Rhys Chatham’s A Crimson Grail Returns

A Crimson Grail rehearsal, 2008
A Crimson Grail rehearsal, 2008

It was a sad night last year when 216 guitarists and bassists were told three days of rehearsal were all for nought due to rain.

Wordless Music is thankfully remounting it again this year on Saturday, August 8, 2009, with precautions in place that’ll make sure the show goes on, rain or shine. There was a contingency plan last year to do it in the rehearsal church with the threat of rain and if you ask me, they ignored the weather forecast.

Anyway, click here to apply! It’ll be a blast!

Oak Hill Respite

oak hill backyard

I spent the weekend in Oak Hill which was a little subdued because half the family is under the weather and the weather is a little under itself. Spring comes two or three weeks later up here than in the city. It was my friends’ daughter’s fourth birthday and they had a swim party at a YMCA which was fun even though it’s really hard not to snark at basting and swimming in Clorox®.

We missed a wedding at the Twelve Tribes compound. The ceremony is said to be full of ritual reverance and divinity. Couples in the Tribe are not allowed to even kiss before they get married there although they may hold hands. I would hope they have elaborate forms of handsies and arm wrestling to go with the sweaty palms. The honeymoon suite near the creek gets lots of spring and summer action.

I’m going to try and come up to the Grey Fox bluegrass festival again this year. There’s an Irish music festival in nearby East Durham at the same time. The hills will ring of droney folk music while the people dance like chickens.

oak hill cow

Steel Pan Drums Are The Next Wave

andy akiho, manhattan school of music, borden auditorium

I had the pleasure of attending one of the most unusual and beautiful concerts last night at the Manhattan School of Music. Andy Akiho’s compositions combine steel pan drums with a harp, cello, and chamber orchestra in gorgeous and unexpected tableaus. He’s off to Boston to study with David Lang. This kid is already going places. (Apologies that he is absent from the snapshot above taken between pieces.)

1918 Was 91 Years Ago

silo of band performing at south street seaport

An epidemiologist I know recommended reading up on the 1918 epidemic. While it is a lesson in underreaction, it’s also a lesson in overreaction. Egypt is killing pigs to stop it. In discussing whether it’s better to overreact or underreact, or react just perfectly, please be informed. Wingnuts who say there’s no such thing as overreaction are overreacting.

Update: A friend of a friend is quarantined with this flu and is expected to make a full recovery soon. It seems a bullet was dodged as it was pure happenstance that my immediate friend hadn’t seen the former in a couple weeks.

Dim Bullets in a Dark Tunnel

98th Street tunnel, Henry Hudson Parkway

  • The new quagmire: Seven questions for Barack Obama on Afghanistan. With hindsight of Mary McCarthy’s Vietnam memoirs and penned by retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
  • Greenwald calls Jane Harman a bunch of names although strangely, hypocrite isn’t one of them. Jeff Stein delves further into the mess.
  • Socialist Andre Damon pretty cynical about everything.
  • Reese Erlich seems to think loosening policy toward Cuba will bring more illicit drug trafficking.
  • Jessie’s bond-trader friend whacks at the Wells Fargo earnings piñata.
  • Tom Engelhardt ruminates on the constant stream of civilian casualties that largely go unreported on these shores.
  • Dems want to sweep torture hearings under the rug as much as Bush flunkies do.
  • Israelis hawking first-class propaganda junket??!?
  • Bank stress test: a) too big to fail b) too big to fail…
  • Tiny violin playing for pro-torture Judge Bybee.
  • Texas sheriff prosecution for waterboarding by Reagan’s DOJ ignored by current torture advocates.
  • New York food banks stressed.
  • Polish pianist stops the show with anti-U.S. tirade.
  • The new terror alert: Swine flu hype conveniently killing off the torture story. Includes a history of “flu oddities.”

The Pacific Gyro (Not the Hawaiian Meat Sandwich)

hudson river bike path, morning

I gave the garbage patch in the Pacific Gyre a mention on my myspace blog last year right before I started this blog. Of course around Earth Day, Oprah and the Huffington Post saw fit to highlight a newish documentary on the subject. One of the comments says everything about American media and ignorance: Nothing bad exists until Oprah says so.*

Anyway, we should send a few aircraft carriers over there to trawl for a month or two while Oprah hosts a reality show with super-rich and smart philanthropists solving this and the rest of the world’s problems. Do I have to think of everything?

* certainly if it's not crashing through our windows like a tornado or a car-jacker