March 2010 Archives

Algren was the author of more than a dozen books. I'm betting that his two most famous novels -- The Man With the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side, one a tragedy and the other a comedy -- will last longer than any of the novels by Mailer, Vidal, Updike, Cheever, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Pynchon, de Lillo, Roth, Bellow, or Bukowski.

Algren would have been 101 today. He was born March 28, 1909, in Detroit. In 1975, when this video was made, he left Chicago for Paterson, N.J., moved on to Hackensack and finally to Sag Harbor, N.Y., where he died May 9, 1981, and where he is buried.

Robert Parry said it for me.

The bottom line is this: When the American Right is offended, the "corrections" come fast and are sweeping, even in highly dubious situations. Sometimes heads roll.

But when the American Left feels aggrieved, the "corrections" are slow and grudging, often very narrow in scope and still misleading. Nobody is likely to get punished.

Parry cites egregious examples in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and at CBS.

"Symphony Space has given us a wonderful present for Sebastian's 325th birthday," says Mike Lawrence, whose terrific documentary, BACH & friends, will have its New York premiere at Symphony Space's Peter Jay Sharp Theatre on May 16.

The Sunday evening premiere, beginning at 7:30 p.m., will be followed by a screening of complete performances of the Bach works that were excerpted for the film, which will be shown again on May 23 and 30. Tickets go on sale April 1.

Take a look at one of the performances, Robert Tiso playing the "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" on the glass harp:

"We hope to have lots of the performers at each screening," Lawrence says. "I am currently working on setting up premieres in San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Baltimore. A prominent art house booker has made an offer for a theatrical run, and Sony Entertainment is considering distributing the DVD."

BACH & friends has been entered in a dozen film festivals, he adds, including the Toronto, Silverdocs, Los Angeles, London, Seattle, Cannes Independent and Chicago festivals. Meanwhile, a Bach birthday event is taking place this weekend in Leipzig, Germany, where the Bach Museum is to re-open after two and a half years of renovation. Bach was born on March 21, 1685. Clips from BACH & friends will be part of the celebration and permanent exhibit in Leipzig.

This appeared two weeks ago:

(Click to read)

This appeared a decade ago:

(Click to read)

Which pretty much says it all.

Postscript: March 22 -- Well, well ... no it doesn't. The Vienna Philharmonic has permanently appointed its first woman concertmaster. Will wonders never cease?

When I saw The Hurt Locker back in August, I thought, "Finally a grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq. And not so gung-ho either." Leave it to my staff of thousands to straighten me out.

Bill Osborne wrote in an e-mail message, "I thought it was a subtle form of American war propaganda that could work as a kind of perverse, macho recruiting film." He cited Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal's acceptance speech, dedicating his Oscar to the troops, at last night's Academy Awards:

His statement lets the cat out of the bag. It's a war movie that glorifies the macho stupidity of war while disguising its agenda with a kind of fake depth and dimension. It could easily fall into the category of "Pentagon movies." [The Defense Department dropped its official support for the movie during filming.]

When will there be a movie that makes it clear that we invaded Iraq to steal their resources and strategic position and that the soldiers there are not a citizen's army but essentially mercenaries? The best that we can say for them is that at least most of the grunts don't know what they are really doing. Whatever happened to artists telling the truth?

Osborne isn't alone in thinking of the movie as a recruiting tool.

Click logo for mugshots and flowcharts:

There is abundant evidence that war crimes were committed by the Bush Administration. ... The question is very simple: Will any officials of the Bush Administration who are responsible for the "war on terror" be indicted and held accountable for those crimes? -- War Criminals Watch

If the Obama Administration and the Congress have anything to say about it, apparently not.

Perversity Think Tank
A Seminar on the Concept of Perversity
by Supervert 32C Inc.

Click photo to watch video:

Bach on the organ? Of course. On the piano? Certainly. On the cello? Naturally. On the violin? Sure. But Bach on the banjo? The ukelele? The mandolin? How about the glass harp? Or the clarinet, the guitar, and the double bass. And let's not forget a cappella. You hear them all -- brilliantly filmed and recorded -- courtesy of BACH & friends, a gorgeous two-hour documentary by Michael R. Lawrence.

The film, three years in the making, is not a stunt. It delivers musicianship of the highest order on every one of the instruments. We're talking Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Simone Dinnerstein, Richard Stoltzman, the Emerson String Quartet, the Swingle Singers, Bobby McFerrin, and Matt Haimowitz. We're also talking Felix Hell (organ), Zuill Bailey (cello), Manuel Barrueco (guitar), Edgar Meyer (double bass), Chris Thile (mandolin), Bela Fleck (banjo), Jake Shimabukuro (ukelele), and the pianists Mike Hawley, Hilda Huang, John Bayless and Anatoly Larkin.

"I'm still shocked that all these people did it," Lawrence says. "Nobody was paid." How did he get them to do it? "Absolutely cold calls." It must've helped that Lawrence, 64, is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who has written, produced, and directed more than 20 documentaries, including productions for PBS, CNN, HBO, and the Library of Congress. And it couldn't have hurt that he is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music who performed widely on the classical guitar before making films.

Lawrence didn't just seek out celebrated virtuosos. He made it his business to approach little-known musicians he believed in -- Shimabukuro, for instance, whose performance of the "Two-Part Invention No. 4 in D minor" is out of this world. Matter of fact, was a ukelele ever meant to sound that grand?

"I became familiar with Jake via the Web and his performance of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps,'" the filmmaker says. "When I read that he was going to be in my area" -- Lawrence lives in Baltimore --"I contacted his agent. She said he was making a Bach CD. I accepted him without an audition because I knew what a terrific musician he was. I figured if he is working on Bach it must be good. It turned out there was no CD. Jake hadn't even played Bach before. He learned the piece just for the movie. No teacher. No instruction. He taught himself. What a talent!"

There are so many enthralling performances -- an hour-and-a-half's worth on a bonus video disc that comes with the movie DVD -- that it's hard to single one out. My favorites besides Shimabukuro's include Hell's "Fugue in D-Major," on the organ; Fleck's "Presto, Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor," on the banjo; Thile's "Partita No. 2, Gigue in D minor," on the mandolin; Barrueco's "Fugue from Sonata No. 1 in G minor," on the guitar; Robert Tiso's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor," on the glass harp; and Bailey's cello performance of the "Allemande, Suite for Solo Cello No. 6."

The Swingle Singers doing the "Badinerie, Orchestra Suite No. 2" is a pure delight -- especially soprano Joanna Goldsmith-Eteson, who cannot go unmentioned; nor can Dinnerstein's piano performance of "Variation 13, from the Goldberg Variations" and Bell's "Chaconne, Partita No. 2," on the violin. "It's the first time Josh has recorded the 'Chaconne,'" Lawrence points out. "His record label objected because he hasn't done it for them. But he insisted, and the record company went along."

If I were forced to pick one performance, however, Stoltzman playing the "Chromatic Fantasy in D minor" on the clarinet -- Bach wrote it for piano -- would have to rank at the top. It's breathtaking, no pun. "Richard did his own transcription," Lawrence says. "Leon Fleisher was supposed to play. But he changed his mind and backed out of the project. I don't know why he decided not to participate, but I'm glad he did or I wouldn't have had Richard's transcendent performance."

Bach & friends also offers a curious MRI exam, demonstrating how the brain functions during improvisation. It's intriguing, but what I thought more enlightening is the smart musical commentary by the performers. Particularly informative are remarks by Swingle Singers' founder Ward Swingle. "He came from Paris on his own dime to be in the film," Lawrence notes.

Philip Glass, although he does not perform, reflects on his deep admiration for Bach. But he has more revealing things to say, it seems to me, in a sequence that did not make the final cut. The composer describes how he devoted nearly three years of study with Nadia Boulanger exclusively to Bach counterpoint. "She basically rewired my brain," he says. Lawrence, who has posted the entire clip on his Web site -- it's a Quicktime file -- has future plans for it. "I will include that section in BACH & friends II," he says.

Hell, I'm not complaining. However Lawrence wants to slice things, I'm in awe. You may have noticed.

(Crossposted at HuffPo)