Though I imagine it would be easy for Mandel to grandstand or write flashy piano, in every piece, the music is delicate and subservient to the words – it’s all about Cummings and enhancing, and drawing out the meaning of each piece such that they become fresh and new. Lovers of Cummings’ poetry won’t be disappointed with this CD, which is deeply engaged with the original poetry.
A review of Time Will Tell by Donald Greig
Donald Greig, a singer, writer and lecturer in film studies and musicology, associated with the Tallis Scholars and the Orlando Consort, proves with this novel that talent in one artistic form often carries over to other forms. Time Will Tell is darkly humorous and rich with detail.
A review of Wings to Fly: An Asperger Soars by Linda Brooks
There is much wisdom here, but also insight and humour which will help others get through the difficult times. Ultimately, what Wings to Fly shows us is that Aspergers and indeed other positions on the personality spectrum are to be celebrated, even when things are hard and when institutions like schools and workplaces make it harder.
A review of Another Broken Wizard by Colin Dodds
Although Colin Dodds doesn’t glamorize a life of strangers, grunt work, living from party to party, he doesn’t portray that the illegal sale of drugs is so bad, either. He does correctly convey the judgment-impaired state of mind when intoxicated.
A review of ARIA: Left Luggage by Geoff Nelder
The balance between character development and plot progression is managed smoothly, along with the thematics, which take the reader through a series of all-too-believable scenarios, chillingly showing how easy it would be for an advanced group of aliens to undermine the human race and have us destroy one another, without the need for any additional weapons or warfare.
ModPo’s Amaris Cuchanski, Max McKenna & Anna Strong
Three of the Teaching Assistants from the University of Pennsylvania’s Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course (ModPo) drop by to chat about the course, how they got involved, contemporary poetics, the notion of uncreative writing and play in poetry, the…
We Study Everything: Branford Marsalis Quartet, Four MFs Playin’ Tunes
Branford Marsalis Quartet’s music is charming, full of pleasing technique, light and playful, so much so that it can be difficult to distinguish between melody and rhythm. The pace is often quick, with bristling energy, and yet the music is quite pretty. The sound is intimate and the bass notes create something almost meditative; and with sound that light and piercing, it is easy to think that the root is freedom, or joy.
Infatuation, Intoxication, Regret: I Know What Love Isn’t by Jens Lekman
The album I Know What Love Isn’t is intelligent and intimate, mellow, and yet seems a serious encounter—probing, humorous—with a different culture and demanding relationships. It is a collection both arty and honest. “I think my dream is trying to tell me something,” Jens Lekman sings in “I Want a Pair of Cowboy Boots,” a guitar and voice song.
Love amid Innovation: Violinist Tai Murray’s interpretation of Eugene Ysaye’s Six Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 27
Eugene Ysaye, himself a prodigy, was a composer, conductor, teacher, and advocate for new music; and Eugene Ysaye, according to the doctoral research of violinist Erin Aldridge (a student of Vartan Manoogian), combined the innovations of Nicolo Paganini—the use of fingered octaves and tenths and double harmonies—with Ysaye’s own preference for quarter-tones, double stops of whole tones, and lengthy arpeggios.
Modern, Dynamic, Intense, a Unity of Sensibility: George Walker’s Great American Concert Music
Mastering and being creative in the classical music tradition demanded courage, dedication, and discipline, as well as imagination. The music of George Walker has great dramatic force, and sometimes surprises—which seems a mark of its modernism. What can be the relation to a classical art that began in another culture, in another era?