. It’s always a treat to hear her speak. There’s something wonderfully jarring hearing her Mississippi accent along with her operatic diction.
Bye bye Tumblr. I’m heading home.
Visit the blog at it’s new address:
http://profpam.com/twinklefingers
After what I thought was a rather dull start, the Met’s production of Aida has come to life. Violeta Urmana is doing a splendid job. The sets are great, the orchestra sounds a bit anemic. Other broadcasts have had a much crisper sound.
The triumphal entry was indeed triumphal. Glad the horses didn’t poop on the stage. With a cast of a hundred, easy. The baritone playing Aida’s father, Amonasro, is very good. Generally, the Ethiopian crew appear to be better actors than the Egyptian gang.
The ballet sequences have all be superb. As is often the case, the TV cameras give us a much better view of what’s going on than seeing a production in person.
With my switch to Ubuntu, I’ll have to modify all my iPod tunes. Not a task that makes my heart glad or one I’ve even begun. But there are a few CDs I have on the iTunes that are worth the effort: Leontyne Price narrating Aida. It’s a storybook recording with excerpts from the opera. It’s Aida told by Leontyne Price
Watching “The Audition” on Great Performances on PBS. Why? I haven’t a clue, really. I hated auditions. I’m grateful that I didn’t pursue solo music performance.
There’s a lot riding on these National Council auditions: there’s the money but the prestige of having made it thus far (the bunch being profiled have already made it to the semifinals).This is the Met, for crying out loud. At least there will be more than one “winner”. I think 4 or 5 will be selected.
I wish them all well. But mostly, I’m glad I’m not joining them!
Great interview. She did Il Trittico in San Francisco and now at the Met. I haven’t had the chance to hear her live. But that’s on my list for 2010 if she comes back to the Bay Area. She could easily become one of my favs. I’ve tried and tried to become a fan of Renée Fleming and I just can’t seem to get past the “cover” in her voice, if that’s the right way to put it. Her tone, for me, is never as clear as I’d like. She’s got lungs, though. She can belt stuff out just like the best of them. But I’m not hearing that penetrating purity of tone that others have had.
You’ll probably think me mad, as in “insane”, but for me Leontyne Price, even toward the end of her career, had such a wondrous tone. I remember seeing her during her quasi-farewell tour. She was singing Poulenc. She was pretty far up there; I’m thinking around an A.
I was about 20 rows back, a little off center-right. I could feel the tone boring into my chest as though it were a laser beam. Probably a full six beats or more.
Oh. Did I not mention? The note was pianissimo.
Snap! I’ll never forget it.
George Russell’s The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation. Quite a mouthful. I got a copy through interlibrary loan. I puzzled over it for a week and sent it back. My Dad promises to walk me through it. More on my saga after I receive the book again.
I’m a liturgical purist. This means that I forbid the playing of “Joy to the World” during Advent. It’s just so wrong. I won’t go so far as to say that it is a sin, but it’s pretty high up on the list.
Well, I was boppin’ along to Anita O’Day on last.fm, when suddenly Diane Schuur, whom I adore, comes on. Tune: The Christmas Song. Now it’s Rosemary Clooney singing it! Isn’t it bad enough that we’re subjected to Christmas music playing in the supermarkets the day after Thanksgiving?
The rule in my house is quite simple: Advent
#FAIL
I realize there is a lot of death notices these days. I don’t mean for it to be a “downer”. I post these notices, especially this one, because of the importance of learning about these musicians. I never knew about Consuela Lee. She sounds as though she did a lot of good promoting music education, broadly, and jazz education, specifically.
Consuela Lee, a jazz pianist who fought to establish an arts school for children in rural Alabama on the grounds of a moribund academy founded by her grandfather, died Dec. 26 in Atlanta, where she had lived since 2007. She was 83.
But what I find fascinating about her influences, Art Tatum among them. This suggests she was quite a virtuoso. You can hear a clip of All The Things You Are. Although the clip ss rather short, there are flickers of Tatum, albeit at a much slower pace! I’m adding her to my library. For sure.
Pendergrass certainly fought valiantly since that horrific car accident in 1982.
R&B singer Teddy Pendergrass, who was one of the most electric and successful figures in music until a car crash 28 years ago left him in a wheelchair, has died of colon cancer. He was 59.
Rest in peace.
I’m not a huge Billy Holiday fan. She was singing “Careless Love” is an okay song. But I wasn’t in the mood to listen to Holiday do a cover of a Country and Western song.
As I was about to log out of Last.fm what did I discover? It was Madeleine Peyroux.
From the year end art in review from the New York Times.
Mr. Zmijewski is one of several contemporary artists to make resonant solo appearances. Who could forget the young musicians playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from the cutout center of moving pianos in an installation by the artist team of Allora & Calzadilla at Gladstone?