My three sisters came in for the weekend to help me celebrate my birthday. Two of them had never been to NYC before, so Andy and I took them on the Staten Island Ferry first thing.
Archive for May, 2014
Photo diary: birthday weekend part 1
May 22, 2014Events: Gamelan Kusuma Laras at Riverside Church June 1
May 22, 2014
The music group that I play with, Gamelan Kusuma Laras, will give a concert of classical Javanese music as part of the Christ Chapel Chamber Series at The Riverside Church.
WHEN: Sunday, June 1, 2014, 3:00 – 5:00 pm
WHERE: Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027 (@122nd Street)
WHO: Gamelan Kusuma Laras is a classical Javanese gamelan orchestra based in New York City that performs music, dance, and theatre from the classical repertoire of the courts of Central Java. Created especially for the Indonesia Pavilion at the World’s Fair of 1964-65, the gamelan has the honor of being housed at the Indonesian Consulate in New York City. The ensemble is led by artistic director I.M. Harjito and director Anne Stebinger.
WHAT: The repertoire for this concert will be:
* Ladrang Singa-Singa (laras pelog pathet barang)
* Ketawang Larasmaya (laras pelog pathet barang)
* Gendhing Tejaningsih minggah Ladrang Playon Bedhayan (laras pelog pathet lima)
* Gendhing Onang-Onang, Ladrang Wirangrong (laras pelog pathet nem)
* Ladrang Kutut Manggung, Lancaran Kuda Nyongklang (laras pelog pathet barang)
ADMISSION: suggested donation at the door.
Follow us on Facebook and find us on the web: www.kusumalaras.org
Performance diary: LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR AND GRILL
May 5, 2014
5.3.14 – From the very first note she sings in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Audra McDonald dives deep into the persona of Billie Holiday and never comes out. It’s not a superficial impersonation or even a musicianly tribute to an indelible style. It’s a carefully studied and crafted performance, ever so slightly stylizing the vowels she sings in a way I’ve never heard anyone else do. It doesn’t even necessarily sound exactly like Holiday but I liked the curious and specific attention McDonald paid to each moment of each song. She has had excellent help from her director, Lonny Price, who took a pretty drab script by Lanie Robertson and made an event out of it, surrounding the singer’s bandshell with cabaret tables to make the usually cumbersome Circle in the Square Theater deliciously intimate. McDonald has a surfeit of conventional beauty, something Holiday lacked, but she’s willing to get rough and look unpretty. The moments when she starts building a tirade about racism in the music business or financial exploitation and her accompanist Jimmy Powers (played by Shelton Becton) gently guides her back into a song reminded me uncannily of Nina Simone in concert (see her riveting, disturbing Live at Montreux video). You know you’re watching a brilliant performer in serious decline, yet Price finds a way to end the show with a spot of unexpected theatrical grace.
Quote of the day: EFFICIENCY
May 5, 2014EFFICIENCY
Two insanely dangerous consequences result from raising efficiency to the level of an independent principle. First, it favors short-term thinking – no looking ahead, down the line; and it produces insensitive feeling – no looking around at the life values being lived so efficiently. Second, means become ends; that is, doing something becomes the full justification of doing regardless of what you do. Operational phrases in business life such as “just do it,” “get it done,” “don’t ask questions,” “not excuses, results!” are telltale signs of the efficiency principle beginning to separate from its cohorts and set off on its own.
The ethical confusions now plaguing business, government, and the professions, although having many varied sources, result in part from the pressures of efficiency as a value in and for itself. Then, curiously, Aristotle’s other principles seem to return from repressive exclusion only to sabotage efficiency. Inefficiency becomes a favorite mode of rebellion against the tyranny of efficiency: slowdown, work-to-rule, buck-passing, absenteeism, delayed responses, mislaid documents, unreturned phone calls. Ethical protest against the tyranny of efficiency employ these modes of inefficiency. It is as if in the name of being a good citizen with concern for the wider implications of a job, one must become a “bad” worker.
— James Hillman, Kinds of Power
Good stuff online: Gabourey Sidibe at the MS. Gala
May 4, 2014
I love Gabourey Sidibe. Love. Her. Besides being an extraordinary actress (see Precious — no, really, watch it!), she’s so smart and funny.
She gave a great talk at the Ms. Foundation gala last week that has been posted online. I read many passages aloud to Andy over breakfast. Some made me laugh; some made me cry. Here’s one:
“I got made fun of at school, I got made fun of at home too, my older brother hated me, my dad just didn’t understand me, and my mom, who had been a fat girl at my age herself, understood me perfectly … but she berated me because she was so afraid of what she knew was to come for me. So I never felt safe when I was at home. And my response was always to eat more, because nothing says, ‘You hurt my feelings. Fuck you!’ like eating a delicious cookie. Cookies never hurt me.”
Read the whole thing here and tell me what you think.
another eye opens 