Blue Train lured me.
Giant Steps hooked me.
My Favorite Things landed me.
A Love Supreme reeled me in.
Meditations gutted and filleted me.
When and how did you first get into John Coltrane's music?
This recording turned 100 in May, I believe.
I've always preferred a quicker tempo for the Adagietto. I want to be able to heard the melody and not just one note after another in slow succession. Nothing against slow versions, which can be nice and lyrical, but my feeling is that we're supposed to recognize the melody transformed in the finale, but it's kind of hard to do that if you aren't able to follow it in a 14-minute version of the Adagietto.
What are your tempo preferences?
"I feel as old as yonder elm." --A washerwoman in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, just before her transformation into a tree.
The first time I read Peace I was struck throughout by its parallels to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Now I'll admit that whenever I spend any time with Finnegans Wake it starts to mess with my head to the extent that I start seeing the Wake in *everything.*
The parallels, if anything, could simply illustrate that Wolfe and Joyce were operating on the same wavelength - and I think they were. Both men were working from the same mythological foundations with the same mythological building materials, both came out a Catholic tradition of integrating spiritual imagery into art as well as into everyday life, and both in their respective works made clear distinctions (IMO) between mythological images and their archetypal references.
For those unfamiliar with Finnegans Wake, it was Joyce's final novel and said to be the most difficult novel ever written. As I recall, the foreword of one edition of the book calls it debatable whether or not the book can be in any conventional sense considered "readable." Of course, as we all know, Wolfe has often been accused of having written difficult books, sometimes unreadable in the conventional sense.
I don't present this list of similarities with any scholarly authority, nor am I making the case that Wolfe was ever directly inspired by Joyce. It's just that I'm unaware of anyone ever having pointed these out before. I offer this list of observations simply *as* a list of observations for whatever you all think it's worth - which may be nothing at all:
Both Peace and Finnegans Wake are dominated by the idea of great cycles of history in which the same story is played out again and again of a people coming into being, flourishing, then going out of being, clearing the stage for the next great historical cycle.
Both books begin with the tableaux of a fall which is overtly connected to a Biblical fall.
Both books end with an "awakening" of sorts which points us back to the beginning of the book.
The names of the main maternal presences of Peace and FW are quite similar (Aunt Olivia / Anna Livia). Both books end with the direct speech of these characters.
Both books feature a character called Old Kate. In FW, Kate is often interpreted as an older aspect Anna Livia and the preserver of cultural lore and ancient wisdom.
The main character of each book (Were / HCE) appears to be implicated in some crime which is related to the fall motif, with each book intentionally fuzzy on the details.
Each book is ostensibly written by a character who shares autobiographical details with the author. Peace is a memoir written by Were[wolf]. FW is a letter dictated by Anna Livia in defense of HCE's crime, written down by her son Shem the Penman, a not-at-all thinly veiled lampoon of Joyce himself. (Shem is said to be the author of that "usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles.")
Peace, as in all Wolfe novels, leaves out many of the puzzle pieces which would allow us get a clear picture of Were's life. In FW, the letter written by Shem has been unearthed by a hen named Belinda, whose peckings have created lacunae in the text just where all the important answers we needed happened to be.
Both books use wolf imagery throughout.
Myths and folktales are told in each book which seem to be about the main characters in some way.
Elms figure prominently in both books. In Peace, am elm was planted by Eleanor Bold at a gravesite (if you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about). In FW, the elm probably mostly refers to the historical elm planted at Howth Castle in Dublin. In FW, "Howth Castle and environs" - HCE, or Here Comes Everybody - is the head of the dead main character, Finnegan/Finn MacCool/HCE, who in the sleep of death dreams all the events of the novel.
In both books time periods are constantly shifting, occasionally bleeding into each other, and even individual characters meld into one another in strange ways. Wolfe is, of course, more suggestive with these moments in Peace than Joyce is in FW, in which Joyce doesn't allow us the luxury of a clear surface structure.
About four years ago I spent an entire summer deep-diving into Beethoven's complete opus numbers and discovered this catchy little Goethe setting I've been obsessed with ever since. There are so many varied interpretations of this little earworm that it's always fun to hear a new take. This, I think, is still my favorite version, apparently done as practice for a school exam, as the description states. I think she must passed it.
I recently caught part of this piece on the radio while driving to pick up wife from work, and, wow! The way Scott integrates Coltrane's magnum opus A Love Supreme with Bach and intersperses it with AB Spellman's poetry is amazing, and I just love the sound of the Imani Winds. This is my latest musical obsession.
With the news that San Francisco Symphony has appointed Elim Chan as its first female music director, I wanted to give Xian Zhang, Seattle Symphony's first female music director, her due. Mainly because I'm excited to finally see her conduct live in a few weeks with Mahler 7. (And even more excited to see Mahler 7!)
I'm especially curious to see how she conducts Mahler, as she studied under Lorin Maazel but cites Bernstein as a big influence on her Mahler. The two conductors represent quite opposite approaches to Mahler, and I'm really hoping she leans into Bernstein more. I'll find out first hand in a few weeks.
Just wanted to post an appreciation thread for Symphony Tacoma music director Sarah Ioannides, who has finished up the final season of her Grit City gig after gifting us twelve great years of music.
I took my son to see his first orchestral concert last season when the orchestra performed Sibelius, Grieg, Mahler, and Stravinsky all in one epic night. The video here is the end of that concert.
Who's next up to the baton? Maybe one of next season's guest conductors.
So sad to bid farewell to Symphony Tacoma's music director.
This is from a concert I saw a few years back. You can't hear it here, but the performance featured the unexpected guest soloist Something-On-The-Side-of-the-Stage-Loudly-Vibrating-in-Concert-with-the-Basses, and it kind of worked!
Next season will be interesting as every show will feature a different guest conductor. I'm especially looking forward to Seattle Symphony's Sunny Xia performing Beethoven's "Erotica." I imagine these performances will be try-outs for new music director.
I got the chance to see this wonderful piece live a few months ago. Poteat (seen here playing clarinet with the orchestra) is a delightful composer.