GROCK!

Ever hear of Grock, the Swiss circus clown? I never did, until composer friend Bill Osborne filled me in. As another friend of mine says, "Swiss clown? Normally a contradiction in terms, like Swiss Navy. But this guy's brilliant." Have a look. Here are some short, terrifically entertaining video clips of Grock, beautifully reproduced and posted by Osborne on his and musician-actor-artist Abbie Conant's Web site. You won't be sorry -- and you don't even have to know about "Sequenza V," Luciano Berio's trombone tribute to Grock, which is their reason for posting the videos.

By the way, Conant and Osborne are in the midst of a tour of U.S. universities in the Northeast and Midwest. They're performing two of their multimedia works, "Cybeline" and "Music for the End of Time." This week they'll be in Ohio at Kenyon College (Tuesday) and Miami University (Wednesday). In case you didn't know, Malcolm Gladwell summarized the story of Conant's Munich Philharmonic audition to wrap up his latest best seller, "Blink." Conant herself didn't know he'd written it up until a friend told her. Here's the complete version of the story, which Gladwell cites -- how she won a blind audition for principle trombonist (besting 32 male trombonists) and how she then had to confront the orchestra's entrenched sexism.