Sunday, February 28, 2010

Disaster and Disappointment


You may recall in a prior post I advised that the Welterweight Boxer that I manage was slated for a 6 round bout on 2/26/2010. Everything was set. The trainer stated that Rick was in top shape, the opponent was a good match, we had studied film on him and his style,the tickets were sold, we attended a pre-fight press comference on Monday 2/22/10, the Promoter was happy and team Hitman was psyched.
Unfortunately, some miscreant dung-heap of a motorist decided to run a stop sign Tuesday evening in South West Philly. Generally, I am ambivalent to some driving infraction in a part of the City I rarely frequent. On this occasion however,said negligent asshole motorist hit my fighter. Rick was out doing his roadwork...and as he jogged he was the victim of a hit and run. Suffice it to say that the injuries he suffered required that we scrtach him from Friday's fight. Rick spent most of Wednesday morning at Univ.of Penn Emergency room. He suffered a shoulder injury, a low back strain and various bruises and scrapes. The offending driver fled the scene.
Rick is despondent . I am worried and furious and the Trainer is appoplectic. The Promoter was understanding yet very disappointed. The Police could care less about another young Black kid getting hit by a car.
The local boxing beat writer for the Daily News caught the story and will do an article about Rick, his career and this incident. Perhaps with some public exposure the offending jack ass may be apprehended.
Hopefully, the injuries will mend and we have Rick set up for an exam with a top orthopedist here in Philadelphia tomorrow. His next scheduled fight is 4/2 and then 4/28 and God willing he is recovered and ready to go.
Can you believe this crap...just awful for all involved.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Idealized, Totemic Love: Godfrey Winham and Bethany Beardslee before the Age of AutoTune

 Godfrey Winham and Bethany Beardslee, 1955
L    et me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not Love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no!

It is an ever fixèd Mark
That looks on tempests, never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring barque,
Whose worth’s unknown though His height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within His bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with His brief hours and weeks,
Love bears it out to the edge of Doom.

If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ nor no man [or woman] ever lov’d.”
  —  William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI.
L isten to this excerpt:


    [50-sec clip, Bethany Beardslee & Robert Helps, Godfrey Winham, ‘To Prove My Love’, III, 1974, 1.6MB MP3]

O ver the past month I have been reading Leslie Blasius’s 1997 monograph on Godfrey Winham (link below), especially passages about Winham’s composition for soprano and string quartet, ‘Habit of Perfection’.

D uring this month I have also been listening and re-listening to the CRI disc, ‘Tribute to Bethany Beardslee’, who was Godfrey’s wife. The disc contains a recording of Bethany singing Winham’s composition, ‘To Prove My Love’, accompanied by Robert Helps on piano.

T he piece is published by Boelke-Bomart Inc in Hillsdale, New York, but the score for it was originally published in memoriam, in volume 13 (1975) of the journal, Perspectives of New Music, immediately after Winham’s death.

T he phrasing and perfection of the intervals that Beardslee sings are amazing. The voice-leading that Winham wrote for her is tight-rope like—no, more like virtuosic, risky ballet “choreography” for the voice.

L ove bears it out to the edge of Doom, as Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 has it.

W hat were these three sonnets—to Godfrey; to Bethany? The piece was composed during the first several years of their marriage, but on this recording it is performed when they had been married 19 years, still in their 40s, near the end of Godfrey’s long illness, youthful but within a few months of his dying and aged way beyond their years...

T here is a maturity and expressive clarity of Beardslee’s and Helps’s performance that poignantly manifests the vulnerability of the soprano wife gazing into the abyss of her husband’s fast-approaching terminal phase. It simultaneously bears the marks of bravery and devotion, defiant strength and tragic fragility. Frailty with advancing illness. Glenn Gould’s last recordings of the Goldberg Variations in 1981, compared to the ones from 1955? Well, no.

O r Johnny Cash’s last recordings? No, but still.

W    hen we first went back and listened to the recordings after he had passed, it really just felt like this voice, coming back from another ‘place’. It had all this weight and gravity to it. Scary. You can hear good days and bad days in the voice. Sometimes, it’s weak—as if Cash were struggling for breath. Other times it’s stronger.”
  —  Rick Rubin, interview with David Bauder on new Cash CD.
W inham’s frailty and inner strength, projected vicariously through the piano part that Robert Helps executes beautifully. We suspect that ‘bearing it out to the edge of Doom’ meant something a bit different in June, 1974, when the piece was recorded than it meant in 1956 when the piece was composed. In 1974, Doom was plainly visible.

A  lapse in sense happens between the twelfth and thirteenth lines of the sonnet. Most of the words are monosyllables; only three contain more syllables than two. Poetic diction is ruptured. The language is now concrete, not abstract or metaphysical. There are run-on lines and the pair of double-endings. There is, as Brooke put it, “a happy blending of open and closed vowels, and of liquids, nasals, and stops.” No Antares AutoTune® or vocoder processing. Only human pitch-shifting and formant correction that defies the impermanence of the flesh. The res-o-lute, fixèd accents in the quatrains give way finally to progressively more vulnerable, unrelieved iambic feet—ones that accept the reality of the soul stuck in the unreliable flesh. The thing converges on silence and ends. The ending is a meditative silence, a ‘hanging’ sonic [non-]event. Runic, millennial, catastrophic.

W    hat is needed is a definition of ‘hanging’ which makes use of the notion of ‘effective context’, with the result that a tone is not ‘hanging’ before it occurs. An event x may be said to be ‘effective’ at the time of an event y if and only if x belongs to the effective context of y. An event x may be said to be ‘closed-off’ from y if it is subordinate to another sonic event z which occurs between x and y in time. An event x is ‘hanging’ at the time of an event y if it belongs to the effective context of y and is not closed-off from y, although there is a superior stage at which it is closed-off from y.”
  —  Godfrey Winham writings, Container VIII, page *26d.
L istening to the piece over and over, I sense a sort of adult willfulness that is out-of-sync with an inner childlike sense of reality. The complex personality who wrote such complex, chaotic music theory, all stored in 6.7 linear feet in the Princeton University Library in 16 archival boxes of cross-indexed papers and notebooks... still had this child inside, who was true and who hoped for everything. Who loved these sonnets, not as worthy artistic vehicles for creating prestigious, commendable academic compositions, but as totems erected to honor a love that defined him. Standing stones.

“Will Bethany be able to do this? Will I be able to do this?”

C hords with more upper structure notes, sounding more active compared to ones with more basic chord tones, which become points of resolution. Idiomatic and fluent writing; the beginning of each movement asks a question and so drives our interest; natural flow to focal points and climaxes; appropriate and sensitive realization of the text; effective and resourceful use of texture, with many imaginative challenges. This is the composer who in the 1960s imagined elegant computer-synthesized soprano voice, long before the technology could fulfill the fantasy. This is the soprano who could sing whatever notes are on the page, the fantasy who inspired the composer’s imagination.

M ost people don’t think of Winham as a contrapuntist, and it is true that one does not find much in the way of imitative counterpoint in his music. He never composed any fugues, and there are not many canons by Winham. However it can, and should, be said that Winham’s counterpoint is exquisite.

L eslie David Blasius is currently Professor of Music Theory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His book includes a set of complete excerpts of materials and an index for the entire Winham archive, which is housed at Princeton University. The book also contains a series of photographs, of Godfrey and Bethany and friends (including the one above).

T o read Blasius’s book and to listen to this CD is to wish to have known these wonderful human beings. I will plan to visit the 6.7 linear feet of Winham boxes the next time I am in Princeton...


H    ow can you make a new revolution when your last statement already said that anything goes?”
  —  Charles Wuorinen.



Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Lacrosse Season




Despite the tons of snow still on the ground...Lacrosse Season is upon me. That means I had to spend nearly 7 hours this weekend doing player evaluations for our local youth league: Ashbee Lacrosse. Ashbee is a very well run organization that provides teams and league play for boys from 4th to 8th grade. I have been Coaching a team the last several years and this year will take the helm of a 7th/8th grade team. This means 2 practices per week and games on weekends as well as travel to a few tournaments. It also means dealing with logistics, the random whiny kid and the officious meddling Parent. The latter are the worst...villifying the coach for not giving their kid enough time on the field...regardless of whether the kid shows up for practice or has a bad attitude . I have had a few bad experiences with parents but these are outweighed and overshadowed by the sheer fun of being involved with the great game of Lacrosse and some really wonderful kids. Having played the game for many years myself I find it rewarding to help teach these kids and see them have fun and compete. Further, my son plays attack and nothing beats the explosion of pride I experience when he scores a goal or makes a great pass to another kid who scores. So, I am prepared for another great season and will hopefully have some good pictures and reports of thrilling victories as we get underway.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Marc-André Hamelin: Alkan Unlocked

W    hat is left is a very simple, straight-forward and honest voice, a voice that is at the heart of the music and that listeners seem able to respond to instantly. When it comes down to it, what makes Alkan’s music so attractive to listeners is not the virtuosity of the piano writing, though that can be exciting, nor the cleverness of the construction, though that might be impressive. No, what grips listeners is the sheer passion of Alkan’s music and the strength of his musical personality.”
  —  Jack Gibbons, 2002.
I    ’m becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous: nothing worthwhile, good or useful to do; no one to devote myself to. My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can’t see any point or goal.”
  —  Charles-Valentin Alkan, letter to Ferdinand Hiller, 1861.
 Marc-André Hamelin, (c) Fran Kaufman

T he performance by Marc-André Hamelin in Kansas City last night as part of the Harriman-Jewell Series was animated and inspiring throughout. I particularly admired the Alkan ‘12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs Op. 39, Nos. 4-7’.

I n making sense of this challenging piece, I find it helpful to read Stephanie McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Keyboard at Sydney Conservatorium, University of Sydney, who gave a paper at the 2007 Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference, entitled ‘Alkan: Enigma or Schizophrenia?’

A lkan withdrew from public life at age 24, and, according to McCallum, Alkan’s subsequent correspondence (200+ letters) provides clear indications of the onset of severe mental illness. McCallum considers evidence for schizophrenia, for Asperger Syndrome, and for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder—with considerable support for the latter... compulsive washing, ritualized avoidance of touching surfaces, refusal to go out of his house, fear of contaminated food, etc.

D espite his private agonies, Alkan in his reclusive years was highly creative. He produced some of the most fantastical, large-scale and virtuosic music of all piano literature. He often displays a preference for long passages of rhythmic and textural patterns, including sequences which set up clashing dissonances. Although these things are frequent in music generally, Alkan takes them to extremes and often to unnerving [melo-]dramatic effect.

E xamples include extended passages of tremolando-like rapidly repeated notes in the left hand and wave-like rolling patterns where the pianist’s hands are like animals roaming the keyboard and the fingers are like animals’ legs—given to primal reflexive impulsions and unspeakable predatory aims.

H amelin captures the erratic, reiterative, relentless, bombastic qualities of these Etudes perfectly—reanimating the unusual personality who composed them. As an encore, Hamelin performed a jewel-like Nocturne of his own composition—a piece that itself embodies ambiguities and moment-to-moment alteration of mood, dissonances, and impromptu trajectory, not unlike the Alkan etudes.


    [50-sec clip, Marc-André Hamelin, C-V Alkan, 12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39, No. 9, Adagio, 1.6MB MP3]


    [50-sec clip, Marc-André Hamelin, C-V Alkan, 12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39, No. 10, Allegretto, 1.6MB MP3]

T hese are miniature worlds full of drama, excitement, color and terror!

C uriously, Alkan’s death involved a bookcase in his home, toppling over and crushing him as he was reaching for a book on a high shelf. Bad things happen, as it turns out, even to people who are delusional or paranoid.


 Alkan in top hat, standing, superstitiously refusing to look at photographer



Tuesday, February 16, 2010

NBC= Noticeably Bogus Coverage



I am still seething with anger. NBC did an appallingly bad job of covering the Olympic Men's Downhill last nite. First, the event was run at Whistler at about 2:45 p.m. PST. There is no reason why it could not have been shown live in near entirety on various NBC affiliates here on the East Coast at 5:45 EST. But no, the greedy swine at NBC had to hold out for an abbreviated prime time presentation of this exciting Winter Olympic spectacle of althletic ability and sheer balls.
So, at around 8 p.m. EST we see Bob Costas with his bad dye job and silly gas fireplace tell us the Downhill coverage is coming. However, all we get is a few of the runs by the medal winners and a few others..... about 6 or 7 runs total. Granted, it was exciting to see Bode Miller win the Bronze (only if one was hyper-vigilant in NOT discovering who won before the broadcast either on Net or other medium.)Yet it is inexplicable why NBC would show so few of the more than 55 competitors in the premiere event. Certainly they need not have shown all the runs...but they absolutley should have televised more. To further this fan's outrage, NBC cut to a piece about Polar Bears after the skiing coverage was complete. Now, I like Polar Bears as much as the next guy...but if I want to see Polar Bears on T.V. I can bloody well tune in Animal Planet. The damn Polar Bear piece has no business cutting off coverage of The Downhill and the witless NBC wanker who greenlighted such an astoundingly poor scheduling move deserves to be sacked.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Book Review


So my readers do not think it is all guns and booze over here, today's post is on a book I recently finished. Yes, Sportsmen do read things other than the Racing Form and Grey's Sporting Journal.
The book is "One Second After." It is a detailed account of what happens to a small town in North Carolina after an Electro-Magnetic-Pulse( EMP) completely fries the entire power grid on the Eastern Seaboard. It is a well written first person account of the hardship and horrors caused by a shut down of all electrical systems: phones, computers,cars,radios,generators,refrigeration,water purification etc. EMP is the by- product of a nuclear explosion and is a very real threat to our sophisticated systems and our electricity reliant society. The book is both entertaining,disturbing and thought provoking...and be forwarned...you may feel the need to stockpile canned goods, bottled water and medicine after you finish the book.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Memorable Night


One of the solemn responsibilties of being a Father is spending time with your Children. Your kids do not really want stuff...they want your time. This weekend was a great expenditure of same with my Son. His 13th Birthday was last week. He wanted to take some of his buddies to the Boxing Matches. I secured a limousine and tickets and we went to The Legendary Blue Horizon for a night of pugilistic spectation. We made a stop at Jim's Steaks on South Street for cheesesteaks and then to the "Blue."
We had seats 1 row off ringside( when you sit too close you get splattered with spit and sweat.)
We watched some excellent fights and saw some stunning knockouts. My son and his buddies loved the night. However, the pinnacle of the evening came when I had a chance to get the kids photographed with "Fast Eddie" Chambers. Chambers is the next World Champion Heavyweight challenger..he is slated to fight Vladimir Klitschko in March. The picture is featured above.
Being a manager I know most of the Players in the local fight game so I was able to arrange this photo-op when Chambers arrived. The kids were in awe...of Chambers..and I think somewhat of me as well since I knew him and his trainer and manager and was able to get the shot. So, I could have simply bought my kid some expensive present..instead I spent the time with him and hopefully created a lasting memory. One can only hope that when he is a father himself,and perhaps long after I am gone, he will have a great memory of a night with his old man when he met "The Champ"...now if fast Eddie can only win the Title...that is subject for another post.
By the way...my son is the handsome young man front and center in the photo.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

2010 Olympic Winter Games






In just over one week the Winter Olympic games will commence in British Columbia. My wife and I took the kids to Salt Lake for the Winter Games in 2002 and had planned on going this year as well. Things did not work out and we will be watching them on TV like the rest of you.
This writer believes that the Winter Olympics are the more exciting of the two Seasonal games ...why? Well name me an event in the Summer Games in which you could easily be killed...in the Winter games there are several. It is this risk and speed that makes for such great Sport and spectating. For our US team, Lindsey Vonn will certainly be the media darling and has real chances for medals in more than 1 event. Bode Miller, the iconoclastic son of New England Hippies and an serious skier...will try again for Alpine Gold after a bad showing in Italy in 2006 and only a Silver in Down Hill Combined in Utah in 2002 (Which we witnessed in front row seats!)
We can all watch the break neck speeds of 2 and 4 man Bobsleds as well as K-90 Ski Jumps, the grace and artistry of skating, the excellent hockey on international size rinks. It really is inspiring to see these athletes from all over the World competing on an International stage for personal and National glory. So,for two weeks this Winter we can watch something really special each evening in the realm of Winter Sports! Go USA!!!

Monday, February 1, 2010

End of the Season




Saturday was the final day of waterfowl season in Delaware. As is our Club tradition, we held a Continental/Release Shoot and lunch for members and guests.
In the morning, several members, including myself, ventured out in frigid weather to the Duck Blinds to hunt ducks.Nothing like going out in a boat in 15 degree weather, in the dark, to set out the decoys.
At 11:00 a.m. 19 guns headed to the field for the Continental Shoot. Just as we marshalled for the shoot it began to snow. The snow got heavier throughout the shoot and made for some adverse conditions for both dog and shooter. Nevertheless, we all had good fun and good shooting.
After the Shoot, we retired to the Clubhouse for a splendid buffet of steaming hot pulled pork sandwiches, Texas style brisket, smoked kielbasa, corn bread and greens...all washed down with good beer and whiskey. The crew included members,friends, guests, daughters and sons, and everyone enjoyed the sport and the camraderie.
It is depressing when the season ends...although Snow Goose is still open and we plan to get in at least one hunt for those "sky-carp." Now we look forward to the opening of Dove Season in September with fishing and other outdoor pursuits keeping us occupied for the next several months. As for me, that includes the start of Lacrosse season and my Coaching duties as well as the Spring Steeplechase Season.