Music
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As a rule, I'm as fickle as the legendary varying flag, but just now I have made a firm unwavering commitment. My absolutely most favorite line of poetry — are you ready now, readers — is (drumroll)l: "If you really want my peaches, gotta shake my tree." Is that poetry or what? It's teasingly inexplicit…
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I prefer to hear rather than to see grand opera. The cd and the radio are my preferred media. Stay at home, sit in a comfortable chair, listen carefully, be ravished. When you go to the opera, you re-discover that the plot is all silliness, the characters incomprehensible, and the intermissions interminable. Nevertheless, there I…
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Ain't it shocking that Gene Chandler's excellent song is now almost half a century old? Seems like just yesterday. This be the verse in its full splendor. Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl Duke,…
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My mother had a pretty fair soprano and as a young adult performed in amateur musicals. She sang in that high, quavering style that I associate with artists of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Ruth Etting ("America's Radio Sweetheart"). I remember that sometimes, when she wasn't busy putting the laundry through the wringer or scrubbing the…
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"Wildwood Flower," of course. The tune would have made Bach proud, the story is classic, and the diction and metaphor absolutely perfect: "You've gone and neglected your pale wildwood flower." "Single Girl, Married Girl," which I can never hear without tearing up (or coming very close — depends on my mood). No one has ever written a lyric that is more succinct or more straightforward: "Single girl,…
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The Takacs Quartet graces us with six superb concerts a year. It's true that they sometimes hanker after strange new composers — Psathos, Part etc. — whose compositions set my teeth on edge like the vile squealings of the wry-necked fife or like a brazen canstick turned or like the gratings of a dry wheel on an axletree — but…
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The downtown mall is home to a motley assemblage of street buskers. Some are excellent and welcome performers: the occasional string quartet, the accomplished visiting bluegrass band, a witty gaggle of a cappella singers. Others are less excellent but still tolerable; the contortionist, the magician with the rings that divide and rejoin, the sword-swallower, the…
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The hype and hoopla at sports arenas are truly deplorable, especially to aged eyes and ears. At a Washington Wizards game in DC a couple of weeks ago, members of the starting team were introduced not only with spotlights, screeching, and "music" but also with bursts from a high-powered flame thrower. Even fifty yards away, I could feel the toasty…
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The Stephen Foster songbook was a staple of my childhood. My mother sitting at the old Hardman baby grand, sang "Camptown Ladies" and "O Susanna" and "Old Black Joe." But times change and Foster was pushed to the sidelines years ago. Too racist, too sentimental, too 'soft'. It's undeniable that the lyrics of many of…
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For the new downtown apartment, we've purchased a Sonos ZonePlayer. What does this oddly-named machine do? It simply allows me to capture the signal of radio statios all over the world (through the internet connection), pipe them through the amplifier, and broadcast them on our old but functional speakers. Quite a step up in standard of…