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Feldman, Sibelius, Webern
Alex Ross has a great piece on the late composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987) in the June 19 New Yorker: [Feldman] loved to challenge students’ assumptions about what ideas were au courant, about which composers were radical and which were conservative. He proclaimed, for example, a love for Sibelius, who had long been derided in progressive circles as a retrograde Romantic.
Vision Festival highlights
The Vision Festival, which ran this year from June 12-18, is exhausting and invigorating in equal measure. This is a left-of-center music marathon concentrated in one venue, the Angel Orensanz Foundation on the Lower East Side. It just happens to take place around the same time as the more mainstream, multi-venue JVC Jazz Festival. The theme for 2006, Vision’s 11th
The Bad Plus revisited
Last year I penned a defense of the controversial jazz trio The Bad Plus for TNR Online. I’d like to take a moment to repeat and amplify that defense. Unexpectedly, I wound up at Carnegie Hall last night for a multi-artist tribute to Lorraine Gordon, owner and proprietor of the Village Vanguard. (This was under the auspices of the JVC
Happy Mornings
Sullivan links to this utterly insane TV ad for Folger’s coffee.
The 9/11 conspiracy thread
Since I took issue with the “9/11 Truth” movement in these two recent posts, I can’t let this pass without comment. Yvonne Ridley, the British former journalist, was taken hostage by the Taliban in 2001; she is now a Muslim fundamentalist and Al Qaeda apologist. Oh yes, and a member of George Galloway’s antiwar RESPECT party. Now Ridley has traveled
Gaza postscript
Now it seems that Human Rights Watch’s Marc Garlasco, who contradicted the IDF’s findings on the recent Gaza beach explosion, is backpedaling. According to this Jerusalem Post piece, HRW “could not contradict” the IDF’s finding that “unexploded ordnance” caused the blast. However, HRW continues to demand an independent inquiry, and rightly so. And Israel’s initial claim — that a Palestinian
JVC Jazz and beyond
Staying on top of New York’s jazz scene is a challenging task all year round. When the JVC Jazz Festival and the Vision Festival are happening at the same time, it’s just about impossible. The JVC festival, which lasts a week longer than the Vision, is of course better-funded, more visible and more mainstream, but it has its adventurous side.
Zahawie on Zionism
A while back, Slate published a C. Hitchens column alleging that an Iraqi official under Saddam, Wissam al-Zahawie, actually did scout out yellowcake uranium from Niger. I still find it dubious, but that’s not why I’m posting. The other day Slate posted a lengthy and apparently authentic reply from Zahawie himself. In the course of this reply, Zahawie defends himself