Chatted with C.M. on the phone last night. Haven't spoken to him in a couple weeks. He borrowed Clive James a while ago. I was a little surprised at the time, actually -- didn't seem like it was up his alley, but he appeared interested. Last night he said he has read a few of the essays. What surprised me, though, was that he thought it was frequently difficult to keep track of the argument because they were "all over the place." I found the exact opposite to be true -- some of the most lucid writing I have ever read, a towering accomplishment in making complex, multi-faceted topics readily understandable without dumbing them down or glossing over the nuances.
Now, what would account for the difference in perception? He is certainly more educated than I am, not only in quantitative terms (two Masters' degrees for him vs. none for me), but also in qualitative terms, especially when it comes to very "textual" fields (history and political science for him vs. mathematics for me). Most of his work experience until recently, too, required creating and digesting what is probably the most obtuse kind of writing -- market analysis, policy recommendations and related miscellany. I thought that by comparison, James would be a welcome oasis of clear writing in a desert of bureaucratese. But maybe it doesn't work like that. Most high-level academic work these days (and already back in the day when he and I were students) involves far more deconstruction than synthesis, and the further you go, the narrower your focus becomes, until you are forced to stop paying attention to any connections between what you're studying and the real world. Professionally, too, I suspect C.M. was so tired of the dry, turgid and borderline-meaningless policy writing that he intuitively craves something simple, something intentionally one-dimensional. And James, of course, is the ultimate synthesizer and connector. I should probably point out that I am making everything sound worse than it sounds -- C.M. did say he was enjoying the book, and that James's introduction prepared him for the style of the essays. Nice to see someone I am close to liking it.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Fred Hersch at the Library of Congress
Fred Hersch played at the Library of Congress Friday night. J. and I first heard him some years ago in Arizona, when he came to ASU to do some workshops at the music department, and enjoyed it tremendously, so we were eager to hear him again. This concert was a little different, though. In addition to being a jazz pianist and songwriter, Hersch is also a composer of “formal” or “concert” music, i.e. music that does not require or expect improvisation. Music that, if it is old enough, is usually called “classical.” The Friday concert was some of each – the first half featured performances of Hersch's compositions by other musicians, while the second was Hersch playing and improvising on his own jazz tunes. As a composer, Hersch belongs in the late-Romantic/early-Modern school of Gabriel Fauré (and probably Mahler, if he wrote orchestral music), though he does push at the boundaries of that form now and then. Five works were performed on Friday.
Saloon Songs is a set of three movements for solo piano, each one derived from a popular form from the turn of the 20th century – slow drag, waltz and rag. The piece sounded like what you would expect – fairly light program music, though in the second and third movements there were flashes of distinctly modern harmony. Little Midnight Nocturne for solo piano was, according to Hersch's program notes, was written for a project that included a variety of composers writing variations on Monk's 'Round Midnight. It's a nice piece; what was interesting is that the connection to the original was readily apparent – more so than some works that claim to be versions of the actual tune. It was the two pieces that followed that demonstrated that Hersch is more than a dabbler in classical composition.
The first, titled simply Lyric Piece for Trio, is a work in one long movement for a trio of violin, cello and piano. It was very much in a Fauré mold (Hersch admitted as much himself in the notes); it reminded me of his piano quintets I like so much. Relatively dark but not gloomy, it had a nice flow, and some cool harmonies that were tonally vague but didn't fall apart completely. Gramercy Trio acquitted itself well, except for the violinist whose intonation left a bit to be desired in a couple of spots (maybe it's just me).
The following piece, Tango Bittersweet, was equally enjoyable – a duet for violin and piano, also in one movement, it was performed by Hersch himself at the keyboard and Gramercy's violinist. It's a beautiful tune, vaguely Latin-sounding, with extensive development sections for both instruments that do some interesting things with the thematic material. The last piece – a set of 24 variations on a Bach chorale – was the evening's dud. I am sure they are fine variations. The problem was that they are way too long, and playing them after so much music has already come before made them impossible to concentrate on and made the audience restless. It would have been a perfectly good concert without them.
Hersch's solo second half was as good as I had hoped. He played five tunes, but he worked each one out thoroughly, and he really is an excellent improviser. His idea flow sensibly from one another, and each solo follows a logical arc. To my great joy, he played two tunes that I really love – At the Close of the Day and Endless Stars. I first heard them at his Arizona gig, and both stuck with me ever since. It was nice to hear them live again. All in all, a good concert, though we could have done without the variations.
Saloon Songs is a set of three movements for solo piano, each one derived from a popular form from the turn of the 20th century – slow drag, waltz and rag. The piece sounded like what you would expect – fairly light program music, though in the second and third movements there were flashes of distinctly modern harmony. Little Midnight Nocturne for solo piano was, according to Hersch's program notes, was written for a project that included a variety of composers writing variations on Monk's 'Round Midnight. It's a nice piece; what was interesting is that the connection to the original was readily apparent – more so than some works that claim to be versions of the actual tune. It was the two pieces that followed that demonstrated that Hersch is more than a dabbler in classical composition.
The first, titled simply Lyric Piece for Trio, is a work in one long movement for a trio of violin, cello and piano. It was very much in a Fauré mold (Hersch admitted as much himself in the notes); it reminded me of his piano quintets I like so much. Relatively dark but not gloomy, it had a nice flow, and some cool harmonies that were tonally vague but didn't fall apart completely. Gramercy Trio acquitted itself well, except for the violinist whose intonation left a bit to be desired in a couple of spots (maybe it's just me).
The following piece, Tango Bittersweet, was equally enjoyable – a duet for violin and piano, also in one movement, it was performed by Hersch himself at the keyboard and Gramercy's violinist. It's a beautiful tune, vaguely Latin-sounding, with extensive development sections for both instruments that do some interesting things with the thematic material. The last piece – a set of 24 variations on a Bach chorale – was the evening's dud. I am sure they are fine variations. The problem was that they are way too long, and playing them after so much music has already come before made them impossible to concentrate on and made the audience restless. It would have been a perfectly good concert without them.
Hersch's solo second half was as good as I had hoped. He played five tunes, but he worked each one out thoroughly, and he really is an excellent improviser. His idea flow sensibly from one another, and each solo follows a logical arc. To my great joy, he played two tunes that I really love – At the Close of the Day and Endless Stars. I first heard them at his Arizona gig, and both stuck with me ever since. It was nice to hear them live again. All in all, a good concert, though we could have done without the variations.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Schiff vs. Grimaud
I had a friend in college whose father was a serious classical music buff. During a break one year, the friend was going to visit his family, and invited me along for a few days, so I got to see his father's CD collection. It was enormous, almost all of it classical, but what I found bewildering at the time was that he had more than one recording, sometimes many more, of almost any work in his collection. I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time – the music of almost infinite variety where improvisation is essential. No piece was ever played the same way twice, even by the same musicians. “What's the point,” I thought, “of having multiple recordings of the same symphony? Isn't the orchestra just playing what the composer had written? Aren't they all going to sound the same?” Needless to say, I couldn't have been more wrong. Interpretation, I would later learn, was the raison d'être of classical performance, and one of the reasons why the symphonies and sonatas that have been recorded thousands of times are still being recorded today (the other is the soloists' and conductors' outsize egos, but that's a topic for another day). This week, however, I had an opportunity to compare two interpretations of one of my favorite pieces – Beethoven's “Tempest” Sonata (No. 17, c-minor) – first-hand. I have owned for some time a disc with a performance by Hélène Grimaud, and have listened to it enough times to be more or less familiar with the music. A few weeks ago, however, the latest installment in Andras Schiff's complete cycle on ECM was released, and it contains his interpretation of the Tempest. The differences are apparent at first hearing, though it's a question of personal taste which one a given listener would prefer.
The Tempest is pretty unusual in structure – the first movement doesn't really have a development section, but contains two short recitatives instead. They are exquisitely beautiful and only distantly related to the main themes. The closing movement, on the other hand, is in a more traditional sonata form, with primary and secondary themes, recaps, and proper development in the middle. In his mostly illuminating liner notes, Schiff suggests that it is actually the last movement that carries the main weight of the sonata, not the first.
The most obvious difference is in the tempos. Schiff's are noticeably slower throughout. In the first movement the difference is not that great – Grimaud beats Schiff to the finish line by only 20 seconds, and five of those are the lead-in silence. More significant, however, are the dynamics. Schiff's are wider. His fortes are louder, his pianos softer. It's more than just volume, though – there is something about his touch that's more deliberate and forceful, especially in the left hand. He plays each chord like he really means it. What also comes through readily is his practice, supposedly once common but now antiquated, and one he had got some flak for in the past, of not striking the right and left hand notes at precisely the same moment even when they are so notated. All of these characteristics put together make for a very transparent, penetrating reading – you really hear everything, and understand better how the parts and themes relate to one another – but it also gives the music a slightly plodding and over-intellectualized quality. Grimaud, by contrast, comes off as more organic and concerned with the overall impression of the movement. Some details, while not completely glossed over, require some effort to catch. Where Grimaud shines, though, are those recitatives. Each is only a few notes long, but she makes them sound eerie, mysterious, other-worldly, almost cosmic. Schiff's over-articulated renditions sound pedestrian by comparison. I don't want to overstate the differences – neither reading is extreme, neither has any glaring deficiencies, and both are satisfying. But they are different enough that most listeners will eventually form a preference.
The slow movement is the least different of the bunch. Schiff's is slower. Not by a lot, but enough to make it a little too slow to my ears. This is good music to be sure, but I was getting a little bored towards the end.
It is in the finale where Schiff and Grimaud shoot off in opposite directions. Schiff makes a stink in the liner notes about how everyone plays the movement very fast. Well, that's what Grimaud does – her version is a full minute and a half shorter – but I think it works beautifully. She is a virtuosa to be sure, so the speed is no barrier to expression. What she ends up with is a concise organic whole, a performance that works as a total experience rather than a collection of notes. And although Schiff's unhurried stroll through the score is probably closer to Beethoven's indicated allegretto (Grimaud's is more of a presto), the speed actually enhances Beethoven's message, I think. It sounds more beautiful when played quickly precisely because the notes flow into one another and create a seamless melodic arc. The litmus test of both a work and a performance for me is that feeling in your chest, that imperceptible shiver of being slightly overwhelmed by emotion that goes through you when you hear a particularly deeply felt passage. Grimaud did that for me, especially with those descending triplets just before the development kicks in in earnest. So for me, as much as I've been enjoying Schiff's cycle so far, on the Tempest the nod goes to Grimaud, though I fully admit that it might have something to do with the fact that I've been listening to her version for a while, and maybe, in some small way, with the way she looks.
The Tempest is pretty unusual in structure – the first movement doesn't really have a development section, but contains two short recitatives instead. They are exquisitely beautiful and only distantly related to the main themes. The closing movement, on the other hand, is in a more traditional sonata form, with primary and secondary themes, recaps, and proper development in the middle. In his mostly illuminating liner notes, Schiff suggests that it is actually the last movement that carries the main weight of the sonata, not the first.
The most obvious difference is in the tempos. Schiff's are noticeably slower throughout. In the first movement the difference is not that great – Grimaud beats Schiff to the finish line by only 20 seconds, and five of those are the lead-in silence. More significant, however, are the dynamics. Schiff's are wider. His fortes are louder, his pianos softer. It's more than just volume, though – there is something about his touch that's more deliberate and forceful, especially in the left hand. He plays each chord like he really means it. What also comes through readily is his practice, supposedly once common but now antiquated, and one he had got some flak for in the past, of not striking the right and left hand notes at precisely the same moment even when they are so notated. All of these characteristics put together make for a very transparent, penetrating reading – you really hear everything, and understand better how the parts and themes relate to one another – but it also gives the music a slightly plodding and over-intellectualized quality. Grimaud, by contrast, comes off as more organic and concerned with the overall impression of the movement. Some details, while not completely glossed over, require some effort to catch. Where Grimaud shines, though, are those recitatives. Each is only a few notes long, but she makes them sound eerie, mysterious, other-worldly, almost cosmic. Schiff's over-articulated renditions sound pedestrian by comparison. I don't want to overstate the differences – neither reading is extreme, neither has any glaring deficiencies, and both are satisfying. But they are different enough that most listeners will eventually form a preference.
The slow movement is the least different of the bunch. Schiff's is slower. Not by a lot, but enough to make it a little too slow to my ears. This is good music to be sure, but I was getting a little bored towards the end.
It is in the finale where Schiff and Grimaud shoot off in opposite directions. Schiff makes a stink in the liner notes about how everyone plays the movement very fast. Well, that's what Grimaud does – her version is a full minute and a half shorter – but I think it works beautifully. She is a virtuosa to be sure, so the speed is no barrier to expression. What she ends up with is a concise organic whole, a performance that works as a total experience rather than a collection of notes. And although Schiff's unhurried stroll through the score is probably closer to Beethoven's indicated allegretto (Grimaud's is more of a presto), the speed actually enhances Beethoven's message, I think. It sounds more beautiful when played quickly precisely because the notes flow into one another and create a seamless melodic arc. The litmus test of both a work and a performance for me is that feeling in your chest, that imperceptible shiver of being slightly overwhelmed by emotion that goes through you when you hear a particularly deeply felt passage. Grimaud did that for me, especially with those descending triplets just before the development kicks in in earnest. So for me, as much as I've been enjoying Schiff's cycle so far, on the Tempest the nod goes to Grimaud, though I fully admit that it might have something to do with the fact that I've been listening to her version for a while, and maybe, in some small way, with the way she looks.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Still More Bill Evans
Finally got through the last of the three Bill Evans CDs I got from J.'s father some time ago. Affinity, from 1978. It features Evans sharing the billing with Toots Thielemans, the world's only jazz harmonica player. It's not just the two of them, though -- Marc Johnson on bass, Eliot Zigmund on drums (both members of Evans's trio at various times) and Larry Schneider, whom I haven't heard of before, on tenor and soprano saxes.
By and large, I liked it. Evans plays well, and sounds like himself, but the real revelation is Thielemans. He is so unique that it's impossible for anyone who has even a passing interest in jazz to avoid hearing about him, but I have never actually heard his playing until now, and I have to say it's pretty incredible. Hard as it may be to believe, he really does make the harmonica sounds like a full-fledged jazz instrument -- full range, fluid solos and -- the most impressive for me -- really expressive. Paul Simon's I Do It for Your Love, in particular, while an odd choice of tune, pretty much caused me to stop doing whatever I was doing and listen. A duet with Evans, it is plaintive, lyrical and very cinematic; I had no idea a harmonica could sound like that. His tone, too, is a far cry from gut-bucket blues harmonica most of us are used to. At times, it sounds like an accordion, which, contrary to common wisdom, can sound good when used judiciously and played well.
Thielemans aside, the album is solid. A couple of tunes give away its era. Sno' Peas sounds like a sixties Blue Note soul-jazz number, but the theme is pretty infectious, and the band cooks on it. Tomato Kiss is probably the most dated -- Evans plays electric piano, and, combined with Johnson's loping, fusioney bass line, it screams "seventies." Schneider is my biggest complaint -- he sounds like a faceless Coltrane clone. No wonder I have never heard of him.
I actually spent most of the weekend listening to a couple of new classical CDs -- the latest disc of Schiff's Beethoven sonatas and some Bach keyboard stuff I got recently. I'll write about those later in the week.
By and large, I liked it. Evans plays well, and sounds like himself, but the real revelation is Thielemans. He is so unique that it's impossible for anyone who has even a passing interest in jazz to avoid hearing about him, but I have never actually heard his playing until now, and I have to say it's pretty incredible. Hard as it may be to believe, he really does make the harmonica sounds like a full-fledged jazz instrument -- full range, fluid solos and -- the most impressive for me -- really expressive. Paul Simon's I Do It for Your Love, in particular, while an odd choice of tune, pretty much caused me to stop doing whatever I was doing and listen. A duet with Evans, it is plaintive, lyrical and very cinematic; I had no idea a harmonica could sound like that. His tone, too, is a far cry from gut-bucket blues harmonica most of us are used to. At times, it sounds like an accordion, which, contrary to common wisdom, can sound good when used judiciously and played well.
Thielemans aside, the album is solid. A couple of tunes give away its era. Sno' Peas sounds like a sixties Blue Note soul-jazz number, but the theme is pretty infectious, and the band cooks on it. Tomato Kiss is probably the most dated -- Evans plays electric piano, and, combined with Johnson's loping, fusioney bass line, it screams "seventies." Schneider is my biggest complaint -- he sounds like a faceless Coltrane clone. No wonder I have never heard of him.
I actually spent most of the weekend listening to a couple of new classical CDs -- the latest disc of Schiff's Beethoven sonatas and some Bach keyboard stuff I got recently. I'll write about those later in the week.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Connection to Musical Greatness
It has been said that every person in the world is within six degrees of separation from any other person, i.e. a chain of acquaintances at most six people long connects you to every person on the planet. I am, for example, only two degrees from Leopold Stokowski, and three from Glenn Gould. The story goes something like this.
The last year and a half of college, from the fall of 1994 until February of 1996, I lived in a stately turn of the century mansion in what used to be the posh, luxurious area of Rochester, NY. Located two doors down from the George Eastman House, apparently it had once been owned by a friend of the Eastman family. At some point it was converted into apartments, and the stables made into garages. I had the attic – a barely livable but wonderfully distinctive collection of triangles under the eaves of the sharply pitched roof. The superintendent of the building was one David Fetler, an unassuming old man, stooped and wrinkled but surprisingly energetic and agile for his age, with a look of purposeful seriousness on his face. He spoke a perfect, idiomatic American English, but with a slight accent that I could never place. The same will be said of me when I am his age, I suppose. He did light maintenance – raking the leaves, that sort of thing – arranged for hired guns to do more serious work like plumbing, and regularly drove off in the direction of downtown in his blue Honda. He lived alone in a half-basement unit with a separate entrance. Sometimes, walking by the window of his apartment, I would glance inside, almost involuntarily. If his curtains were open, I could see a console piano with piles of sheet music scattered on top.
J. and I had started dating in the summer of '94, shortly before I moved into the attic apartment. We were shy, awkward, inexperienced and utterly clueless about how a relationship between two 21-year-old college students should be conducted. This was Rochester, however, the home of the Eastman School of music, among other places, and J. was an active and accomplished French horn player, a part-time student at Eastman, and a classical DJ on WRUR when we met. Needless to say, we indulged our natural predilections and, not realizing we were probably hiding emotionally from ourselves and each other, wallowed in the endless supply of free and cheap concerts and other musical events the city had to offer. Countless dates were spent listening to music and talking about it afterwards at Tivoli, a faux-Italian cafe on Monroe Avenue that stayed open mercifully late for the few nightowls eeking out drops of after-hours life from what was essentially, music scene notwithstanding, a small steel belt city on life support. One evening, we found ourselves at a concert by the Rochester Chamber Orchestra that played at the time (and still does, I believe) at the Hochstein School, a converted Romanesque church on the Western edge of downtown with unbelievable acoustics. Well, who steps up to the conductor's podium but David Fetler, my building's superintendent. Shocked, we turn our programs to the conductor's bio page.
Born in Riga, Latvia, he moved to the US at the age of twelve (perfect explanation for the accent – twelve was the age at which I started speaking English), received a degree from Julliard, taught at Eastman and served as assistant conductor to Leopold Stokowski! After that concert, I started to address him as Dr. Fetler (he didn't object) and cautiously started to try to engage him and ask him about his musical past. He was polite, but not particularly forthcoming, and as socially awkward as I was at the time, I am sure I did a terrible job of it myself. I regret it now – Dr. Fetler seemed like a perfect example of a regular guy with a fascinating past full of stories. The kind of personage you meet all the time in movies and books but all too rarely in real life. I wish I found a way to get to know him. My biggest coup was recommending two of J.'s musician friends for an amateur orchestra he conducted at a local festival in the summer of '95. He took both, and thanked me for helping him fill out his wind section. And how does Glenn Gould fit into all of this? Gould recorded with Stokowski towards the end of the latter's career, and was a lifelong fan and admirer.
The last year and a half of college, from the fall of 1994 until February of 1996, I lived in a stately turn of the century mansion in what used to be the posh, luxurious area of Rochester, NY. Located two doors down from the George Eastman House, apparently it had once been owned by a friend of the Eastman family. At some point it was converted into apartments, and the stables made into garages. I had the attic – a barely livable but wonderfully distinctive collection of triangles under the eaves of the sharply pitched roof. The superintendent of the building was one David Fetler, an unassuming old man, stooped and wrinkled but surprisingly energetic and agile for his age, with a look of purposeful seriousness on his face. He spoke a perfect, idiomatic American English, but with a slight accent that I could never place. The same will be said of me when I am his age, I suppose. He did light maintenance – raking the leaves, that sort of thing – arranged for hired guns to do more serious work like plumbing, and regularly drove off in the direction of downtown in his blue Honda. He lived alone in a half-basement unit with a separate entrance. Sometimes, walking by the window of his apartment, I would glance inside, almost involuntarily. If his curtains were open, I could see a console piano with piles of sheet music scattered on top.
J. and I had started dating in the summer of '94, shortly before I moved into the attic apartment. We were shy, awkward, inexperienced and utterly clueless about how a relationship between two 21-year-old college students should be conducted. This was Rochester, however, the home of the Eastman School of music, among other places, and J. was an active and accomplished French horn player, a part-time student at Eastman, and a classical DJ on WRUR when we met. Needless to say, we indulged our natural predilections and, not realizing we were probably hiding emotionally from ourselves and each other, wallowed in the endless supply of free and cheap concerts and other musical events the city had to offer. Countless dates were spent listening to music and talking about it afterwards at Tivoli, a faux-Italian cafe on Monroe Avenue that stayed open mercifully late for the few nightowls eeking out drops of after-hours life from what was essentially, music scene notwithstanding, a small steel belt city on life support. One evening, we found ourselves at a concert by the Rochester Chamber Orchestra that played at the time (and still does, I believe) at the Hochstein School, a converted Romanesque church on the Western edge of downtown with unbelievable acoustics. Well, who steps up to the conductor's podium but David Fetler, my building's superintendent. Shocked, we turn our programs to the conductor's bio page.
Born in Riga, Latvia, he moved to the US at the age of twelve (perfect explanation for the accent – twelve was the age at which I started speaking English), received a degree from Julliard, taught at Eastman and served as assistant conductor to Leopold Stokowski! After that concert, I started to address him as Dr. Fetler (he didn't object) and cautiously started to try to engage him and ask him about his musical past. He was polite, but not particularly forthcoming, and as socially awkward as I was at the time, I am sure I did a terrible job of it myself. I regret it now – Dr. Fetler seemed like a perfect example of a regular guy with a fascinating past full of stories. The kind of personage you meet all the time in movies and books but all too rarely in real life. I wish I found a way to get to know him. My biggest coup was recommending two of J.'s musician friends for an amateur orchestra he conducted at a local festival in the summer of '95. He took both, and thanked me for helping him fill out his wind section. And how does Glenn Gould fit into all of this? Gould recorded with Stokowski towards the end of the latter's career, and was a lifelong fan and admirer.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
St. Clement's Island
A few weeks ago, the Washington Post wrote up four local day-long drives intended to rekindle the romance between you and your loved one. Thinking it a good idea, J. and I embarked on one of them on Saturday. I think J. and I lack in the romance department sometimes, but a bigger problem is that I don't find driving very romantic. Well, maybe if you're driving a Morgan Plus 4 through the Welsh countryside. For the most part, though, we had a good time.
The weather was beautiful, and after a leisurely breakfast at home we crossed the Wilson Bridge into Maryland in late morning and headed South on MD-210. Traffic lightened up quickly, and before long we were meandering leisurely through Charles County, grateful that the leaves were finally starting to turn color. The Post's directions were lousy – MD-229 does not cross MD-225 as they claim, it dead-ends there – but with the help of a normal map we reached our first stop – the Thomas Stone Historic Site in Port Tobacco – without too much trouble. Stone was a Maryland lawyer turned revolutionary and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He bought the house and the surrounding 300+ acres in 1770 and lived there with his family during and after the Revolutionary War. The house remained privately owned and inhabited into the 1990s, the National Park Service took over and, after repairing damage from a fire in the 1970s, made it into a Historic Site in 1997. The house is well-maintained, with four rooms on the first floor open to the public and furnished with period furniture (though none of it Stone's own), but in the grand scheme of things there is nothing special about it. Other than having signed the Declaration, Stone was an unremarkable guy, and none of the grandeur or historical significance visible at Monticello or Mount Vernon was evident here. The Post's description of the estate's park-like grounds was also overstated, so after a a ten-minute tour of the house, we swallowed down our lunch at a picnic table carelessly placed on the edge of the visitors' parking lot, and hit the road. During our entire time at the site, we were the only visitors.
Our final destination was Colton's Point where a water taxi would take us to St. Clement's Island in the mouth of the Potomac. The only glitch was that the taxi sails to the island only twice a day, the second trip being at 2:30, and the windy country roads, scenic as they are, do not make for quick progress. The vague directions conspired against us once more, so the last ten miles or so were a little harried, to put it mildly, as I gunned the old VW to seventy and beyond in 45-mph zones (on nearly treadless tires no less). We squealed into Colton's Point at 2:30 sharp only to discover that we need not have rushed – we were the only passengers, and thus could leave pretty much at our leisure. After the short ride out to the island, we made arrangements to be picked up on the opposite side in an hour, and set off to explore.
Turns out the 40-acre island was the site of the first landing, in 1634, by English settlers in today's Maryland. It also turns out that the site is of great significance to the Catholic church – Cecil Calvert, the son of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was Catholic, and the first Catholic mass in “English America” (don't you love the clever ways to dismiss the Spanish?) was celebrated here upon his arrival. The island has undergone many changes of ownership and even name over the centuries. A lighthouse had once stood here; it was destroyed by a Confederate raiding party during the Civil War, rebuilt, then used for target practice by the US Navy after being decommissioned in the 1930s. It is currently being rebuilt again to its original look to serve, presumably, as an educational exhibit. We wandered leisurely around the island, making our best attempt at romance and wishing that we had brought our picnic here – tables abounded along the wide trail that circled the perimeter of the island. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful, albeit a bit buggy. We eventually made our way to the North end of the island where two ham radio operators the boat's captain told us about – the only other humans there – were packing up their gear for the return trip. The boat showed up shortly afterwards and we made our way back to the mainland, learning a random bit of trivia in the process – sea planes have the lowest right-of-way priority of any vessel on the water.
We drove home by retracing our steps more or less, though taking a bit of a shortcut along US-301 and stopping for a bag of fresh mussels for that night's dinner. When we got home, I threw the mussels in the pot, pan-seared a couple of salmon fillets that were languishing in our freezer, opened a bottle of deliciously fruity though slightly sugary Albariño, and we settled down to the most romantic moment of the day.
The weather was beautiful, and after a leisurely breakfast at home we crossed the Wilson Bridge into Maryland in late morning and headed South on MD-210. Traffic lightened up quickly, and before long we were meandering leisurely through Charles County, grateful that the leaves were finally starting to turn color. The Post's directions were lousy – MD-229 does not cross MD-225 as they claim, it dead-ends there – but with the help of a normal map we reached our first stop – the Thomas Stone Historic Site in Port Tobacco – without too much trouble. Stone was a Maryland lawyer turned revolutionary and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He bought the house and the surrounding 300+ acres in 1770 and lived there with his family during and after the Revolutionary War. The house remained privately owned and inhabited into the 1990s, the National Park Service took over and, after repairing damage from a fire in the 1970s, made it into a Historic Site in 1997. The house is well-maintained, with four rooms on the first floor open to the public and furnished with period furniture (though none of it Stone's own), but in the grand scheme of things there is nothing special about it. Other than having signed the Declaration, Stone was an unremarkable guy, and none of the grandeur or historical significance visible at Monticello or Mount Vernon was evident here. The Post's description of the estate's park-like grounds was also overstated, so after a a ten-minute tour of the house, we swallowed down our lunch at a picnic table carelessly placed on the edge of the visitors' parking lot, and hit the road. During our entire time at the site, we were the only visitors.
Our final destination was Colton's Point where a water taxi would take us to St. Clement's Island in the mouth of the Potomac. The only glitch was that the taxi sails to the island only twice a day, the second trip being at 2:30, and the windy country roads, scenic as they are, do not make for quick progress. The vague directions conspired against us once more, so the last ten miles or so were a little harried, to put it mildly, as I gunned the old VW to seventy and beyond in 45-mph zones (on nearly treadless tires no less). We squealed into Colton's Point at 2:30 sharp only to discover that we need not have rushed – we were the only passengers, and thus could leave pretty much at our leisure. After the short ride out to the island, we made arrangements to be picked up on the opposite side in an hour, and set off to explore.
Turns out the 40-acre island was the site of the first landing, in 1634, by English settlers in today's Maryland. It also turns out that the site is of great significance to the Catholic church – Cecil Calvert, the son of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was Catholic, and the first Catholic mass in “English America” (don't you love the clever ways to dismiss the Spanish?) was celebrated here upon his arrival. The island has undergone many changes of ownership and even name over the centuries. A lighthouse had once stood here; it was destroyed by a Confederate raiding party during the Civil War, rebuilt, then used for target practice by the US Navy after being decommissioned in the 1930s. It is currently being rebuilt again to its original look to serve, presumably, as an educational exhibit. We wandered leisurely around the island, making our best attempt at romance and wishing that we had brought our picnic here – tables abounded along the wide trail that circled the perimeter of the island. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful, albeit a bit buggy. We eventually made our way to the North end of the island where two ham radio operators the boat's captain told us about – the only other humans there – were packing up their gear for the return trip. The boat showed up shortly afterwards and we made our way back to the mainland, learning a random bit of trivia in the process – sea planes have the lowest right-of-way priority of any vessel on the water.
We drove home by retracing our steps more or less, though taking a bit of a shortcut along US-301 and stopping for a bag of fresh mussels for that night's dinner. When we got home, I threw the mussels in the pot, pan-seared a couple of salmon fillets that were languishing in our freezer, opened a bottle of deliciously fruity though slightly sugary Albariño, and we settled down to the most romantic moment of the day.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Single White Programmer
Eleven years ago, as a starry-eyed fresh-out entering the professional world for the first time, I expected that world to conform to certain assumptions simply because those assumptions made logical sense to me. One of these was that job seeking was an employers' market -- any job opening short of something really esoteric would have many candidates applying and vying for attention, and the employer would have the luxury of choosing the most qualified candidate. Well, when it comes to Information Technology, either I was spectacularly wrong or things have changed a lot since then. Probably a bit of both.
I am realizing now that hiring a qualified engineer is more than a bit like trying to get a date. First, you post an ad and wait for people to respond. They don't. Or if they do, it's inevitably the desperate, misguided souls who change jobs every six months and who don't have a single skill that you listed as required. So you have to go out and start making contacts yourself. Perhaps even engage the services of a recruiter. Eventually, a great candidate emerges. You work diligently through the obstacles posed by mutually incompatible schedules and other problems until you finally manage to interview the person. Things go great. You work through more adversity to put together an acceptable job offer. When you do, the candidate, politely but firmly, turns it down, citing the familiar "I really enjoyed meeting you, thank you for everything, but, well... it's just not the job I am looking for right now." Sigh. But wait! There is hope -- though he is not interested, he has a friend, also available, who might be, so he sets you up. Excitedly, you call and leave a message. A couple of days go buy. Every morning, you get to the office hoping to see that voicemail light flashing, or that "New Mail" link highlighted on your computer screen. Nothing. Worried about appearing desperate and coming across as a pest, you eventually call again. Score! As the interview approaches, you get increasingly nervous, hashing and rehashing in your head what you're going to say so as to give them the best impression while gaining as much information as possible yourself, all in an atmosphere of congeniality and cooperation. When you can no longer stand it, you think about what tie you're going to wear. Sound familiar?
I am so glad I only have to deal with this on the professional level, and not the personal.
I am realizing now that hiring a qualified engineer is more than a bit like trying to get a date. First, you post an ad and wait for people to respond. They don't. Or if they do, it's inevitably the desperate, misguided souls who change jobs every six months and who don't have a single skill that you listed as required. So you have to go out and start making contacts yourself. Perhaps even engage the services of a recruiter. Eventually, a great candidate emerges. You work diligently through the obstacles posed by mutually incompatible schedules and other problems until you finally manage to interview the person. Things go great. You work through more adversity to put together an acceptable job offer. When you do, the candidate, politely but firmly, turns it down, citing the familiar "I really enjoyed meeting you, thank you for everything, but, well... it's just not the job I am looking for right now." Sigh. But wait! There is hope -- though he is not interested, he has a friend, also available, who might be, so he sets you up. Excitedly, you call and leave a message. A couple of days go buy. Every morning, you get to the office hoping to see that voicemail light flashing, or that "New Mail" link highlighted on your computer screen. Nothing. Worried about appearing desperate and coming across as a pest, you eventually call again. Score! As the interview approaches, you get increasingly nervous, hashing and rehashing in your head what you're going to say so as to give them the best impression while gaining as much information as possible yourself, all in an atmosphere of congeniality and cooperation. When you can no longer stand it, you think about what tie you're going to wear. Sound familiar?
I am so glad I only have to deal with this on the professional level, and not the personal.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Rant: Weather
I suppose it is still possible to doubt global warming, though the science seems pretty convincing to me. What is not possible to doubt is the local warming here in Washington, DC. The forecast today calls for a hight of 92, with high humidity. In the second week of October! And if that wasn't enough, we haven't had a rainstorm in weeks, to the point that some counties in Northern Virginia are starting to ration water. The same thing happened last year, all but ruining the fall foliage colors, to say nothing of less visible but more serious problems. Taking advantage of the holiday, I ran about six miles yesterday, in the middle of the day. Big mistake. Normally, I feel like a million dollars after a six-mile run. Yesterday, I felt like someone sucked the life out of me, and I'm still not entirely back to normal today. Of course, the delicious libations I shared with C.S. over dinner last night (Gouden Caroluls Trippel Belgian ale and my last bottle of Stix Pinot Noir) may have had something to do with it, too.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
More Bill Evans
Got through another Evans CD from the batch that J.'s father sent me. This one is Montreux III, a live set of duets with Gomez recorded and released in 1975. Definitely has its moments, though I am not sure how much it did for me as a whole. The opening Elsa is solid, Minha, which I first heard on his set of Paris concerts from '79, is as melancholy and pensive as ever, and though the entire thing is played rubato, at only four minutes long it does not bore you. The Summer Knows, played as an encore, is also attratcive, and there are some good solos scattered throughout the rest of the tracks. A couple of things immediately jumped out at me, though. First of all, way too much Gomez. I hate to harp on a good musician, especially not being one myself (none of any consequence, anyway), but unless you're Mae West, too much of a good thing could be a problem. John Lewis's Django is one big Gomez solo, his tone is no better than on Half Moon Bay, and the overall sound quality is worse. Not a recipe for success. Evans plays some electric piano here and there. I knew he experimented with it in the seventies, but never actually heard him before. It comes off as an innocent novelty. It adds a little color, but I am not sure I'd miss it if he stuck to acoustic for the entire set. The most curious, though, is how straight Evans plays throughout the date. Straight, linear improvisations, mostly single-note lines, comping metronomically in block chords -- he doesn't really sound like himself. A different side of Evans, and not a bad one per se, but not really distinctive. Was he flying on autopilot because he couldn't get it together that day to play for real? Then why release the record?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Bill Evans
For my birthday a couple of weeks ago, J.'s father sent me some CD-Rs of Bill Evans that he burned from iTunes downloads. One of them was Half Moon Bay – a live trio gig at a small private club in California that Milestone did not release until the late 1990s (and thus omitted from the official discography in Peter Pettinger's book on Evans) – that I finally finished listening to the other night. Good stuff. Recorded in 1973 with Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums, it probably qualifies as “late,” and since I'm only really familiar with the famous first trio (with LaFaro and Motian) records on Riverside, this is a side of Evans I rarely come in contact with. Overall, there is definitely more energy and perhaps less delicacy here than in the Riverside stuff, but it is no less introspective. The extreme harmonic and rhythmic displacement that Evans became known for later in his career is in evidence, but it is not distracting – there is plenty for the listener to latch on to and just float along as Evans develops his long, flowing lines. The highlights, for me, were Sareen Jurer – a dark mid-tempo tune that didn't enter his repertoire until later in life and one I therefore had not heard before, Quiet Now, an Evans standard but really a beautiful tune that should be far better known, and a high-energy, boppy take on Who Can I Turn To that gives the lie to the suggestion that Evans couldn't cook with the best of them. The disappointments, relatively speaking, are minor. One is the version of Autumn Leaves – in an effort to give Gomez as much solo space as possible, Evans has him play the head, and frankly, I think it robs the melody of its lyricism. I am biased, of course – it's one of my favorite standards. Gomez's tone, too, is a little unnerving at times – poppy, constricted and more than a little whiny. I suspect amplification is to blame – the stereo imaging is quite good, and the piano tone is surprisingly natural even after it was subjected to iTunes's compression, which leads me to believe that the whole thing was recored with a pair of mikes in the middle of the room. But since Gomez was probably already miked up (using 1973 technology) to equalize himself with the piano, we have two layers of compression going on.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Psychotherapy
For someone seeking the help of a therapist, the worst nightmare is an old-school shrink, steeped in the antiquated theories and practices of psychoanalysis, who, week after week, sits there and nods, interjecting occasionally, but generally relying on the therapeutic value of the patient's act of talking itself. More modern, progressive behavioral approaches were intended to rectify this -- they introduced structure, goals and homework. The unfortunate truth, however, is that these approaches are only helpful with some problems (addiction, for example, or communication issues) but patently ineffectual for others (existential paralysis, dealing with a chronic illness of a loved one). Sure, any therapist regardless of approach can help gain some insight, but in the latter cases, the best advice they can generate are platitudes along the lines of "needing to make a leap of faith" and "focusing on the positive." But they offer no instruction on how to do it. A reasonably intellectually sophisticated patient doesn't need a psychologist for this -- reading Kierkegaard is sufficient, and a whole lot less expensive.
Any therapist worth her salt, however, is a very good listener and empathizer -- she is professionally trained to be those things, in fact. So, paradoxically, though she is telling the patient to focus on the positive, the therapy session in fact becomes an excellent venue for the patient to focus on the negative instead, making it completely counter-productive.
Any therapist worth her salt, however, is a very good listener and empathizer -- she is professionally trained to be those things, in fact. So, paradoxically, though she is telling the patient to focus on the positive, the therapy session in fact becomes an excellent venue for the patient to focus on the negative instead, making it completely counter-productive.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Weekend Miscellany
A Fed Is in Da House
J.'s permanent job finally came through earlier in the week. It's the same job, but she is no longer a contractor. She is employed directly by the Federal Government now. Scary thought. Got a fat raise out of the deal, too, so she is pretty happy. I am happy for her, of course, and ecstatic about the fact that she will have real vacation now. I don't care about the cash so much. Friday night, I threw together a semi-celebratory meal of pan-seared salmon over roasted green beans with black olives and anchovies. Not my original recipe (Jamie Oliver's, actually, I'm a little embarassed to admit), so I'm not posting it here. Came out pretty well. Opened a bottle of Dyed in the Wool Pinot Noir from New Zealand. Good -- on the light side, but bigger than some pinots, bright, with fair amount of bite and decent fruit. I was worried about how it would take to the anchovies, but it didn't clash.
Why Me?
I got a group together to go to Crystal City Uncorked on Sunday -- a street festival focused on wine tasting and food samples from local restaurants. A few friends actually took me up on it -- something that does not happen very often. Of course, as my luck would have it, it was complete bust. The organizers appear to have seriously underestimated the turnout, and the lines to each of the booths were absolutely enormous. So much so that an organizers' representative was walking up and down the admission line telling people basically to have low expectations. So we bailed at the last minute, and ended up having some mid-afternoon tapas and wine at Jaleo instead. It worked out ok for the most part, but we had to sit inside despite the beautiful weather (seven people was apparently too many people for the patio), and C.S. and his girlfriend felt screwed over, I think, since they trekked down from Germantown for this, and got there late, so they couldn't participate in making the decision to bail on the festival. Why is it that the one time I plan a group event, it goes wrong?
Books
Finished Standage's A History of the World in Six Glasses. A quick and simple but very enjoyable read. The quotes of old advertising copy and 19th century medical opinions are priceless.
J.'s permanent job finally came through earlier in the week. It's the same job, but she is no longer a contractor. She is employed directly by the Federal Government now. Scary thought. Got a fat raise out of the deal, too, so she is pretty happy. I am happy for her, of course, and ecstatic about the fact that she will have real vacation now. I don't care about the cash so much. Friday night, I threw together a semi-celebratory meal of pan-seared salmon over roasted green beans with black olives and anchovies. Not my original recipe (Jamie Oliver's, actually, I'm a little embarassed to admit), so I'm not posting it here. Came out pretty well. Opened a bottle of Dyed in the Wool Pinot Noir from New Zealand. Good -- on the light side, but bigger than some pinots, bright, with fair amount of bite and decent fruit. I was worried about how it would take to the anchovies, but it didn't clash.
Why Me?
I got a group together to go to Crystal City Uncorked on Sunday -- a street festival focused on wine tasting and food samples from local restaurants. A few friends actually took me up on it -- something that does not happen very often. Of course, as my luck would have it, it was complete bust. The organizers appear to have seriously underestimated the turnout, and the lines to each of the booths were absolutely enormous. So much so that an organizers' representative was walking up and down the admission line telling people basically to have low expectations. So we bailed at the last minute, and ended up having some mid-afternoon tapas and wine at Jaleo instead. It worked out ok for the most part, but we had to sit inside despite the beautiful weather (seven people was apparently too many people for the patio), and C.S. and his girlfriend felt screwed over, I think, since they trekked down from Germantown for this, and got there late, so they couldn't participate in making the decision to bail on the festival. Why is it that the one time I plan a group event, it goes wrong?
Books
Finished Standage's A History of the World in Six Glasses. A quick and simple but very enjoyable read. The quotes of old advertising copy and 19th century medical opinions are priceless.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
