jwilzewske: November 2012

Friday, November 30, 2012

Tormead School Visit

Just spoke to over 100 sixth-formers at Tormead School in Guildford, and about to leave to do a talk at Bedales School in Petersfield.

Shaun Attwood

Thursday, November 29, 2012

These are guys you have known since the Fall of '81. You rushed with them, went to the games,studied,pulled pranks and pledged. These are the guys with whom you stumbled around "The Hill" on a Friday night hitting 7 of 8 raging fraternity parties and guzzling Old Mil' and Hamm's from 12 ounce cups.You flirted with girls from Cedar Crest at IFC cocktails every Friday afternoon wearing sport coats and khakis and ties. You did road trips and hit Linderman Library, played squash and pinball and "zooled" in the woods behind Chi Phi. You went to class hung-over and crammed for exams. It was a glorious time.

These guys have names from the college days like: Cave, Spike, Schwabey,Beeter, Wighty,Kipper,Divits and Blue. Some of us from different years barely know each other's real names to this day...we sure do not use them if we do. Decades later we immediately fall into the same patterns and banter from the first beer to the 4th quarter. This is Lehigh/Lafayette.

You worked hard and played hard. You graduated. We all come back. When the Lehigh v. Lafayette game is on enemy turf, we leave the wives and kids at home. On game day we angle a tailgate spot on the streets near the stadium in Easton. Once again we are laughing and guzziling beers. The grill is lit, the laughing takes over after the news about families and kids and who did not make it today and why...and how much of a pussy they are for failing to do so.

Sneaking booze and beer into the stadium is an art, a science and a tradition.Note the flask in the Sportsman's mit...a nip of fine Bourbon while watching Lehigh football on a chilly November afternoon.

"Greekers" were cheap hot dogs slathered with chili sauce, onions and mustard sold by little lunch-counter joints in South Bethlehem and available at 3 A.M. after you stumbled out of the Fraternity parties and off "The Hill." So named as a nod by the proprieters to the Fraternity trade that was a constant flow of revenue. At the away games I re-create the "Greeker" for the boys at the tailgate. Always a hit, the fare acts as a utilitarian "beer sponge" for the drinks at the tailgate and the ones smuggled into the stadium and the pitchers consumed at the bar back in Bethlehem after the game.

You and the boys cheer and high five the touchdowns. This is a grudge match game...college football's most played rivalry. You cheer louder than a regular game...you really want a win.This year Lehigh once again triumphed. It was a close game in the 1st half...but the Lehigh boys ran away with it after that.

The Lehigh faithful flood the field at the end of the game. In the old days we rushed the goal posts and tore 'em down. That tradition is best left for another post.

Barton Peveril College Visit

News story about my visit to Barton Peveril College: http://www.wwgazette.co.uk/2012/11/former-convict-tells-students-harsh-jail-life/

Shaun Attwood

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Postcards from T-Bone (2)

How goes it my friends?

Thoughts become words.
Words become actions.
Actions become habits.
Habits become character.
Character becomes destiny.

Pass that on to whoever wants to listen about change.
I will be in England some day.

Each one, teach one. Strength and Honor. Steel embrace.

Students at the T-Bone Appreciation Society, I love you,

T-Bone

Click here to read Postcard 1 from T-Bone: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/postcards-from-t-bone-1.html

Click here to read the the fight story, T-Bone v Scooter: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/12-jun-08-t-bone-v-scooter-t-bone.html

Shaun Attwood

Epping College Forest Visit

For my third year in a row, I was back at Epping Forest College today.

With Glaci

With Jason

With Mollie

Shaun Attwood

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Amber Foundation Visit

Today's news story about my visit to Amber Foundation: http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2124745_troubled_youngsters_learn_from_mans_us_jail_lesson

Shaun Attwood

Thai Lady Boys of Bangkok

I couldn't resist getting on the stage last night with the Thai Lady Boys to get this picture taken to mail to my giant transsexual friend Xena in prison in Arizona. Six of them including the one to my left on the pic look just like female models. The question of the night among my friends was: is it gay to fancy a beautiful woman who used to be a man who no longer has her man parts?

Shaun Attwood

Monday, November 26, 2012

Tiffin Boy's School, London

I did two talks today in Kingston-Upon-Thames.

With Tom and Zack

With Ben and Matt

Shaun Attwood

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Sväng’s Arrangements of Chopin for Harmonica Quartet

W e use a special bass harmonica microphone manufactured by Suzuki. This mic is attached directly to the body of bass harmonica, so it gets really close to the source of the sound. The mic module is as long the instrument, and there are several electric condenser mic capsules in it. The capsules are engineered to have different frequency responses depending on their location in the bass harmonica, according to register. The mic has an built-in preamp operating on battery power. Because the capsules are omni-directional condenser mics, the mic module is very prone to feedback on-stage. It feeds back really easily in the monitors and sometimes also on the main PA. To solve this problem, we use in-ear earbud monitoring and very careful equalization on the bass harp.”
— Sväng.

F or diatonic and chromatic harmonicas, we use handheld Audio Technica ATM350s. The mic is held between player’s left-hand fingers, but there are seldom problems with any handling-related noises. Microvox has its own belt clip preamp with volume control knob.”
— Sväng.

O nly recently I came across Sväng’s 2010 recording of their arrangements of Chopin piano etudes, mazurkas, and polonaises. Sväng—the award-winning harmonica quartet from Finland—was commissioned by the La Folle Journée de Nantes festival to create these arrangements. Eero Grundström and Jouko Kyhälä, two of the group’s members, responded to this challenge with dazzling facility, adapting and orchestrating Chopin in such a way that the ethnic texture and musical intent of the originals are honored and preserved and yet new and interesting possibilities are revealed.

I n much the same manner as Chopin wrote the bulk of his compositions while living on ‘foreign’ soil, so too this work by Sväng feels deeply ‘transnational’.

T he arrangements have the motorics of festival dancing and outlawry, and all the confessional intimacy of close friends. The tuba-like bass lines alternately convey polka-like or gypsy-like feel. We have klezmer/ladino clarinet figures in here, rendered by harmonica with awe-inspiring technique. Story-telling, pneumatic phrasing of free-reeds clasped to emphatic lips, the music hovers between conserving traditional values and surrendering to pressures for assimilation into an alien culture.

T here are sad songs of separation, improvised deployments of non-standard instrumentation in service of musical ideas that hail from another culture. The collection co-opts Chopin, infusing it with Baltic jazz sensibilities.

T he informality of the recordings makes you want to get up and dance and join in song. The arrangements of the mazurkas are all bright and uplifting.

[50-sec clip, Chopin - Mazurka Op. 68/2 arr. Eero Grundström ; (track 1), 2010, 2.4MB MP3]

M ore than anything, the effect is a ‘caravan’ soundscape—like a great kumpania—a nomadic band of families, traveling with horses and sleeping in the rough. The sonic ‘wagons’ in this caravan are elaborately carved and fantastically painted; the outlook of Sväng is heterogeneous, with a strong sense of the whimsical and the absurd.

T he music evokes nostalgia, but nostalgia for what? A return home? No. This is a musical pattern of chronic displacement; of families who have winter digs but are of uncertain origins; of clans who have no permanent place and few possessions. Or maybe you feel a resemblance to the saudades and fatalism of portuguese fado. Or you listen, as you might listen to a ribald uncle telling aphorisms. The fascination in which he holds you derives from his concision, which stuns... and also from his wit, which throws you down. The Disenfranchised and Appropriated become the Appropriators!

T he engineering and production values achieved at Studio Kyhättö do great credit to the arranging and performing on this disc. The sound has great warmth and intimacy, with just enough reverb/chorusing for liveliness. (For harp players who wish to learn about the miking equipment and techniques that Sväng utilizes to such advantage, have a look at their website.)

Schools Tour Blog and Pics

I've been up and down the country in the last week at various schools. I left my laptop at Macclesfield College, crippling my Internet access. On Friday, I drove on an almost 6-hour round trip to Kingswood School in Bath the day before Bath was flooded, and a man drowned. I leave soon for a hotel for my next talk tomorrow.

Winchmore School, London

With Amy and Pat at Macclesfield College

With Jade and Ian at Macclesfield College

With Laura and Akif at Macclesfield College

William Beaumont School, Warrington

With Tia a brilliant reader at Winchmore School

Shaun Attwood

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Thanksgiving Salutations

Dressed in that get-up, I doubt Marilyn would have to do much calling. The birds would flock to her. Well, at least any hunters in the vicinity would be drawn in. It is doubtful that the old hammer gun blunderbuss would be operable so the fetching Pilgrim would have to rely on wit to fend off the camo'd suitors.

Here is wishing fellow bloggers a fine day and a fine feast. Enjoy your family and friends. Buck season opens here in PA on Monday so be safe. I have to be in court Monday so I will defer deer hunting until later in the week. If the weather is not 60 and sunny on Friday I will be in the duck blind. If it is a "blue-bird" day I will shoot some clays and train the dog rather than just taking the decoys for a ride. In the meantime, dinner for 12 tomorrow and a 17 lb free range to brine and roast. Cheers!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

William Beamont Community High School and Specialist Sports College, Warrington

Great reception in Warrington today, where I spoke to Years 10 and 11.

With Callum and Holly

Shaun Attwood

Monday, November 19, 2012

Question Time

Hi there Shaun,

I was at your talk at my college, and I have to say it hit a spot with me as I suffered from drug abuse years ago. When I was 17, my father died and I went off the rails, and ended up living with a girl in Manchester and all her friends who were much older than me, and was peer pressured into taking heroin, which I ended up addicted too. For a good while, I was binge drinking and shooting up and not spending money on food, and lost about 5 stone in weight. My family disowned me as I was always taking money, and I just become a shell of my former self. I hit my lowest point when I was stealing beer from shops and was with a group of my ex-girlfriends friends when they attacked a take away delivery driver with a knife, who was injured. Before I knew it, the police broke down the door and I was arrested for attempted murder, as they blamed it on me, and I took the blame for it. Eventually I gave a statement of what really happened, and was set free from the cells, but had to rebuild my life from there. I never took heroin again, but I suffered so much, and I suffered alone as I didn’t tell anyone I was a heroin addict. Now I’m 22 and I live with my partner and two kids and study media at college. My family speak to me again and forgive me, but I still suffer from withdrawal symptoms sometimes and have horrendously bad nightmares about that time. It was nice to hear your story as I could relate to it and it was nice to see I’m not the only person to make mistakes, and it showed me how lucky I am to avoid more serious consequences. I do have a question though. Do you still suffer from memories of your incarceration and drug abuse, and if so how do you cope with them?

Thank you for the talk again!

Tom

My response:

Thanks for sharing your story, Tom, which moved me deeply. Sometimes things happen in life that send us off the rails, but you’re back on track now, and that’s what’s important. You’ve emerged from the other side a much stronger and wiser person, and you still have most of your life ahead of you. It’s great that you’re in college, and channelling your energy into education.

Yes, I do suffer memories and nightmares. I shudder when I think about some of the dangerous situations I put myself in while high on drugs, but I can’t change the past. I can only make the most of the future. To cope, I use yoga as therapy. I wrote a blog about it right here:

http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/questiontime-yoga-for-prison-recovery.html

I do a lot of exercise and keep myself busy all of the time. I’ve learnt to channel my energy into the right things. I really enjoy speaking to young people and writing books, so I consider myself lucky that I’m doing what makes me happy. After going through Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail system, I try to live each day with a smile on my face no matter what happens to me.

Good luck in life my friend!

Shaun Attwood

Click here for the previous Question Time: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/question-time.html

Saturday, November 17, 2012

DiDonato, Sinkovsky, Il Complesso Barocco Bring Down the House

W e singers tend to boast that our careers offer the best form of psychotherapy in existence, for we are allowed to work out the bulk of our inner demons courtesy of the larger-than-life drama queens we encounter on the stage—divine ladies who weep, love, moan, and avenge more grandly and stylishly than in any other art form.”
— Joyce DiDonato, 2012.

T he Joyce DiDonato/Dmitry Sinkovsky/Il Complesso Barocco performance last night in the Harriman-Jewell Series was really phenomenal. Many extraordinary, seldom-heard works by lesser-known Baroque composers, like Antonio Cesti (1623-1669), Geminiano Giacomelli (1692-1740), Giuseppe Orlandini (1676-1760), and Giovanni Porta (1675-1755). Extraordinarily dramatic and vivid vocal and instrumental interpretations. Extraordinarily tight and responsive interactions between the ensemble members and Ms. DiDonato throughout.

A scending cadences, each with the forte dynamic they require, imparting a strong sense of closure. Descending cadences to pianissimo, imparting a sense of sorrow with aspiration. The sort of gestures that Hatten once characterized as “yearning” (see links below).

F ormalized emotion—a dialectic of ‘drama queens’—DiDonato rations her body movement, reserves it mostly for recitative passages, while her body is relatively still during arias: her regal rhetoric is well-suited to these stories of queens and princesses. The arias ‘frame’ the dramatic recitatives, not the other way round (that is, ‘decorative’ arias, see Taruskin, p. 25).

M ost online reviews from performances on their current tour do focus, understandably, on Ms. DiDonato’s singing. But, my God, this ensemble! Gorgeous! And, my God, Sinkovsky! Prodigious!

W hat strings is Dmitry Sinkovsky playing!!? Silver-plated, copper on gut? Pirastro Eudoxa? Chorda? Sensuous with a glint, a sound that is a perfect match for DiDonato's rich mezzo-soprano voice!

T he wound G-string was common on violins in the 18th century. Beyond 1840 and already far beyond plain gut strings, composers were writing things that were, essentially, only playable with a wound G string. With modern strings, we’d lose this rich, complex sound of very thick gut strings. We’d lose the consort timbre within the violin family. We’d lose the diversity of articulation, and we’d lose subtleties of this 17th and 18th Century sonic architecture.

T o a software engineer like me, the musical score is an object-oriented ‘method’, procedural code executed on an instance of an object-class that may or may not grant all of the behaviors specified by the arguments passed to it. But Dmitry Sinkovsky and Il Complesso Barocco accomodate all args, all flavors!

T he range of Dmitry Sinkovsky’s articulation is especially interesting, because it allows him to imitate the singer’s diction, with diverse ‘consonants’ beginning each violin-syllable (or bow stroke) and diverse glottal and quasi-labial and -dental and -fricative sounds to match each of DiDonato’s vocal gestures. Through the centuries, the imitation of the human voice has always been an ardently sought goal for instrumentalists. Sinkovsky totally owns this! (He has even mastered American folk-fiddlish, jiggy “hoe-down” technic, which he improvised to humorous effect at DiDonato’s prompting for one of her encores, to the raucous delight of her hometown Kansas City audience!)

S inkovsky’s pulsatile, fluid bow-and-whole-body gestures, dance-like, match DiDonato’s operatic arms-and-whole-body gestures. Sinkovsky’s bow stroke is Transitional Period? Russian? Energized ‘non-legato’, at any rate! Because of the ‘give’ of the bowhair, the bow does not emit full sound immediately at the onset of the stroke, but only after some pressure has been exerted and some bow excursion has occurred—the momentary softness followed by a crescendo in each stroke.

H e plays fast passages with energy abounding but with still a roundness to his sound and supple articulations. A player trained in a modern, pressure-on-the-bowstick style feels immediately that baroque bow does not give the attack of a modern bow—it’s more from the wrist and fingers. But Sinkovsky’s Baroque bow attack is astonishingly sharp—more so maybe than would be achieved with a modern bow. Our jaws were agog for 2 hours in gob-smacked amazement.

A re these tempi faster than normal, or are we just glad to see you all? Was the room hot, or was it just you? :)

N ext up for these artists is Carnegie Hall tomorrow.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Random Acts of Spirit

One of the things I always liked about the week leading up to the Lehigh v. Lafayette game was the campus-wide atmosphere of school spirit. Here we see a "flash-mob" type spirit disply. A contingent of Lehigh's band...The Marching 97....barges into a classroom and starts a rousing,brassy,blaring rendition of the Lehigh fight song. From the stuff on the chalkboard it seems this is an engineering class or some other highly technical stuff way above the sportsman's pay grade...so the effort may have been lost on the two Asian kids in the front row who plan to spend game day accelerating a particle or some shit.

Nevertheless, the tone on campus was and is always ramped up. There are still bonfires and attempts to deface the opposing school statues and sunrise cocktails on the morning of the game. The fraternities rent buses to hit the away games and I have fond (but episodic) memories of washing down stale donuts with 101 proof Wild Turkey at 8:30 A.M in the back of the bus with the boys on the way over to Easton.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Skills

The Sportsman Channel circulates some great stuff. This list of skills can be honed in a duck blind, on a deer stand or walking a cornfield. These are all things I hope my son aquires during the time I spend hunting with him...whether they come from me or just from the experince. This is just one more reason to pass on the rituals and traditions of hunting.

Connaught School Visit in Aldershot

Just got back from Connaught School. Every so often the students go wild, and it happened tonight. I don't mean wild as in feral. I mean feel-the-love wild. I ended up staying behind for 1 1/2 hours after the talk ended answering questions, getting pics taken with students, and signing books and scraps of paper. I drove home with a big smile, and I'm still smiling now thanks to all of the feedback coming in on my Twitter feed.

With Tilly and James, brilliant readers

Shaun Attwood

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Experiencing ‘Map of Rain Hitting Water’ in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

W   hen at last Justine arrives, he’s at the piano
     the hammers strike and rise
with his fingers, and the pedal’s damp
   shifting carries through the instrument
as waves echo through the frame of a ship...
Now he thinks perhaps the music’s
More like a map of rain hitting water—
He’s moving closer to her without moving;
And how wonderful to be held from her
   at last by nothing but the song's duration—”
  — Wayne Miller, ’What Night says to the Empty Boat’, p. 73.

I ’d first listened to Mara Gibson's new 16:30 work commissioned by Mark Lowry of newEar Contemporary Music Ensemble in July. The DVD has Mark performing vibraphone, log drum, woodblock, gong, tam-tam, songbird whistle, cymbal, and miscellaneous percussion, accompanied by video imagery and film by Caitlin Horsmon. Bob Beck rendered a high level of engineering and production values achieved in this recording.

T he beauty of the chromatic intoning of vibraphone, punctuated by tolling woodblock, drum, and, less frequently, other instruments captured my interest from the first listening. The glisses and pitch-bent post-processed sounds of the vibraphone acoustically paralleled the imagery, the lateral motion of water in the foreground and in the distance; the water droplets in air, falling under gravity in parabolic arcs; the globules of water separating from a stream; the intercalating pastel cloud layers.

B ut now several months later—having just last week returned to the midwest after a period at our home on the East Coast, and having driven through some of the areas of hurricane-caused power outages and natural devastation—these textures and narrative arcs of ‘Map of Rain Hitting Water’ evoke different meanings for me. The watery surfaces now seem ominous and obscure what lies beneath.

T he reflections imply sky and sun, but these seem untrustworthy. The eddies and vortices imply structure and hidden currents, turbulence: the violence and indifference of Nature to humanity.

T he speed of the current makes abundantly clear how rapidly we will be swept away, annihilated, pointlessly. The accelerando/ritardando phrasing imparts a large-scale 2+ minute hypermeter to the piece.

N o animals or other sentient creatures are seen anywhere in Horsmon’s imagery here... bulk matter only, liquid and air. The abruptly changing frame-rate... declares a capriciousness of our frame of perception, together with Nature’s propensity to precipitous, emergent change, against which our human wishes and needs are respectively futile and irrelevant.

T here is midway through the film a montage of stop-action stills, with different transparency/saturation settings, calling into question what is motion. It brings to mind horror film sequences built up out of successions of freeze-frame stills.

T he very high-speed video of the water droplets, together with digitally-stretched contrast and/or edge-sharpening, gives heightened perception of the separateness of the individual [droplets].

W e have here a sort of ‘video-monitor-as-painter’s-canvas’ effect... a palimpsest of successive masks and over-writing of previous images and surfaces.

T he film draws our attention to the very thinness and 2-D nature of our existence in the biosphere, between the sky and the depths of water.

I n fact, most of the film is of deep water: the first 5:45 is sky; second 6:00 is water; third 4:45 is water hurled into sky—with gradual transitions between these segments.

T he piece conveys feelings of loneliness and alienation that arise from our understanding that we are alone in the universe and insignificant in its workings. Underneath the performer’s punctuated observations and soliloquy about fate and the stream of events that occupies our attention while we are alive is a certain forboding, a fear of nothingness.

T hat we are in some inescapable way alienated from Nature is an old concept, going back at least to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th Century. It is also a notion that coheres with our current environmental problems, insofar as our estrangement from Nature involves a hubris that forecloses upon developing an awareness and regard for how we depend upon Nature, in such a way that we would stop harming Nature.

R elinquishing whatever agency I have in the presence of the bulk matter around me reveals my beholdenness to the agency of other humans who are living now and who will take care of me in my dying days and who will outlive me, and the susceptibility of my remains and the residue of my life’s work to the agency of all creatures and natural processes that persist beyond my tiny lifetime.

T he harsh contrast and unblinking lens of the camera—together with the continuous, unflinching sound of the music—announce the abject hopelessness of our achieving any anonymity in the flesh, or participating in any genuine reciprocity with Nature.

S uch existential worries are absent when reciprocal trans-corporeality involves the definitely spiritual, or “more than human”, or involves an ambiguity or reversibility afforded by the hardly-human-at-all, or as-minimally-human-as-possible, as in Wilderness or Zombieness.

O ne can make some sense then of this piece’s assertion that we might be estranged from the flesh without that meaning either that such estrangement puts us really outside the flesh, or that landscapes including sky and water are themselves not fleshy. We are estranged, every bit as much as sky and water are patently fleshy.

T his is a superb composition, an excellent film, a beautiful performance, an excellent recording—sufficient to propel an evening’s meditation and beyond.