John Updike was born three years into one financial panic and died roughly one year (depending how historians end up demarcating our current debacle) into another one. In between, he lived through the defining moments of the American twentieth century, but it’s rare in his works, among those I’ve read, to find the Big Drama [...]
John Updike has died after a struggle with lung cancer, his publisher Alfred Knopf reports, at the age of 76. I’ll write more on this, something different from the obituaries, soon enough, but will start with this story. Updike came to Butler University to read during my freshman year, and his talk fell on my [...]
Drew McManus of Adapdistration awarded DecSimp a Premios Dardo Award – which Google Translator tells me means Award Dart Award – and I’d like to thank all the people who worked so hard and without whom I wouldn’t be standing here today. I won for being “the intersection of clever and hip,” and combine that [...]
Even monks who’ve taken a vow of silence yearn to take part in the annual holiday performances of Handel’s Messiah. Les Freres de St. Francis de la Sissies show us how the Hallelujah Chorus can be done – with flash cards. They manage to make soprano-alto-tenor-bass easily identifiable, too. (Don’t be a smart aleck and [...]
I found this New Republic essay by art critic Jed Perl (New Art City and others) after writing the post below, and it’s nice to find yourself on the same page as someone like Perl without knowing it. Perl states that “[W]hat mattered in the early 1960s was not what JFK knew about Casals or [...]
You have to pity John Williams, a little. Here’s the most-recognized composer America’s produced in the last 35 years, a man who brought orchestral music back to Hollywood soundtracks after the pop-song collections of the 1970s, who’s tapped to compose a brief chamber-music piece for the inauguration of the 44th President. “But it’s going to [...]
Warning to all ye who enter the St. James Theatre: Thou shalt not take any photographs during the singing of Gypsy, or Patti LuPone will tear you up. Some shutterbug learned it the hard way (Rose’s Way?), and some audiobug was there to capture the sound of a LuPone tongue-lashing. Even at a distance, it’s [...]
“It is easy, of course, to ridicule art created by accident—by asking “what does it represent?” or asserting that “my little child could have done that.” And perhaps the child could. But for these artists that is not the point at all. If we take what they are doing seriously—and, as I shall try to [...]
As we close a ridiculously busy week, I can only note that everyone else is scrambling, too, audiences included. Tenor and blogger Nicholas Phan makes his Chicago recital debut tonight at the U. of C.’s Mandel Hall (someone plugged him in his Chicago operatic debut), and it’s only $10 and [UPDATE] the Chicago Brass Ensemble [...]
In light of the US Airlines accident yesterday, in which “birdstrike” was blamed for the downing of an Airbus A320, this linguistic investigation of that term by Eddie Izzard seems apt: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyLLlrUmN3o