The Novel Bookstore & 100 Foot Journey

Here's one for lovers of "good novels". Two avid readers open a bookstore in Paris which only sells "good novels". Their inventory is selected by a secret committee of authors who never meet. There is an outcry against this undemocratic idea, which culminates in threats & violence against the committee. A bit of mystery & love story, and many, many recommendations of good novels. Structure could be tighter and needs editing in the second half of the book, but if you love reading novels, this will be fun! It has a bit of the flavor of Elegance of the Hedgehog, & both were translated by Alison Anderson.

The Hundred Foot Journey: Indian ex-pats' restaurant and their son's journey to three Michelin stars. Not the best writing, but if you are a "foodie", this is it!

Bobby McDuffie - The Seasons Project

Bobby McDuffy & The Venice Baroque Orchestra performed The Seasons Project at the Lensic. Of course, the place holder was Vivaldi's Four Seasons. This was the most dynamic performance of VFS that I have ever heard. The musicianship was incredible, energetic & pushing the envelope, especially McDuffy. His rapore with the orchestra was palpable & often playful. Several years ago McDuffy approached Phillip Glass about writing a companion piece to VFS. Glass composed his Violin Concerto #2 - The American Four Seasons for McDuffy in 2009. The piece is vintage Glass and the third & fourth movements were powerful. McDuffy was soloing for nearly the entire piece & played with passion. They are doing a 28 city tour of this program, which is hard to imagine given how demanding it is on him! Debbie knew him at the Aspen Music Festival, so big hugs ensued after the performance.

Songs of the Earth

Susan Graham, mezzo soprano, & Paul Groves, tenor, sang Mahler's Songs of the Earth at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Mahler titled this 65 minute piece as "Symphony for Tenor & Alto Voice and Orchestra", and this is a great description. The voices & orchestra are perfectly melded . Both voices in this performance were well suited for this wonderful music. I generally prefer sopranos to mezzo's, but Graham's gorgeous voice is my favorite mezzo. Her singing tonight was sonic ambrosia. Grove's clear tenor was exactly what this music called for, he deserves a wider audience.

Starry Night Project

Debbie and Montage Music Society performed The Starry Night Project at the Corcoran Gallery of Art's hall in Washington, DC. Jeopary question: What is the oldest museum in the United States? SNP is music based on visual art by living composers, a thought provoking concept. The images of the art were projected above the musicians during the concert. The highlight of the performance was Andrew List's Noa Noa, commissioned for the MMS, and based on the Gaugain painting at Boston's MFA. Montage followed this with a performance at the Chautauqua Institute in NY. Both events were beautifully played and well received. You can hear this program on their CD, The Starry Night Project.

Silver Seduction

A friend recommended that we see a show of Mexican silver at the International Folk Art Museum. I was prepared to yawn, & wow, was I wrong. Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda is an extraordinary show of 200 pieces of jewelry. His work is elegant, graceful, original & modern, even from our perch in the 21st century. Pineda was a leader of the Taxco School of Mexico & internationally renowned . I found a few examples on the Internet, but they hardly do the show justice. His work is delicious.

Lewis Spratlan Recent Compositions

Santa Fe New Music presented a program of chamber music by Lewis Spratlan. This was the 8th annual Living Composer Portrait, in conjunction with the Santa Fe Opera. Mr. Spratlan's opera "Life is But a Dream" won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2000 & will be premiered by the SFO in July. It was written in 1978, & Spratlan has championed it for over 30 years: a long road. This program included a piano quartet, solo piano, & music for soprano & sextet. Spratlan's music achieves a balance between the abstract & the emotive, lightened by occasional humor. Each piece had complex harmonics, devilish syncopation & lightning fast passages. There were frequent Ivesian collisions of styles that delighted everyone. Hats off to Judith Gordon who played the gnarly piano solo "Wonderer" (2005) with power & grace. Clear-voiced soprano Kiera Duffy's treatment of the song cycle "Of Time & Seasons" (2001) rang true & was perfect for the music & lyrics. Spratlan introduced the program with energy & enthusiasm. He was clearly delighted that this music was being performed and heard. He happened to sit right in front of me & danced in his seat, especially during "Wonderer". I chatted with him after the program, & he modestly accepted my compliments and gave raves to Gordon for her performance. My friend Bebe thanked him for the humor in his music, & he replied, "Humor, I fight for that!" Mr. Spratlan is indeed a fighter for new music & we are the beneficiaries.

The Band's Visit

Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit is a beautifully filmed movie with extraordinary acting. It is a slow, simple story: The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Band is lost in Isreal on a goodwill tour. They are taken in by cafe owner Ronit Elkabetz. She and the conductor, Sasson Gobai, circle each other in a sexually charged waltz. Elkabetz is incredible: sultry, confident, yet understated. She makes a powerful impact with the slightest facial gestures. She's a great actor who deserves a bigger footprint. In fact, she has moved from Isreal to Paris to try to find a larger stage for her career. I hope she does!

Smart & Fun

Two new fun books from smart authors. Our friend Connie May Fowler's new novel just came out! How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly is filled with fun characters in a double helix story. The real double helix is how all the fun is wrapped around some big issues. In John Banville's The Infinities, the Greek Gods are alive & well, and interfering in the lives of the family of a famed physicist who lies in a coma commenting on the craziness. It's a delight.

Winter Park Library Photo Show

I have a show of my color photographs at the Community Room of the Winter Park Library for the month of February. My work explores the relationship between composition and color. I begin by composing the image through the lens, and then digitally manipulate colors, contrast, saturation, & crop for the final image. The result: fifteen 17 X 22 inch colorful images, your eyes will have fun!!

The Arts

Friends L & M recommended The Elegance of the Hedgehog to me, and a big thank you to them. This book contains the most extraordinary writing about the arts and the way the arts enrich our lives that I have ever read. I've read a lot of art history, criticism, essays, and this is The Best. A joy to read. The scoop: a lonely concierge in an up-scale Parisian condo has a secret life of arts appreciation, which is her lifeblood. Her observations on art, music, literature and film are fantastic. Lots of colorful characters, but the juice is her thoughts about the arts.

Lucky

Once again, appreciating how lucky I am to have been born in the USA. I read Shahriar Mandanipur's Censoring An Iranian Love Story. The initial conceit of an author writing a love story & dealing with the Islamic censors is catchy, but the book zeros in on a lot more. Mandanipur gives graphic examples of life under the Islamic Cultural Police, & the consequences of crossing them. It's horrific. The pernicious spying by neighbors & family reminded me of stories of life under the Stasi, and with similiar results: prison, torture, public hangings. Also, routinely used for political ends. He keeps coming back to the underlying love story, so it does have some hope.

I quite randomly followed this with Water Touching Stone, the second in a series by Eliot Pattison set in and near Tibet. These are mystery stories but are famous for telling the story of the on-going genocide of the Tibetans at the hands of the Chinese. This one expands to the plight of the nomadic Uighurs & Kazachs, with the same mistreatment: forced relocation, the nationalization of property, resources, factories (handed over to ex-Chinese military, now "entrepeneurs"), brutal oppression: torture, slave labor prisons, the forbidding of teaching or conducting business in indiginous languages. It seems endless, as does our country's tacit endorsement of these policies. How's your microwave? Inspector Shan, a Chinese escapee from a slave labor camp, is an endearing character, especially his relationship with some elderly Tibetan monks.