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“Rough Crossings”
My review of “Rough Crossings,” with pianist Jason Moran, soprano Alicia Hall Moran and historian Simon Schama, is now online at the Jazz Times site.
Evil: when no other word will do
It pains me to post this right after an item about CDs. But this is reportage from Iraq that I want to preserve before it goes behind the NYT archival wall. Regarding the calculated slaughter of commuters traveling from Baghdad to Baquba on June 4: The roadside executions took place on a road north of Baghdad, near a village called
CDs on parade
I receive anywhere from 10-20 CDs per week in the mail. I can’t listen to them all, so they tend to collect in neat stacks around my apartment. I’d like to think I’m becoming more efficient, but keeping up with all this music is a constant struggle (one that I’m happy and honored to undertake, of course). Anyway, I finally
Iraq: the oil issue
One of the posts in my Kurdistan travelogue concerned Iraq’s acute gasoline shortage. It baffled me then and still does. But this extensive piece in the NYT is the best treatment of the issue that I’ve seen. Once thought to be only a tool for insurgents to undermine the government, the pipeline attacks have evolved into a lucrative moneymaking scheme
Supporting pianist Hilton Ruiz
Via Jazz Promo Services. — New York, NY –June 1, 2006– Famed Puerto Rican/New York Composer, Pianist and Jazz musician Hilton Ruiz is in a coma at a New Orleans hospital Intensive Care Unit with severe trauma to the face and a fractured skull. The circumstances surrounding this tragic incident are under investigation by the New Orleans Police Department. In
Haditha
Reports about the atrocity carried out by U.S. Marines last November in Haditha appear to be accurate — and very late in coming, as Rep. John Murtha has stated quite bravely. I don’t believe in condemning all U.S. troops. But neither should this incident be viewed apart from the disastrous overall course of this war. We must face the possibility
Turkey shooting update
So to speak… From this article it appears that details of the courthouse shootings on May 17 are murkier than previously thought. There’s some question as to whether the shooter actually made a religious pronouncement before firing his gun. This piece reports that prime minister Erdogan and the AKP are blaming the attack on “a shadowy far-right group.” Of course