It has a slippery groove featuring a beat that glides and stops, glides and stops; and that first part is appealing but not soothing. The second part is quiet, slow, almost tense, with a sprinkling of piano notes, and a heavy, slow bass—until what is ponderous achieves beauty. The third part—the fast tempo of the piano, staccato string rhythm, and jazzy percussion—creates and maintains a tension between rhythms (the way one instrument complements and contrasts another reminds me of jazz, as does the jittery energy).
Chamber Music of Memory and Mischief: Now Ensemble, Awake
The Now Ensemble—Alex Sopp, Sara Budde, Mark Dancigers, Logan Coale, and Michael Mizrahi—are playing music and also playing with our expectations. After a pleasantly quiet beginning, a strong rhythm emerges in “Burst,” and I thought I heard, faintly, the blues in it (its inspirations are Mozart and Ali Farka Toure); it is a merry score for memory and mischief—one can dance to it, or enter a reverie.
With Voice, Will Travel: Susana Baca, Afrodiaspora
Afrodiaspora, Susana Baca’s voice is almost plaintive in “Bendiceme,” a song devoted to the infant Jesus, the kind of Catholic processional tune popular among black Peruvians, and her voice— which begins with a nearly formal firmness and goes high and tender—and that near-plaintive or plaintive tone touches something within the listener. Baca is joined by a chorus, which can seem like a false accent, a cliché—but not here: the chorus is the community and a musical strength; and theirs is an old, possibly timeless, sound, echoing beyond logic.
Shocking Story, Significant Sound: Julia Wolfe’s Cruel Sister, featuring Ensemble Resonanz
In the New York performance of the piece, it was accompanied, as on the Wolfe album, by “Fuel,” a score for a Bill Morrison film “that shows time-lapse images of cargo ships, trucks being loaded, drilling rigs and highways in New York and Hamburg,” with the music described as “all spiraling rock riffs and whirring clusters of notes” (Tommasini, Times, February 4, 2011).
A review of My School by Maralyn Parker
This book would be of particular value to someone moving to Australia for the first time as it provides a very good overview of the idiosyncrasies of the Australian school system, including how to make best use of that system.
A review of Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Yes, it’s a great Australian novel, full of people and places that are both inherently part of their time and true to that space. Above all though, what elevates this book from a cracking good yarn to something that is great, is the magic. The book is rife with magic, so purely woven into the story you might miss it on a first reading. It’s a magic that comes straight from a love of humanity – a generous, funny magic that picks up on all that is truly beautiful, even amidst our flaws.
A review of Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
I’ve always found the term ‘experimental literature’ to be unsatisfactory, since it begs so many questions. For a start, what hypothesis is being tested? Then again, how would you know that the experiment – if such it is – has been successful? Only if the hypothesis has been confirmed? Yet what if the experiment had done its job, by providing a rigorous trial?
An interview with Eric Maisel
The author of Mastering Creative Anxiety talks about his latest book, about why creating produces so much anxiety, his best tips for either avoiding, or managing anxiety, how to ‘get a grip on your mind’, the relationship between making meaning and anxiety, and lots more.
A review of Mastering Creative Anxiety by Eric Maisel
If you’re an artist–an author, a painter, a musician or an actor–who has chosen to live a creative life, you can’t avoid anxiety. It’s part of the process, inherent in the work you do. Coming to grips with that anxiety can be the difference between working and not working, which can be the difference between a fulfilled life that has meaning and one that is unsatisfying and meaningless.
A review of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
So Writing Down the Bones isn’t just a guide for writers to write better, it’s a guide for living better and for integrating that life with work that is immensely meaningful. This is a book that will open doors of perception that won’t be closed again when you close the pages.