religion does not really play a large part of it, then there will be peace in Israel once and for all, but then again, maybe not as deception and denial are too grounded in today's political stones.
After all, a former PLO executive committee member statement back in 1977 must be a deception of sorts because history seems to have been re-written for many and deception lives on.
Reflections on the Israeli Invasion of the Gaza Strip and Obama's Position and Silence
How Long Will Israel Attack Gaza? Death Toll Close to 300 in Gaza
Israel Attacks Gaza Strip, More Than 155 Killed
Israel Launches Second Day of Airstrikes on Gaza Strip
Israel's Attacks on Gaza Strip Ignite Middle Eastern Protests
John Hopkins Hospital Doctors Aid in Gaza Strip


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The China-Canada Dinosaur Project (Chinese: 中国-加拿大恐龙计划; Pinyin: Zhōngguó-jiānádà kǒnglóng jìhuà; also known as Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project) was a six-year series of palaeontological expeditions carried out by scientists from China and Canada.

History

Background
In the 19th and early-20th centuries, foreign and domestic researchers - including Roy Chapman Andrews and Yang Zhongjian - made many dinosaur-related discoveries in China and Mongolia, particularly in the Gobi Desert. This changed with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, which saw Chinese academia reorganized and some fields, including anthropology, fall out of favour over their perceived ties to imperialism. The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing had many of its students reassigned onto other projects, such as the Down to the Countryside Movement, but began to rebuild in the mid-1970s with the reestablishment of the institute's journal Vertebrata PalAsiatica and monumental discoveries like the Dashanpu bonebeds. Chinese palaeontologist Dong Zhiming became prominent in the organization following the death of Yang Zhongjian, his mentor and the "father of Chinese vertebrate paleontology".

A period of economic and political reforms known as the "Opening of China" in the West led to scientific cooperation beginning between researchers in the country and abroad, drawing the attention of Canadian researchers. While establishing the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in 1982, Provincial Museum of Alberta palaeontologist Philip J. Currie suggested to communications consultant Brian Noble that the Gobi Desert was an ideal location for discovering dinosaur fossils. Noble received an $8,000 CAD grant from the Canada Council to begin a feasibility study into creating a cultural program that could facilitate joint research missions by Canadian and Chinese palaeontologists, and in 1984 founded the Ex Terra Foundation, an Edmonton-based non-profit. Noble would remain executive director of the foundation for the duration of its existence, later bringing on Kevin Taft to serve as CEO from 1986 to 1991.

Creation
The China-Canada Dinosaur Project (CCDP) was formally launched by the Ex Terra Foundation in 1985 to organize cooperative expeditions between the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the IVPP in Beijing, and the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta with the support of the provincial government of Alberta, the federal government of Canada, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Inner Mongolia Museum. Canadian Airlines International provided transportation to China for Canadian researchers involved in the project.

The stated mission of the Dinosaur Project was to improve the understanding of dinosaurs from North America and Asia by conducting field work in the Canadian Arctic, the Gobi Desert, the Junggar Basin, and other places of interest over the course of the following eight years. Philip J. Currie of the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Dong Zhiming of the IVPP, and  Dale Russell of the Canadian Museum of Nature served as project leads for the CCDP. Dong Zhiming and Sun Ailing of the IVPP visited Alberta in October–November 1985. The project's official logo featured the English word "dinosaur" adjacent to its Chinese translation: "恐龙".

Field work

Field work related to the China-Canada Dinosaur Project began in May 1986 with an eight-day expedition to the Gobi Desert, the first to involve Western scientists since 1930. In the early summer a larger-scale reconnaissance mission was led by Currie, Dong, and Russell in which they and their team travelled across the Gobi to identify sites of interest for dig teams in the future. This three-week excursion was the first major operation of the Dinosaur Project and marked the first use of eight Jeeps granted to the CCDP by the Toronto-based Donner Canadian Foundation. The team also visited fossil sites in Alberta, Montana, and the Arctic, with their first fossil-collecting mission occurring in Dinosaur Provincial Park in July, where the project's first major find - a troodontid braincase - was made by Tang Zhilu.

The 1987 field season was extremely productive for the CCDP. Between August and October, the team uncovered fossils which would later serve as the holotypes for Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum and Sinraptor dongi in China, and began work on the Devil's Coulee fossil site discovered earlier in the summer by Wendy Sloboda in Canada.

In 1988, Dale Russell discovered the therizinosaurid Alxasaurus in the Gobi Desert. A team led by Phil Currie uncovered five juvenile Pinacosaurus and sixty-six protoceratopsians near the town of Bayan Mandahu, in addition to three dinosaur egg nests and an incomplete Alectrosaurus skeleton from the Iren Dabasu Formation. Two years later, further work at the site would uncover seven more juvenile Pinacosaurus in the same quarry.

The 1989 field season represented a turning point for the Dinosaur Project. Canadian researchers arrived in China and began work on dig sites in Xinjiang amid ongoing protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Following the government crackdown against demonstrators on 4 June, the government of Canada ordered all of its citizens in China to return home, cutting that year's field season short. Canadian scientists returned to China again in 1990 to continue excavating at dig sites identified on earlier expeditions, and noteworthy discoveries were made on a near-daily basis. An extraordinarily well-preserved cycadophyte fossil was discovered near Urad Houqi in 1990, sixty years after the Sino-Swedish Expeditions (1927-1935) had uncovered fossils at the same site in 1930. By the time CCDP researchers returned to Canada in August, the organization had already determined there would be no further missions to China. Later that summer a handful of Canadian sites failed to produce any notable fossils. A final expedition was made to Dinosaur Provincial Park and Grande Cache in 1991, during one of the most successful field seasons in the history of the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Chinese researcher Tang Zhilu, who had made the first major discovery of the CCDP, made one of the last discoveries of the project when he uncovered an ankylosaurid skull belonging to Edmontonia.

With the conclusion of the 1991 field season the China-Canada Dinosaur Project ended six years into their eight-year mandate. The CCDP produced an enormous amount of fossils, with over fifteen tonnes of fossil material collected in Canada and another sixty tonnes in China.

Impact

Discoveries

New dinosaur taxa described by the China-Canada Dinosaur Project include Alxasaurus, Bellusaurus, Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, Monolophosaurus, Sinornithoides, Sinraptor, and Wuerhosaurus ordosensis. An incomplete skeleton recovered from Pingfengshan in 1989 is believed to be an unidentified species of Euhelopus. The project also described non-dinosaurian fossils such as the turtles Khunnuchelys, Ordosemys,  and Zangerlia neimongolensis; the crocodyliforms Rugosuchus and Sunosuchus junggarensis; the crocodilian Borealosuchus griffithi; the trace fossil Fictovichnus; and an unidentified atoposaurid tentatively assigned to the genus Theriosuchus. The CCDP also produced six distinct types of fossilized embryos believed to belong to the protoceratopsians Protoceratops and Bagaceratops.

In addition to specimens recovered in the field, CCDP researchers also reanalyzed fossil material that had gone ignored following earlier expeditions. This includes a partially-complete ankylosaur skull discovered in 1959 or 1960 by a multinational expedition made up of Chinese and Soviet researchers but which was placed into storage and never properly described. The skull was rediscovered while searching for fossils to feature in the Dinosaur Project's touring show, and in 2001 was made the holotype for a new genus of dinosaur: Gobisaurus.

A survey conducted of the Djadochta Formation during the CCDP dated the formation to the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous.

Chinese response
The National Natural Science Foundation of China was founded in 1986 in conjunction with the China-Canada Dinosaur Project and reflected on the program's successes at an international palaeontology symposium which ran from 10 to 12 October 2001 celebrating the foundation's fifteenth anniversary. Even after the CCDP ended some Canadian and Chinese palaeontologists continued to work together, resulting in the description of newly named dinosaurs like Gobisaurus and the reevaluation of known genera such as Shanshanosaurus.

After the CCPD concluded Chinese institutions were quick to begin collaborating with other foreign bodies, resulting in three additional dinosaur projects being launched in the 1990s: the Sino-Japan Silk Road Dinosaur Expedition (1992-1993), the China-Japan-Mongolia Mongolian Plateau Expedition (1995-1999), and the Sino-Belgium Dinosaur Project (1995-2001). Zhao Xijin and other participants in the CCDP continued to lead multinational expeditions to the Gobi Desert for years after the project ended.

Dale Russell, one of the CCDP's leaders, departed from the Canadian Museum of Nature in the years after the Dinosaur Project concluded and was replaced by fellow Dinosaur Project researcher Wu Xiaochun.

Western response
At the conclusion of the 1990 field season, Ex Terra Foundation CEO Kevin Taft was quoted as saying: "This concludes one of the biggest hunts in history". Peter Dodson, an American palaeontologist from the University of Pennsylvania, called the China-Canada Dinosaur Project "a very significant expedition". Phillip J. Currie, one of the project's leads, attributed the ongoing collaboration between Canadian and Chinese populations to the relationships established during the CCDP and referred to the project as a high point in the careers of all involved. Another project lead, Dale Russell, described working in the Gobi Desert as "like being on another planet. You have a wonderful feeling of time, of antiquity".

In recognition of shared customs between the Indigenous peoples in Canada and China, the Indian Association of Alberta (IAA) organized a symbolic exchange of tipis from the Peigen Reserve (now Piikani 147) and yurts from Kazakhs living in Inner Mongolia. The tipis were presented by Piikani elder Joe Crowshoe, Sr. at a research site in China in September 1987 at a ceremony which, following the tipi raising, featured a series of cultural events including horse races and dancing. A lack of funding resulted in the IAA and the Ex Terra Foundation initially cancelling the event before additional funding was secured.

Less than five years after opening and after four years participating in the CCDP, the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology received the title "Royal" from Queen Elizabeth II on 28 June 1990 near the start of the 1990 field season.

The CCDP was the subject of the 1993 non-fiction book The Dinosaur Project by Wayne Grady.

In 1996 the Royal Tyrrell Museum put on a special exhibit entitled "Kong-Long: Dinosaurs from the Gobi" which covered discoveries made by the CCDP and other researchers in the Gobi Desert. To promote a 2013 Pacific National Exhibition attraction based on Genghis Khan, science journalist Don "Dino Don" Lessem travelled to China and Mongolia with the radio show Ideas and revisited the site where Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum was discovered by the CCDP in 1987 as part of the program.

Dinosaur Project World Tour

Preparation
One of the largest science exhibitions in history was organized by the Ex Terra Foundation to showcase dinosaur fossils from China and Canada, with a heavy focus on those discovered by the CCDP. The show was alternatively known as "The Dinosaur Project", "The Greatest Show Unearthed", and "The Dinosaur Project World Tour", and was meant to raise funding for non-fiction books and documentaries which covered the research done by the CCDP.

Work began on the touring show in 1986. A preliminary analysis conducted by the Harrison Price Company to determine the possible financial returns of the project was completed in 1989 and projected that the Dinosaur Project exhibition could draw 900 to 3,200 daily visitors in North American markets and 6,000 to 10,000 in Japan. In preparation for the show, Ex Terra acquired archived fossil material from historic expeditions in China, leading to the rediscovery of previously-overlooked fossils such as a skull which was later made the holotype for Gobisaurus. Some names used to identify fossils featured in the show - such as "Gobisaurus" and "Sinornithoides" - had not been published in academic literature at the time of the show. As a result, these names were considered nomen nudum until they were described in official publications.

Tour
The show was originally scheduled to tour Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan in 1990, but was delayed multiple times. Officials announced in October 1990 that Edmonton would host the premiere showing of the Dinosaur Project World Tour from 15 May to 5 July 1992 before moving on to Toronto; other locales which had been considered to host the show were Calgary, Ottawa, and Winnipeg. The government of Alberta contributed $1.94 million CAD towards the Edmonton portion of the tour. Ultimately the event was delayed again and went forward in 1993, premiering in Edmonton before travelling to Toronto. The show made its international debut in Osaka in 1994 and then appeared in Singapore and Vancouver in 1995 before moving on to Sydney for the summer of 1996–1997. The show also appeared in Dallas, Milwaukee, and Winnipeg. In 1997 the Ex Terra Foundation ended the tour and sold many of its assets to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Of the eleven cities suggested as venues by a 1989 consultation with the Harrison Price Company, only Dallas and Toronto ever hosted the show.

The opening of the Edmonton show was attended by Ralph Klein, Premier of Alberta; Donald H. Sparrow, Minister of Economic Development and Tourism; Dianne Mirosh, Minister of Innovation and Science; and Tom Musgrove, MLA for the Bow River electoral district. Mirosh and Musgrove were critical of the show, saying it lacked sufficient recognition for Dinosaur Provincial Park's contributions to palaeontology. The show was also derided as "Bedrock meets Epcot" by critics as it toured Canada. However, Deputy Premier Ken Kowalski repeatedly defended the show and deemed it a success. During an October 1993 meeting of the Alberta Legislative Assembly, Kowalski deemed dinosaurs one of Alberta's primary tourist attractions:

Most of the reviews that are done clearly indicate that people are fascinated by three things in the province of Alberta. They're fascinated by RCMP with red serge coats, they're fascinated by the Rocky Mountains, and they're absolutely fascinated by dinosaurs. There's something international about a dinosaur, and of course Alberta is really the great home of the dinosaur.

Features
Fossils featured prominently in the tour included samples from a Centrosaurus bonebed, a Daspletosaurus skull, a well-preserved ornithomimid, a nearly-complete Prosaurolophus skeleton, a stone slab containing twelve juvenile Pinacosaurus, a Mamenchisaurus skeleton, and the Tyrannosaurus skeleton known as "Black Beauty". A number of artistic recreations were prepared for the tour, including a life-size Albertosaurus sculpture created by Canadian palaeoartist Brian Cooley. Many of the sculptures and other palaeoart used in the tour were acquired by the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 1997, and have been periodically reused by the museum and other touring exhibitions.

The exhibition was set up in each locale under large tents and consisted of several areas. The Great Hall, or "Boneworks", featured not only dinosaur fossils but an interactive centre for children and several tables where guests could engage with CCDP researchers. The final product also featured a recreation of one team's field camp.

Formations visited by year

1986
 Eureka Sound Group, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut)
 Isachsen Formation, Axel Heiberg Island, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut)
 Judith River Formation, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta
 Shishugou Formation, Jiangjunmiao, Xinjiang

1987
 Ejinhoro Formation, Ordos, Inner Mongolia
 Tugulu Group, Xinjiang

1988
 Bayan Mandahu Formation, Urad Rear Banner, Inner Mongolia
 Bayin-Gobi Formation, Alxa League, Inner Mongolia
 Ejinhoro Formation, Ejin Horo Banner, Inner Mongolia
 Iren Dabasu Formation, Erenhot, Inner Mongolia
 Shishugou Formation, Jiangjunmiao, Xinjiang
 Tugulu Group, Xinjiang

1989
 Eureka Sound Group, Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut)
 Kanguk Formation, Bylot Island, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut)
 Shishugou Formation, Jiangjunmiao, Xinjiang
 Wucaiwan Formation, Jimsar, Xinjiang

1990
 Bayan Mandahu Formation, Urad Rear Banner, Inner Mongolia
 Ejinhoro Formation, Ordos, Inner Mongolia
 Gates Formation, Grande Cache, Alberta
 Iren Dabasu Formation, Erenhot, Inner Mongolia
 Shishugou Formation, Jiangjunmiao, Xinjiang

1991
 Judith River Formation, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta

References

1986 in paleontology
1987 in paleontology
1988 in paleontology
1989 in paleontology
1990 in paleontology
1991 in paleontology
Asian expeditions
North American expeditions
Paleontology in Canada
Paleontology in China
Canada–China relations

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Magnus Granberg: 'Nattens skogar'
I'm starting to think of Magnus Granberg's music the way I think of late Morton Feldman: each one is the same yet each one is different. The restrained but taut atmosphere of extreme focus prevails, over an extended span of time. Other than that, I don't want to make comparisons. That shared attention to the small details living inside sound comes from a different place. Granberg's scores, described as "rather open", seem designed to allow more liberty to the performers than Feldman would permit. This approach needs the tradition of free improvisation that has developed over the last half-century, and skilled, sympathetic performers.
His regular ensemble of players, Skogen, has released several discs on Another Timbre, ranging from a ten-piece electroacoustic ensemble to a quintet. On this new release from Insub, his 2015 ensemble piece Nattens skogar is presented in a version reduced to just four musicians. Again, everything's the same yet it's all different. As with other recent works, Nattens skogar (it's the Swedish translation of Nightwood) draws inspiration and material from pre-existing music; in this case, Erik Satie's nocturnes and Thelonious Monk's "Monk's Mood". As before, any resemblance to the source would not be detected by the uninformed listener. The nocturnal theme suits Granberg's, and his musicians', palettes of sounds both dark and frail.
In this setting, every sound is set in stark relief. Part of this may be due to the recording, which sounds very close. Background noises, seemingly inadvertent, colour the music, unless it is Cyril Bondi's percussion. Granberg plays his prepared piano in slow motion, Anna Lindal's violin merges with harmonicas played by Bondi and d'incise. d'incise adds electronics and 'tuned objects' – the buzz and hum of line noise and distortion adds an unnerving edge to the music. Anything that may be construed as a slow, unhurried flow through the fifty minutes or so is upset by subtle but indelible shifts in mood; this may be down to the shadowy presence of Satie. At the beginning, events are punctuated by an ominous knocking; in the latter half of the piece, intrusions such as electric organ or bass drum cast the other instruments in a new light. It strikes me as the clearest expression I've yet heard of the aesthetic world Granberg has constructed and might be the best place to start for newcomers. Ensemble Grizzana is premiering a new work by him next month in Huddersfield, which I would like to witness.
One quibble: Insub have released this on vinyl, as so many small, adventurous labels must to make ends meet these days, and as a download. It's a shame the download version preserves the fadeout and break into two tracks from the vinyl instead of offering an uninterrupted experience. In the pause, you can hear how the 'silence' is charged with electrical hum, ambient noise, hiss.
Pianos (II): Epstein Abrahams Pateras
Nobody has made it…. Nobody is accessible*."
At the last Music We'd Like To Hear concert this summer I heard the first live performance in the UK of John McGuire's 48 Variations for Two Pianos (completed in 1980). The work could be considered 'minimal': a continuous span of some 50 minutes, dynamically and texturally static, with a single, clear principle underlying the cycling of the material through harmonic and rhythmic changes. As a tour de force of compositional engineering, it first sounds like an evolution of Steve Reich's Piano Phase: a unifying process developed to a point of elaboration where the inner workings of the method remain elusive to the listener, yet the presence of an intelligible principle of operation is intuitively apparent. (Works such as this are sometimes described by critics as 'postminimalist', inasmuch as it displays a greater development of Reich's ideas than Reich himself achieved.)
I started thinking about this when listening again to R. Andrew Lee's album of piano pieces by Paul A. Epstein. The relatively brief pieces here, all written in the 2010's, achieve a similar type of complexity as in McGuire's epic, aimed towards a different end. Epstein writes of "reducing surface repetition while retaining the 'limited means' that remains for me a crucial aspect of minimalism and postminimalism." It's probably not a coincidence that he has also written a perceptive analysis of Piano Phase. Pieces with intellectually provocative titles such as Drawing No. 4 (triangles, broken horizontal and vertical lines, rectangles, and parallelograms) hint at objective processes at work underneath the shifting mosaic of notes and chords. Rhythms are not steady but appear to conform to an underlying grid; pitches and harmonies are transformed according to rules that remain unknown to a casual listener but clearly follow a coherent order. For something that immediately sounds so straightforward, this music hovers in an ambiguous place. Typically, any music moving away from strict minimalism to greater complexity is perceived as a turn toward subjectivity, but Epstein trips our sensitivity for affective sounds through entirely rational means.
The difference in hearing this type of complexity is a little like distinguishing a knot from a tangle. Complexity, and the designing intellect behind it, can come in many forms. Music In Eight Octaves is a vast, churning ocean, cryptically credited on the front cover to "176". This reveals itself to be the piano duo of Chris Abrahams (him off The Necks) and Anthony Pateras. I'd heard years ago that these two had recorded an album with them each improvising for an hour at a time on each octave of the keyboard in turn, then superimposing the results. From time to time I wondered what became of it. The sessions, recorded in 2005, have finally been released.
Has there been much editing of the raw material? Am I remembering this correctly? The sleeve notes don't give anything away, instead dedicating themselves to Pateras interviewing Abrahams about the musical environment in which he developed, ranging from jazz to the avant-garde to pedagogical studies to the Australian alternative rock scene of the 1980s. (Nothing is said of Pateras other than as a reflection, a succeeding generation inheriting Abraham's legacy.) The music is as overwhelming and ultimately pounding as you might expect, but much of the exhaustion comes from the sheer wealth of differentiated material, more than overbearing volume. The "all-over" nature of the music at first recalls Pollock's drip canvases, but it progressively becomes clearer that a closer analogy would be to Gerhard Richter's abstract paintings. Besides the overlaying of material, the aleatory montage of different images, alternately hidden, distorted and revealed, there's the way the music is treated as a source of further development. In the way that Richter photographs, cuts up and re-photographs some of his abstract canvases, the two pianos here seem to have been cut up, cut away, sculpted into its present form. Certain registers drop away from time to time and I'm still getting to grips with the piece to determine if there is silence or admirable restraint by the two players.
I just replaced 'improvisers' with 'players' in that last sentence. Even without editing, the act of playing in these circumstances was a compositional strategy, with the awareness that the material would be layered and combined. As a monolithic block of sound, it reveals itself to have a complex, multifaceted shape of many-coloured faces.
Tom Phillips' 'Irma', for real
Tom Phillips' opera Irma is nearly fifty years old and at the pre-performance talk on Sunday evening the host, the director and others were still a little squeamish about directly calling it an opera. (It's anti-opera, it's a work with operatic elements, the word after all is from the Latin for…) Even after Phillips expanded the work in 2014, adding more overtly musical notation, its allusive fragments remain tantalisingly elusive as an experience. On record, one could hear realisations by Gavin Bryars and AMM, each transforming the work into a pastiche of their own recognisable style and neither fully comfortable with the score's hedge of limitations against possibilities. Comparing the two recalls the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
Over the weekend South London Gallery presented two performances of a new version of the opera, with staging by Netia Jones and music direction by Anton Lukoszevieze, whose ensemble Apartment House played as a string trio with keyboards and percussion. Apartment House have form in making music out of scores better known for their looks than their sounds. In this realisation, with two singers, an actor and chorus, staged with choreography and video projections, the collaged nature of the work, like much of Phillips' art, came to the fore. In its expanded form, there's greater liberty to include and omit, but many elements familiar to listeners to either recorded version persist and remain indelible to the work.
Irma has an indulgent quality to it, and this quality is what truly makes it an opera. The romanticism in Phillips' poetic fragments is overt and spreads from the libretto to musical and stage directions. The Victorian-era source material is redolent with the same atmosphere. This production gratefully accepted the score's implied invitations to operatic conventions of tragic heroes, idolised heroines, thwarted love, melancholy, intrigue, the ballet. As Grenville, Benjamin O'Mahony was suitably gentlemanly in his anguish, while singers Josephine Stephenson and Elaine Mitchener evoked characters from their contrasting parts as Irma and The Nurse respectively, in roles that might otherwise become ciphers for the expected values of the audience. All coped well with the added demands placed on how they moved in the space during the second half.
The music itself adopted a new guise with each scene, in turn overtly dramatic then austere, ranging across the approaches taken by his contemporaries in the British avant-garde: Scratch Orchestra-like free-form, quietly minimal, affectionately atavistic. Rather like Cage's operas, the Babel of collage created a type of Ur-Opera more than anti-opera. Elements from outside the score were permitted, with allusions to more pieces by Phillips and other operas. Precisely halfway through, a gunshot rang out and everything so far seen and heard by the audience was repeated, in reverse – a neat reference to another opera's use of formal constraints to reign in romantic excess.
Casting the opera as a palindrome raises questions about the ephemeral nature of theatrical experience, not to mention the difficulty of getting music like this performed in public. At least the audience will have heard it more than once. It also highlighted the fact that we were only hearing yet one more possible interpretation of Irma and that only a certain amount of material was used. Irma remains elusive, its score suggesting a lost Platonic ideal that cannot be recreated, but at South London Gallery it gained a distinct identity for itself.
This Is The New Music: Unstained Melodies
I'm sorry, everyone.
Unstained Melodies by Ben Harper
It started out with the urge to test music to destruction, removing structure, context, all momentum and teleology from existing pieces of music to see what musical qualities may still survive in the desiccated remains. (This test was to prove that musical 'meaning' is an irreducible quality induced through any phenomenon being perceived as music.) I had previously composed a piano piece titled Benches, made entirely from the final bar taken from a large number of compositions. Each quotation was taken from a point at which all supposed momentum had been exhausted, yet when pieced together they could not help but form a new continuity.
Unstained Melodies is a set of piano miniatures designed to test internal continuity in harmonically-structured composition. The source material was a found object: a very old and damaged edition of pedagogical organ pieces demonstrating "Stainer's Organ Method." (I do not recall if the book was by John Stainer himself.) Taking only what was presumably the least valuable material, I systematically extracted only the last beat of each bar from each piece. To disorient the material, the extracted up-beats were reassembled in reverse order. In fact, I started with the last intact page and steadily worked backwards through the book, assuming that the pieces would tend to become shorter and simpler until the process ceased to be viable; a study in regression. This recording is a crude realisation of the written music, using computer-controlled piano samples, playing from algorithmically edited MIDI files. No physical keyboard playing was involved.
Ryoko Akama: places and pages
This is a vast work, in duration and scope, made from the briefest notations. It shows that there is so much more to be explored in and understood by the term 'minimal' in music. Akama states simply that "places and pages is a collection of fifty texts to be performed at random places". The texts are as gnomic as any score by George Brecht, La Monte Young or Yoko Ono in the high times of Fluxus. There seems to have been a resurgence in text scores lately, or perhaps a rise in people who know how to play them. Akama's texts are exceptionally brief, in a way that simultaneously risks an interpretive free-for-all yet also seems forbidding in its plain lack of information. They do, however, place an emphasis on procedures, either in performance (one simply states "forty-four: walks") or structure ("fifty overlaps"). She has published an essay describing the pieces and thinking behind them in more detail.
Another Timbre has released the recordings Akama made in various locations around Switzerland over one week last summer as part of a group with Cristián Alvear, Cyril Bondi, d'incise, Christian Müller and Stefan Thut. Over two and a half hours, forty-five of the fifty are presented. The realisations range from solos to sextets, using musical instruments, found objects, field recordings; the locations range from the recording studio to the streets. From such insubstantial slips of writing comes a sonic landscape big enough to get lost in. The musicians' ingenious interpretations can sound in turn like a flight of inspiration or a solution to a puzzle. In the mosaic-like arrangement of pieces, this album takes on the semblance of an aural movie in which a band of explorers make a quixotic survey of their surrounds, with only a roughly-sketched map for guidance.
Some patterns seem clear on casual listening while others remain unknowable. Brief vignettes intrude, certain themes and settings reappear, new elements are introduced and these simple little pieces accumulate a history and a complexity not previously considered. There are aspects reminiscent of Cage's Song Books, Ferrari's audio travelogues, Fluxus happenings, yet it sounds like none of these. As the joint project of six artists, it allows for a variety of distinct approaches while maintaining an overall coherence. The more overtly musical segments put the less obvious ones in a new light, admitting a broader range of sounds as music. In turn, when the 'music' returns it is heard as one of a range of possible activities permitted by the score. Taken as a whole, places and pages shifts back and forth between categories: composition, performance, documentary, collage, field recording. It is a true composite.
The Most Influential Rock Album Of The Last Twenty Years
I live in a country where Oasis is still treated as more than a punchline so I can't help but notice that their album Be Here Now was released twenty years ago on this day. Whatever the relative artistic merits of them or it, Be Here Now still casts a long shadow over all subsequent rock'n'roll to this day. The album, as everyone knows, is an epic of empty bombast and false bravado that tries to simultaneously distract and intimidate the listener from observing the meaningless void it barely covers. There's nothing wrong in itself with braggadocio in rock; the genre was created as a vehicle for blagging. But Oasis weren't blagging to get in anymore – they'd made it. Looking down on the world from a small mountain of blow, it was their moment for untouchable self-indulgence. Instead, they flinched and looked over their shoulder. The bombast was purely defensive, the arrogance a deflection from a bad case of impostor syndrome. They were blagging just to stay put.
It was a turning point in rock music. For the first time, a band on the upswing made an album whose primary motivation was not the hunger to conquer the world, but the fear of failure. Fear of losing what you already have has become the dominant mode of rock. Into the new century, hundreds of bands have copied Be Here Now's example: cajoling anthems, singalongs fishing for assent from the crowd, hoping the mob doesn't turn on them. Once, people in the audience wanted to be in the band; now, the band pleads to belong with the audience. Each new act, each new record reeks of focus groups and flop-sweat. This is Be Here Now's legacy, held tight like a comfort blanket.
The Presence of Julius Eastman, in full
While I was away a new issue of Tempo came out, which includes my review of last December's London Contemporary Music Festival. This is a much expanded and improved version of the post I made here at the time, discussing the remarkable music of Julius Eastman, Arthur Russell and Frederic Rzewski. More context is given and Gay Guerrilla is misspelled – entirely my oversight. If you have access to journal articles you can read the whole thing on the Tempo website.
Filed under: Music, Reviews, Self-promotion by Ben.H
Airplane Shuffle Summer Mix 2017
Back from a quick holiday, will still be writing over summer about some cool music I've heard lately. In the meantime, I'm amusing myself by uploading a half-hour mix of the tracks that played when I hit Shuffle on my phone during the flight home.
Boring Like A Drill Airplane Shuffle Summer Mix 2017
(30 minutes, mp3, 53MB)
Filed under: Music, Stupidity by Ben.H
Pianos (I): Parkinson Dalibert Pateras
For reasons economical as much as ideological the piano has become the one-man* laboratory for the composer as autonomous author or auteur using the instrument as a vehicle for musical manifestos. Music and ideas about music have become inseparable to the extent that to try such a separation is a theoretical statement in itself. That could be heard as a less direct demonstration of an aesthetic argument. In a similar way each piece of music may be heard as exemplifying a certain theoretical principle to a greater or lesser degree. When Feldman protested that he abjured systems he created a new means of approach for other composers to follow.
You make music out of sounds and not ideas but composition as a demonstration of a theoretical principle can be very direct and unadorned yet still be aesthetically pleasing or at least interesting even if nobody really wants to play the first part of Boulez's Structures and skips straight to Book 2. Tom Johnson has created an oeuvre of compositions that rigorously follow even the simplest and most predictable processes yet can charm and delight through a counterintuitive adherence to an obvious pattern. The reason things get unexpectedly complicated is because there is a difference between letting a theory play out in your imagination and experiencing it as a physical acoustic phenomenon. If the idea is evident then it has to operate on musical terms.
I've been listening to Philip Thomas play two of Tim Parkinson's eponymous piano pieces released by Wandelweiser a while back. The two pieces from 2006 and 2007 are discontinuous and ostensibly anonymous. Unconnected gestures and patterns separated by pauses accumulate in an arbitrary sequence. Parkinson describes the earlier piece as a constant state of beginning that is beginning with nothing. An echo of Cage's dictum of chance starting over from zero at every instance comes to mind but here it is not chance but performance. Patterns of piano playing come to mind and are reflected on when starting over again. The latter piece is described in terms of work. Writing and playing in a given space of time and finding things new whether by playing something new or playing something heard before but hearing it new. In each case a give-and-take between the composer and the instrument reveals something unexpected.
I don't know much about Melaine Dalibert's music or his new album Ressac on Another Timbre. His plays two of his own compositions for solo piano. Like on the Parkison album the pieces are written in successive years. The 2014 piece is short and the second from the following year is long. Other than length it is difficult to tell the two apart. Each one is made entirely of single notes spaced widely apart with each note left to fade away. It gets monotonous but as each pitch is different from the next it is never monotonous enough to become interesting. Apparently there is some algorithm behind the sequence of pitches but this conceptual process is not demonstrated in an interesting way. The two pieces demonstrate nothing more than an idea that need not be heard. Letting each note decay so completely unfortunately recalls a previously fashionable style of 'holy minimalism' that assigned a superstitious reverence to each note played.
Two more piano pieces again played by the composer on Anthony Pateras's Immediata release Blood Stretched Out. I've just looked and yes again the pieces are from successive years albeit in reverse order. Chronochromatics from 2013 plays like the latter Tim Parkinson piece albeit filtered through Pateras' more manic sensibility. His programme notes list a set of ideas ideals idle thoughts obsessions and reference points which may well constitute the score for the piece. There may be autobiography in here encoded into the patchwork of allusions exercises and outbursts. As with the Parkinson anything familiar is rendered strange through context. As an idea the piece Blood Stretched Out seems simpler upon hearing it although the act of playing it seems much more arduous. An extended trill that thunders away for nearly 45 minutes would sound on the surface as a single exercise in timbre. The sleeve notes to this work are in the form of a diary compiled over two years collating thoughts on culture and music equally with reflections on society and philosophy. The opening of the piece establishes a parallel with Wagner and then starts to transform itself in a defiant attempt to break through the constraints of multiple traditions to which the most progressive musician may paradoxically find themselves bound. To distance oneself from classical tradition now puts one in debt to the past century of the avant-garde and to renounce both leads into an equally burdened history of improvisation. Pateras has carefully considered the odds and the options before deciding to launch a full-frontal attack in which competing ideas are subsumed entirely by acoustic phenomena.
Christoph Schiller & Morgan Evans-Weiler: spinet and violin
It describes itself as "an extended improvisation" but I don't believe it. A few years back Another Timbre put out a solo album by Christoph Schiller titled Variations – a strange hybrid of improvisation and composition. Schiller worked inside an amplified spinet and piano with various objects to compose a canon out of improvisations of predetermined length. His working methods were inspired, producing evocative sounds that only occasionally betrayed their origins.
Someone could carelessly say that improvisation is about spontaneity, but that only goes some way towards a satisfying musical experience. When away from the club, the theatre, the sense of community, the bravado, the booze and only the sound remains. As Schiller said, "A recorded improvisation is as fixed (or even more fixed) as a written piece." Improvisation is about heightened senses of judgement, knowing when and how to act, even if only on a subconscious level.
This new duet by Schiller and violinist Morgan Evans-Weiler, titled simply spinet and violin, exercises such a fine judgement over such a long time that it's difficult to believe that, as Evans-Weiler confirms in the accompanying interview that the music was completely improvised, or that they haven't been playing together for years:
It was clear from the second that we started playing what direction it was going to go. I think we have both become increasingly interested in pitch and so the focus was very much on permutations of pitch sets and working through these sets over time.
The focus on pitch yields a fascinating study in timbre and texture. Carefully choosing when to deploy each new note creates a beautifully paced slow arc of sound that builds up ominously before dying away to almost complete silence halfway through. Strangely, this stillness and subsequent stirring into activity again feels like a natural progression than a break or a structural argument. The shifts in dynamics throughout the piece are all the more striking and effective for being confined to a relatively narrow range.
Both musicians hover in a state halfway between definite pitch of 'proper' playing and the indeterminate sound of 'extended' techniques. The piece begins with Schiller plucking muted spinet strings against Evans-Weiler's frail violin drones. Any tendency to pursue a particular gesture or sound gets reined in by an emphasis on pitch, yet the pitch itself remains a nebulous ideal which may be approached but never possessed. This ambiguous haze persists throughout, like a familiar image that preys on memory but never quite resolves into recognisable focus. Sustained double-stops float microtonally, the strings from both instruments rasp and buzz, a rare plucked note dropped like a pebble into a pond. The spinet rattles and echoes – at times it seems like there are electronics involved, with lower pitched sounds welling up in the background. It's all hard to tell. I haven't heard many pieces this year composed as well as this improvisation.
Late Feldman live and on record
Last September Mark Knoop, Aisha Orazbayeva, Bridget Carey and Anton Lukoszevieze played Morton Feldman's last piece, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello at Cafe Oto. I've written before about the playing conditions at Cafe Oto in hot weather, particularly when playing Feldman. Watching the musicians wilt in the airless heat, a sense of solidarity builds between the players and the punters, the understanding of dedication to a common interest.
In these circumstances, rough edges inevitably appear, attention can wander, but the sense of occasion gives an insightful edge. The exposed seams in how a piece is made, how it is played, helps the listener to understand more about what goes into the music. After the September gig, one of the players described it as "a nice run-through" of the Feldman. Another Timbre has now released a recording made by the same musicians in the more sedate climate of Henry Wood Hall in January. The differences are striking.
Yes, it's more polished. Of course it is. The performance here is different in other ways. The four musicians, superb under pressure, now bring a new coherence and focus to the sound. The polish isn't a layer of gloss, but a new surface, as simultaneously opaque and transparent as a late Rothko canvas. Compared to my memories of the Oto night, this new version is more sombre but also more settled. Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello seemed to mark an advance from Feldman's other last pieces, in that it seemed more organic, even relaxed in its unhurried traversal of 74 minutes. In this recording, that more discursive aspect has diminished – presumably the musicians were able to pay more attention to each other. It's replaced by a unified sound, closer in feeling to the more commercially celebrated Piano and String Quartet.
In playing together more closely, the strings produce a more otherworldly sound. The piano balances this tone beautifully, as though outlining a pattern visible within the surface of the strings. Heard in this way, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello now incorporates and resolves the monadic mysteriousness of preceding works like Coptic Light and For Samuel Beckett, allowing both the stillness of contemplation and an invitation to breathe again.
John Cage's 'Concert For Piano and Orchestra'
The programme notes for the St John At Hackney gig last Thursday admitted that Cage's Concert For Piano and Orchestra is a work more often seen than heard. Its spectre haunts all music that aspires to the condition of art as surely and as silently as his more notorious 4'33". The score for the piano part acts as a signal, here be dragons. It's a visual manifesto for Cage's aesthetics of chance and indeterminacy, as forbidding as it is liberating. Critics worry, often without having heard it, that the music is random, meaningless. The meaning of, say, Haydn is a question that has never troubled them.
Live, the first performances I heard of the Concert were sparse and bracing, with that quality of openness that so often distinguished Cage's music from other atonal composers of the Fifties. Years later, I heard a much more raucous, impetuous performance, with a larger orchestra. The comic qualities of the Concert have come under greater focus in recent years. The score itself conveys its own mischievous humour for the performer, the notation allows scope for an uncommon exuberance, the conductor has their own, independent part which may be safely ignored. For a "random, meaningless" work, it carries a lot of signs that it is a Concert of Misrule.
There's too much precise working out of details to consider the work as a Dadaist stunt. Critics could, of course, complain that Cage's anarchism isn't anarchic enough. Despite all attempts to dismiss it – as a joke, as conceptual art, as a philosophical statement – the Concert persists as a discomfiting presence in music. Describing the music as 'abstract' or non-referential is not enough to diminish its power – this should be obvious to anyone who can hear. How, as a piece of music, does the Concert continue to exert such force on the imagination, nearly sixty years after its premiere?
At St John At Hackney last Thursday night, pianist Philip Thomas joined conductor Jack Sheen and ten musicians from Apartment House for a performance of the Concert. The piece has always sounded protean, a mass of competing forces that never find equilibrium, always on the verge of becoming identifiable but never resolving into a fixed state at any time. Cage often talked about observing and imitating nature's methods of operation and, in this piece, nature seems always on the verge of exceeding its bounds.
Thomas had scrupulously devised a new realisation of the piano part. In this incarnation the solo, often pointillistic in other interpretations, frequently assumed a studied fury, with extended loud phrases in restricted registers, elaborate figures and, every now and then, sudden interruptions of added colouration through extended techniques and objects. The orchestra members, scattered to various points around the church, called out to no-one, expecting no reply. As the sun set and the church darkened, quieter moments felt more like fatigue than rest; silences, always unnervingly unpredictable, opened up in the music like chasms.
Cage expressed the belief that any meaning to found in music comes from within the listener. This is not a renunciation of meaning in art, but a more complex understanding of how meaning may be found. After Cage's death, a clear trend emerged in performing his work in a heightened state of quiescence, embracing the accidental harmonies found in his late work. This attitude carried over into new realisations of pieces from the Fifties and Sixties, which typically received more abrupt, abrasive performances at the time. The Apartment House performance of Concert opened up a new way of hearing this music. As the discordant voices rose, coalesced, fell apart and were silenced, the piece became an ominous, unreadable symbol for the times, refusing to explain itself but portending dark times ahead. I've never heard a more powerful performance of the piece, live or on record.
It's fitting that the companion work on the night was a new piece by Christian Wolff, titled Resistance. Written for the same forces, it was premiered by Apartment House in Leeds the weekend before. Wolff's resistance is not obstructionist; the piece synthesises several different approaches he has used to composition over the years. At times fully notated, at others partially or completely open, the conductor gives direction as needed, marks time when required, or stands aside. In contrast to much of Wolff's recent music, the sense of a shaping force was present, allowing greater contrast and affective shading to emerge while still not compromising the 'consensual' working of the musicians. It worked backwards through allusions to Cage's Music For ______ series, Cardew's ensemble music of the early Sixties, and Wolff's own, earliest rule-based works, drawing upon them as principles to be maintained into the next century.
A Post-Cage World: Antoine Beuger's Ockeghem Octets
In my mind I've worked up Antoine Beuger as my personal nemesis. Never met him, but his music has always aroused a vehement antipathy, sufficient for me to have resolved to avoid further encounters wherever possible. (The only other composer I've singled out for this treatment, more or less arbitrarily, is Wolfgang Rihm.) Whatever I've heard has always struck me as being imprisoned in theoretical purity, beholden to presenting an idea at the expense of any musical considerations; a dry, academic routine left to run its course. I found it devoid of aesthetic interest, but never in a way that challenged or provoked, and so felt no need to pursue it further.
So, when Another Timbre sent me their new recording of Beuger's Ockeghem Octets last week, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to demonstrate my impartiality by getting really stuck in. I'm happy to report that those hopes have been dashed. This is quietly intriguing music. Maybe I needed to hear more Beuger after all, but what seems to set this piece apart from previous works I've heard is that the idea here focuses on musical considerations.
Each page of the score contains two lines of four tones. The tones are all to be played long and softly. Four of the musicians play one line of tones, each in their own time, and the four others play the second line. This recording realises twenty-five of the fifty pages of the score.
There's a simple scheme in play here, not unlike some of my preferred music by Eva-Maria Houben. From this simplicity, a pleasing subtlety is allowed to emerge. As the title suggests, the piece is an homage to Ockeghem and Beuger observes that each page of the score "constitutes a kind of double canon". The structure of the piece – musicians independently playing shared material within loosely-defined time-frames – bears a clear similarity to Cage's late 'number' pieces. Indeed, the sound-world of soft, overlapping pitches strongly resemble many of those works.
There are distinct differences, however; borne out of differences in musical thinking. Firstly, Cage wasn't one to think in terms of canons. Each page is circumscribed as a miniature, self-contained piece. Where Cage allows some interpretive freedom, Beuger stipulates long and soft notes throughout – those 'lines' of four tones take, in this recording, 2-3 minutes each. With potential for harmonic and textural complexity thus reduced still further, other qualities come to the fore. The instruments (flute, alto flute, melodica, concertina, harmonium, accordion, cello, e-bow zither) divide differently between the two lines on each page, producing strangely sophisticated tone-colours. The mix of instruments used here, combining "high" and "low" cultures, brings out unexpected beating frequencies and other acoustic phenomena. It's a work that lovingly exemplifies the beauty of instrumental sounds, all through simple play that removes any faint traces of didacticism that linger even in Cage's most beguiling works.
It figures that I must have been missing something all this time. Still wary of diving into Beuger's back catalogue, but now because I'm worried I'll spoil the mood.
Convulsive Amnesia and Disruptive Technology
How does a composer respond to the modern world? Do you try to shut it out as a distraction and risk irrelevance? Or do you try to engage with it and risk co-option to commercial and political interests? Are you sufficiently aware of the changing currents in society, able to record them in such a way that your music doesn't grow as stale as last year's fashion?
Synergy percussion ensemble is approaching their 40th anniversary and commissions a new work to mark the occasion. They ask Anthony Pateras, who responds with an hour-long percussion sextet using over 100 instruments, with electroacoustic improvisations, written over two years. Now released on CD and download, Beauty Will Be Amnesiac Or Will Not Be At All is a huge, ambitious work, far beyond a celebratory showpiece for technical virtuosity.
The title immediately recalls a misquote of Breton's dictum, "Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all." In fact, it's a direct quote of the conclusion to Sylvère Lotringer's essay The Dance of Signs. As with all the releases on Immediata, the music comes wrapped in ideas. The disc is accompanied by a booklet of interviews between Pateras, Lotringer and Jérôme Noetinger.
Presently, amnesia is impossible because we are immersed in the omnipresent archive of the Internet. The techno-utopia we have collectively bought into makes it more difficult for creative processes that consciously seek new worlds, because the weight of the past is magnified and indulged. If we cannot forget, how do we stumble on the beautiful?
Lotringer replies, "Surprise doesn't surprise anymore. It's already inscribed in the machine." Cage typically liked to see the bright side of the emerging postmodern condition (we will become omni-attentive, i.e. electronic) but Lotringer cites another quote from Cage, on the need for art to "help us to forget" when we "drown in an avalanche of rigorously identical objects." Right now, as any tech billionaire will tell you, information is an industry, rapidly defining for itself its own standards of manufacture and reproduction. Pateras notes that ubiquitous technology has given us a surfeit of self-representation, at the expense of self-awareness.
In a cultural sense, technology has allowed us to be consumed by inertia. How to break this hold? A percussion work too often asserts a return to primal origins, an attempted negation that in fact is a regression to accumulated cultural baggage and prejudices. Beauty Will Be Amnesiac Or Will Not Be At All makes a regression of a more complex kind. It starts out sounding like a recording from the 1950s, the highest frequenices deadened, a faint hiss and rumble throughout. Despite the appearance of tape recorders later in the piece, at this stage everything is in fact acoustic, all sounds created by low, muffled percussion instruments of various types. An invisible act of technological disorientation.
The music is difficult, virtuosic in its complexity of composition and performance, but never in a flamboyant way. The polyrhythms and timbral shifts between instruments form a coherent hole, with no single voice standing out for display. Throughout the piece, the percussion is overdubbed with improvisations by Pateras and Noetinger on Revox tape recorders, reproducing, manipulating and distorting the percussion sounds. At times, the percussion sextet's playing acts as an armature for the electronics, and at other times, vice versa. For all the small-scale restlessness in making the sounds, and the large-scale flux in densities and textures, the piece feels curiously monolithic. It creates its own meaning, leaving it to the listener to discern.
The question of whether the electronic and acoustic here exist in symbiosis, or instead prey upon each other in turn, is effaced by the electronic technology appearing to be obsolete (tape, open reels). To a less obvious extent it is also effaced by the 'primitive' percussion including highly-developed instruments and newer inventions such as Xenakis' Sixxens. Freed from the distractions of being "cutting edge", technology here is embraced for its truly disruptive properties, over an empty gesture of futilely attempting to renounce technology. Percussion and tape introduce complexities and complications which digital technologies have tried so hard to expunge.
We are living now in the half-forgotten legacies of the last century, from a time when first percussion music, and then tape, were seen as means of liberating sound. The use of older technology here is not an act of nostalgia but of taking up again a promise of the future left unfulfilled. If the music here seems foreboding, it still may be a utopian alternative to digitally-enforced cheerfulness.
I bought 10 Edition Wandelweiser CDs for 50 Euros and now I'm posting tweet-length reviews after drinking beer in the sun.
Tim Parkinson: cello piece
A study in self-knowledge triumphing over self-expression, allowing the personal to speak for the universal.
Eva-Maria Houben: von da nach da
She calls them 'pictures' and I love how reductive and transparent these pictures are. Sophistication is heightened simplicity.
Eva-Maria Houben: Works For Tromba Marina
An acoustic version George Harrison's Electronic Sound LP.
Michael Pisaro: an unrhymed chord
How to present sound as subject without diminishing the power of composition. Open format gives acoustic and digital samples equal stature.
Michael Pisaro: Hearing Metal 1
How to turn Stockhausen's Mikrophonie I into a Harry Bertoia sculpture. Congratulations, I guess.
Tim Parkinson: piano piece piano piece
I plan to discuss this in greater detail in the near future.
Eva-Maria Houben: orgelbuch
Like a transcription of von da nach da. The rigorous economy of playing seems natural and gentle, as though fulfilled.
Eva-Maria Houben: dazwischen/immer anders
It's a nice day so I'll just leave the windows open and pretend this CD is playing.
Jürg Frey: String Quartets
Earlier quartets by Frey. Heard now in retrospect they reveal an exploratory nature, quietly restless (just not on the surface).
Beat Keller, Tom Johnson, Joseph Kudirka: String Trios
The Keller trios are so brief they make the larger works by Johnson and Kudirka seem equally ephemeral, hard to pin down.


What is the meaning of Aliyah?
What is the meaning of Alea?
What is the meaning of Alburz?
What is the meaning of Alau-din?
What is the meaning of Alakat?
What is the meaning of Alaaqat?
What is the meaning of Alamghir?
What is the meaning of Aalamgir?
What is the meaning of Alaamat?
What is the meaning of Alam Efroze?
What is the meaning of Alam Afroz?
What is the meaning of Alamafrooz?
What is the meaning of Alam Ara?
What is the meaning of Alaaudin?
What is the meaning of Alaaudeen?
What is the meaning of Alaudeen?
What is the meaning of Ala al Din?
What is the meaning of Akias?


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Home › Music › Album Reviews › Mary Mary, Something Big
Mary Mary, Something Big
By Cameron Conant
Posted: Tue, 02/22/2011 - 14:49
Something Big
Artist: Mary Mary
Label: Columbia Records/Integrity Music
Genre: Contemporary, Gospel
By Cameron Conant, contributing writer, www.watchgmctv.com
The new Mary Mary album, Something Big, might more appropriately be called 'Something for Everyone.' Here the gospel sister-singers give listeners a collection that spans the pop, soul, and R&B gamut, from the Marvin Gaye-inspired "Survive" to the gentle "Homecoming Glory," which could be found on an Amy Grant album.
Click HERE to see Mary Mary's new music video, "Walking."
The album starts with "Recall," a foot-stomping number with dirty guitars and Stevie Wonder-like keyboard flourishes about Jesus, the "greatest man in history/can't nobody do better," while the next song, "Something Bigger" is a well-produced R&B track that's big indeed, but, like a few others on this album, has a monotonous and unvarying beat, and a bridge that is, if not entirely absent, mostly absent.
However, the 12-song project, Mary Mary's sixth studio effort, shines as a whole. The duo's vocals are fantastic, the production is good, and the songs are interesting. Faith themes are addressed throughout, though a few tracks are clearly intended for a more mainstream audience. But how many other albums can attract listeners of Beyonce, Barlow Girl, Nicole C. Mullen, and Amy Grant? Mary Mary does it with this album – and that's definitely Something Big.
Tags: Uplifting Urban
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De vele Orden en onderscheidingen van de Sovjet-Unie zijn voor een deel de onderscheidingen van de Russische Federatie. Andere onderscheidingen zijn gebaseerd op de traditie van het tsaristische Rusland van vóór 1917.

Hoogste eretitels van de Russische Federatie

Orden van de Russische Federatie

Onderscheidingstekens van de Russische Federatie

Medailles van de Russische Federatie

Eretitels van de Russische Federatie
Volgens het Presidentieel Decreet № 1099 van 7 september 2010 zijn er per 2015 in totaal 61 eretitels.

Herinneringsmedailles die tot 2010 staatsonderscheiding waren
Deze medailles worden sinds het Presidentieel Decreet № 1099 van 7 september 2010 niet tot de officiële onderscheidingen van de Russische Federatie gerekend. De onderstaande medailles werden door de Russische Federatie bij wet of decreet ingesteld. Ze werden als herinneringsmedailles uitgereikt en ze worden ook naast de officiële orden, onderscheidingen en medailles gedragen.

Herinneringsmedailles
Ook in 2013 is nog een herinneringsmedaille uitgegeven, die daardoor nooit een officiële staatsonderscheiding is geweest, maar wel past in de oude traditie.

Certificaten van de President van de Russische Federatie

Externe link
 Presidentieel Decreet van 9 september 2010 op  2015


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text:
Ottaviano od Ottaviano - San Pietro - Musei Vaticani è una fermata della linea A della metropolitana di Roma.
Si trova all'incrocio di viale Giulio Cesare e via Ottaviano e via Barletta, nel rione Prati, all'interno del I Municipio.

La fermata è sotterranea e i due binari sono collocati all'interno di una sola canna.

L'atrio della stazione ospita alcuni mosaici del Premio Artemetro Roma. Gli autori dei mosaici esposti sono il giapponese Shu Takahashi e il britannico Joe Tilson.

Con la costruzione della futura tratta T2 (già finanziata), Ottaviano diventerà la seconda stazione di interscambio della linea A con la linea C.

Storia
Ottaviano fu costruita come capolinea nord-occidentale della prima tratta della linea A della metropolitana, entrata in servizio il 16 febbraio 1980.

Il 29 maggio 1999 fu attivato il prolungamento verso valle Aurelia.

Nel periodo tra il 2006 e il 2007 Ottaviano fu interessata dagli scavi archeologici per la costruzione della linea C.

Nel 2007 alla stazione è stato aggiunto il suffisso San Pietro al nome originale, cui si è aggiunto solo pochi anni più tardi quello di Musei Vaticani, in primo luogo assegnato alla successiva stazione Cipro.

Nel 2012 la stazione, contemporaneamente a quella di Lepanto, è stata parzialmente ristrutturata con l'installazione di nuovi pannelli bianchi (graficamente simili a quelli presenti a Manzoni dopo la sua completa ristrutturazione) in sostituzione dei comuni pannelli arancioni presenti nella maggior parte delle altre stazioni della linea A. I lavori compresero la sostituzione delle mappe e l'installazione di montascale per rendere Ottaviano accessibile ai portatori di handicap.

Servizi
La stazione dispone di:
  Biglietteria a sportello
  Biglietteria automatica

Interscambi
  Fermata tram (Ottaviano, linea 19)
  Fermata autobus ATAC

Note

Bibliografia

Altri progetti

Linea A (metropolitana di Roma)
Linea C (metropolitana di Roma)
Roma R. XXII Prati
Stazioni della metropolitana di Roma


My experience is that Mitchell genuinely believes in freedom of speech and in the free play of ideas. Indeed, I can't remember a single instance when he tried to prevent or influence me to stop or change my column, which ran every second Saturday in 'The Weekend Australian', even though what I wrote may have been diametrically opposed to his paper's editorial stance or policy. This included my writing a series of articles defending protectionism, not just in relation to safeguarding our nation from pests introduced from overseas, but also for Australia keeping some forms of economic protection in the manner of tariffs.
The truth is that, although my wife Lyndal Moor and I were definitely present at this dinner, I have no recall of this happening . But perhaps I'd briefly left the dinner table. However, Lyndal has no memory of this either.
I then explained that, as prime minister, Abbott needed a few friends who would speak to him freely, unmediated from Credlin's interposition and interventions. As Mitchell and his wife Cathy, as well as Lyndal, agreed the lack of frank and fearless advice was a major factor in how and why a man who had been so in touch with the electorate in opposition could have become so out of touch so quickly.
However, my impression is that the Hendersons remember their comments that evening somewhat differently from those quoted in the book.
As well as canvassing his close contacts and dealings with past prime ministers, editors and media CEOs, there are a number of purely personal revelations in 'Making Headlines'. For example, while I had known that Chris Mitchell had been brought up by his widowed mother who had left Germany in 1954, I had no idea that, in 1964, just after his eighth birthday, Chris had actually witnessed his father drown in the Hawkesbury river, north of Sydney.
Of all the prime ministers with whom he had dealings, Mitchell is particularly revealing about fellow Queenslander and erstwhile friend Kevin Rudd whom, to Mitchell's later regret, he persuaded Rupert Murdoch to let 'The Australian' back for PM in the final election editorial of the 2007 campaign. Although Rudd is nominally still the godfather of his son Riley, Mitchell as with many others had a massive and terminal falling out with arguably Australia's most narcissistic political leader.
Mitchell also writes in intimate detail about the flawed prime ministership of Tony Abbott who, to his credit, Mitchell still regards as a deeply decent person.
After he moved back to 'The Australian' in mid 2002 to become its editor-in-chief, Mitchell had decided to focus on indigenous affairs. This involved the first-rate investigative work of ex-'Courier-Mail' reporter Tony Koch, as well as that of leading Aboriginal spokesman and activist Noel Pearson and brilliant writer and researcher Nicolas Rothwell who uncovered and brought to unflinching public gaze endemic alcohol and other substance abuse and widespread sexual assaults on indigenous children, often at the hands of older Aborigines.
And the coverage was not universally focused on the negative. Our leading national newspaper also brought to public attention many stories of Aboriginal success, including reporting hundreds of illuminating tales of young indigenous people succeeding in school and tertiary education.
In a key chapter entitled "Rupert, My Boss", Mitchell confides that on federal election night, 21 August 2010, he and his wife to be Cathy Rushton were invited to a party in Sydney's trendy East Balmain. The guests were overwhelmingly Labor Left or Greens voters who regarded Abbott as a demon and who resented Cathy's intimate relationship with a Murdoch editor.
On top of this, if they hadn't known already, they became aware that Abbott and Chris were friends and that Cathy had liked him since their time at Sydney University. Things got worse when Cathy blurted out: "I don't know why you all vote Green. Chris says the Greens want to introduce death taxes." The frigid atmosphere became even chillier when Cathy expressed pleasure that, after having defeated John Howard in Bennelong in 2007, Maxine McKew looked likely to become, as proved to be the case, a one-term MP.
Moreover, almost all of the audience, largely comprised of what Mitchell describes as "a band of progressive, wealthy lawyers and media types", were extremely hostile to Abbott and to anyone who worked for Rupert Murdoch who that night, while the party was in full swing, regularly rang Mitchell from New York to keep in touch with an election that the Opposition leader nearly won.
Unsurprisingly, things were never the same again with that group. This was despite the fact that a number of those present at the 2010 election night party had been friends with Cathy and her children for almost four decades.
This very much mirrors my own experience after I wrote a series of articles for 'The Weekend Australian' in which I expressed some considered support for Abbott and talked up his chances of being elected PM. As a result, a number of long-time friends, and academic colleagues, crossed me off their Christmas mailing list and have never been in contact with Lyndal or me again!
Professor Fitzgerald, a reviewer with 'The Weekend Australian' and 'The Sydney Morning Herald', most recently co-authored the political/sexual satire 'Going Out Backwards: A Grafton Everest Adventure'. Professor Fitzgerald is currently researching and co-authoring, A Dozen Soviet Spies Down Under?
The Sydney Institute Review, June 2017.


Dale did an amazing job! He was patient and helped us navigate the negotiations/contracts of three houses and the closing on one house. He knew what to be on the lookout for - We might've ended up with a money pit, had he not recommended local contractors to double check specific aspects of one of the houses. He also kept us laughing . . . something that was helpful when negotiations were stressful! In this fast-moving Waco market, I was so glad to have someone with local knowledge and lots of experience. It made all the difference!


I have just completed the tutoring session with Angus yesterday (6 sessions altogether). The session had a good overall structor, pace and content. In additional Angus was well prepared with the tailored practice questions and advice on examination techniques. He had a good teaching attitude. The sessions were very helpful to my GRE preparation.
Our Auckland GRE instructor has a near-perfect GRE score: 334 out of 340. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland and holds a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mumbai, as well as a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University, India. He has worked in the engine production industry for a year after his graduation. Apart from Mechanical Engineering, he likes to solve mathematics puzzles in his spare time and is fond of reading fiction. He is a member of the Design and Development Research Group at the University of Auckland.
Our Auckland GRE instructor has been tutoring since 2011, successfully working with students of various ages. Last year she worked as a Math teacher at a public high school. Currently she is teaching at a college in Auckland helping students with their exam preparation. Our Auckland GRE instructor holds a Bachelor of Counseling degree from Wellington Institute of Technology, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Management Science from the University of Canterbury.


Does forceMerge(1) not always merge to one segment?
Subject Does forceMerge(1) not always merge to one segment?
We're using IndexUpgrader to upgrade indexes.
here, I see that it has 11 segments after doing the merge.


Abra Forman, Author at Breaking Israel News | Latest News. Biblical Perspective.
Pence had been scheduled to visit the Western Wall on Sunday, where he was set to light the menorah in celebration of the sixth night of Hanukkah.
Abbas has cancelled a December meeting with Vice President Pence over fury at President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Trump Missed Deadline to Sign Embassy Waiver. What Does it Mean for Jerusalem?
With few signs that preparations for an embassy move are underway, most expect Trump to sign the waiver. But this time, Israel may get a consolation prize.
Israel and the Trump administration are racing against the clock to stop publication of a United Nations "blacklist" of companies operating in Judea and Samaria.
Archaeologists believe that the finding has revealed the location of the ancient Roman-Byzantine city of Ashdod-Yam.
Robert Mueller is investigating Jared Kushner's contacts with Israeli officials last year over joint efforts to stop the passage of UNSC Resolution 2334.
The first snowfall of Israel's winter season covered Mount Hermon, located in Israel's north, with several centimeters on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
The Canadian government will sponsor an initiative to "reintegrate" into society Canadian-born ISIS fighters who want to leave the Islamic terror group and return to Canada.


text:
package osl

import (
	"errors"
	"testing"
)

var ErrNotImplemented = errors.New("not implemented")

func newKey(t *testing.T) (string, error) {
	return nil, ErrNotImplemented
}

func verifySandbox(t *testing.T, s Sandbox) {
	return
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


01. Client All Home – trade network in Uzbekistan, format of «All home».
02. Task Branding, company style, website re-branding, brand book, design for SMM.
03. Decision While preserving the existing concept of the trading network, we developed branding, the basis of which was the style of minimalism. Aesthetics, refinement and coziness – are the aspects which needed to be expressed in the design of the whole company, from the design of the store interior and façade to courier cars, corporate T-shirts, paraphernalia, online store and social networking pages. We played with three colors (green, dark gray "bluish" and white) and created a vivid style that highlights the brand, and that stands out from the competitors.


text:
About Bud Withers
Glory Hounds
How a Small Northwest School Reshaped College Basketball. And Itself.
Zags-Huskies in the NCAA: It could happen
So … might it happen this March? Might the Gonzaga-Washington series, previously truncated and occasionally tortured, resume in the NCAA tournament?
And would Gonzaga want that?
OK, I get it: It's way premature and there are other bigger fish to fry. Gonzaga is licking wounds applied by Saint Mary's Tuesday night. Washington is still doing business in the Pac-12 tournament. But hey, in the days leading to Selection Sunday, let's speculate. It's not just whistling in the wind, it's a real possibility as a second-round matchup. Don't anybody get overly lathered about it, but file it away, just in case.
It appears there's more than a passing chance that the two could line up in the second round. The Zags' WCC-finals loss either leaves them as a No. 1 seed, or, depending on other results, drops them to a 2. So if Washington rates from a 7-10 seed, the possibility is live. Gonzaga is going to be placed in the West, and Washington would need to join GU there, and they'd each have to advance.
Remember, a good many bracket analysts through January and February have had the UW as an 8 or 9, and the Zags a 1, in the same region.
Here is probably a good place to insert the disclaimer that we don't know with certainty that Washington is in the tournament, but its quarterfinal win over USC Thursday in Vegas surely helped. And its fate Friday night (and Saturday, potentially) will have a lot to say about its seed. My guess is that even winning the tournament wouldn't kick them higher than a 7 seed.
Let's dig deeper:
THEIR LAST MEETING
On Dec. 5, the two teams met in Spokane, and in an expected sizzler, Gonzaga pulled out an 81-79 victory on Rui Hachimura's elbow jumper inside the final second. It was the Huskies' first competitive effort against GU in well, years and years (owing partly to the nine-year hiatus in the series exacted by ex-UW coach Lorenzo Romar).
I reviewed that game tape and came away with several impressions, probably the most prominent that Washington seemed comfortable running its offense against the Zag defense. Indeed, the Huskies shot a healthy 47.5 percent to GU's 42.9, and as noted in this space a couple of times, Gonzaga had historically shot the lights out against Washington – eight straight times of 50 percent or better.
The biggest problem for GU was Jaylen Nowell, who had 26 points and six assists. The Zags tried Corey Kispert, Zach Norvell and Josh Perkins on him at various times, mostly without success. Kispert isn't quick enough and Perkins, needing to conserve energy for the other end of the floor, isn't ideal. So if it happens, it's probably going to fall largely to Norvell.
Essentially, the Husky offense flourished because of slashing drives by Nowell and Matisse Thybulle (18 points, four assists), and when they didn't have openings themselves, they flung it out to the perimeter for teammates' threes.
Other takeaways:
-- Filip Petrusev was hugely important for Gonzaga, with nine points and three rebounds in 14 minutes.
-- This was one of Brandon Clarke's poorer games; he went 4 of 11 from the field and had five turnovers. He never looked comfortable on offense, including on scoring opportunities from the high post. (An aside: The Huskies seem oddly willing to concede damage from the high post, almost as if to say the shot is something opposition big guys can't convert. And indeed, a couple of times, Clarke obliged with leaning attempts, trying to make a 13-footer an 8-footer.)
-- When Washington elevated its matchup zone defense – collapsing its bigs farther toward the foul line to confront penetration – the Zags hurt the Huskies a few times by getting the ball to the corner for baseline drives.
-- My guess is, upon review of tape, the Zags saw several cringe-worthy moments down the stretch, when they were, frankly, horrible. Perkins got caught at the end of a shot clock taking an off-balance mid-range attempt that misfired, GU didn't get back and Washington pushed the ball and hit Thybulle for a dunk with 35 seconds left. Then Norvell, with 17 seconds showing and 13 on the shot clock, drove the baseline and missed a three-footer, not using the backboard, to give the UW a final possession on which it tied the game.
-- With 4:50 left and GU ahead 73-62, Kispert missed an open three that very likely would have turned the lights out on the Huskies. Instead, they returned fire with their own three, so a potential 14-point lead quickly became eight points.
WHAT'S CHANGED IN THREE MONTHS
For one, the presence of Geno Crandall and Killian Tillie, unavailable in the first game, would help GU. Crandall is a good match for UW guard David Crisp, who has shown the ability to get hot. Tillie, coming off his foot injury, should be ready for perhaps 20 minutes a game the first weekend, and he was a key figure when GU throttled Washington 15 months ago in Seattle.
Probably the biggest imponderable is this: How much has each team improved since Dec. 5? The Huskies made significant advancement, then struggled down the stretch before the USC victory. Perhaps the biggest strides have been made in Gonzaga's defense, which was spotty early but is now top-20.
THE PSYCHOLOGY
My sense is that the rivalry has cooled. For one, Gonzaga has dominated the Huskies for a long time. And there's that long interruption in the series from 2006-15. Too, Romar is out now, so there's no immediate connection to the ruffled feelings of years past, although Cameron Dollar is on the UW staff. Mark Few and the UW's Mike Hopkins seem to have a healthy relationship.
For two reasons, I don't think it's a good game for Gonzaga. First, Washington's defense is a curveball for anybody it plays, and the last thing the Zags need after the schooling by Saint Mary's and its possession game is curveballs. Having seen the zone this season probably would help Gonzaga, however.
Second, to whatever degree the rivalry provides a sideshow, there's that amount less focus on the task at hand. Gonzaga would have to entertain off-day questions about the rivalry, about how much attention they pay the Huskies, etc., etc. For Washington, the nothing-to-lose element might be deepened by the chance to get back at a rival (a one-time rival, anyway).
I'd give it maybe a 25-30 percent chance of happening. Obviously, the selection committee has to comply. And each would need to win a game in the tournament to get there. At the very least, it's something to watch as the bracket is revealed Sunday.
Yeah, it would create a stir. But for Gonzaga, I suspect the thinking is: Who needs it?
&copy2017 Bud Withers. All Rights Reserved.