Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Summer of '89


Bridge avenue and the Beach, Bay Head, New Jersey. A Summer evening at "The Bridge Avenue House" or "The Castle" as some locals called this clapboard and turreted monstrosity. This Beach House was rented by a group of late 20's Manhattan money guys and some girls. This joint had countless bedrooms and always bunked a plethora of North-East maniacs.Several were from my cadre of Lehigh beer swilling pals and so I was often invited for a weekend to sit on the beach all day and pound cocktails all night. We drank at the Bluffs...(now sadly ripped down and replaced by ostentatious beach Mc-Mansions.) We ate at Spike's Sea Food, we fished from boat and beach and we slummed at Martell's Tiki Bar in Point Pleasant.
This photo dates to July 1989 and one of the huge evening post beach parties we threw. Single guys scoured the beach all day to invite affable vixens and more Lehigh ne'er-do-wells and sports showed up from all over. The Supremes and Smokey, Stones and Dead mixed with the crash of waves and the banter of Frat boy flirting and liquor fueled good natured insults and invective.
I am pictured wearing a vintage madras sport coat and standing alongside my particular friend Wighty. He is sporting a subdued striped number harkening back to Henley coats. The kegs had just been tapped and the crowd was trickling in...one of the girlfriends of one of the guys grabbed us for this photo.
Wight and I met at a Lehigh Pi Lam party when he was a Sophmore and I was a lowly Freshman....been buddies ever since that moment. He was a groomsmen at my wedding and my kids call him "Uncle Wighty." He is the guy who turned me on to white bucks...Dexters..."Touch, the girls love 'em...screw what guys say." We have bet pitch by pitch at a Phillies Pennant game,discussed Hemingway,skiied Aspen,shot birds and cheered at the Indy 500. He is one of the best.
Note the ubiquitous 9 oz. plastic cups grasped in our greedy hands....Mount Gay & Tonic if memory serves...and memory was tattered with a fusilade of drink and other diversions that night.
Bay Head town ordinance closed these gigs down by 10 p.m. But damn, around 7 to 8:30 we had at least 300 party guests comprised of tanned lovelies and sport-coated guys and 3 kegs of beer, and open bar with cheap A-Treat mixers and maybe one bag of pretzels. The buzz was delicious and the girls had no last names.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Back To Boxing


Attention Fight fans....Ardrick Butler, the Welterweight I manage,is slated to return to the ring July 29th,2011 at the Arena in South Philly. We had hoped to have him busy this past weekend but the matchmaker was not cooperative regarding opponents...so we declined. Ardrick has been training diligently and is poised for an explosive outing. If any of the cadre out there in Blogo-land wants to attend...e-mail me for details and tickets. If you need incentive, just check out Brohamas blog post about the enjoyable night he shared with the boys and I.
There really is nothing like attending the fights... a true Sportsman's evening!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

One Season Ends and Another Begins




Last weekend signaled the end of my son's Ashbee Lacrosse team season. This photo of our team(minus several players who did not make the tourney or bugged out already) is after our last game at the Annapolis Father's day Invitational. Our team went 2 for 2 on the weekend and my son scored 4 goals. I was damn proud. As you know from my prior posts, I played the game for many years....as a defenseman. To watch my boy play attack and smoke a shot passed a goalie for a score is a particular thrill for me that just makes me practically levitate with pride and happiness.
The bittersweet aspect of this tournament was that it likely was my last stint as a coach. I was an Assitant Coach this year and enjoyed not having to deal with the time and effort associated with the Head Coach job. Now that my son is going to 9th grade, he cannot play Ashbee Lacrosse and hence I will not coach. It has been great to coach this sport that I love. I was privileged to know some great and talented kids, some great coaches and parents ( and some not so great parents) and see some excellent games from up close and from the inside.
Even though Ashbee is over, my son is now playing for the Summer on a Tournament team called "Philly Fever" Lacrosse. This team is a select group and has a ton of talent. The head coach is one of the Haverford School Lacrosse Assistant Coaches. As I posted before, Haverford is the number one High School Lacrosse team in the Nation...so it is a real treat for my kid to be on this team and learn and be coached by talented guys. We attended the Summer Slam tournament this weekend and our kids did great. They made it to the Semi-Finals and only lost by one goal to miss going to the final. They went 4-1 and I got to see some really good lacrosse both Saturday and Sunday and my kid had a blast being part of it....which is really the whole point.

Friday, June 24, 2011

More Junior Sportswomen


As I swelter on the streets of Philadelphia walking from my garage to the office, an e-mail is forwarded by my wife. Yesterday was middle daughter's 16th Birthday and her Counselor sent this photo from Camp. My daughter is in Virginia at riding camp for 5 weeks. It is one of her favorite places on the Planet next to the Adirondacks...30 girls...35 horses...800 acre farm, pool and pond, horse shows and drive ins, roller rink and flirting with the townie boys at the lake. She left while I was in Annapolis at the Lacrosse tournament and we were both sad about that. But she sure looks happy in this photo. Her cabin was giving her a huge choclate cake after dinner and then all 30 campers plus staff will sing.She is has become a knowledable, skilled and dedicated equestrian...and now advises she wants to be a large animal Vet and is fashioning her potential college choices accordingly...at least for now. That is a hard path but if anyone can do it she can...
I miss her but I am certainly glad she is enjoying her Summer and not suffering like me....sweating thru my Poplin suit walking back from the Courthouse or from the Garage.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

etta james I'd Rather Go Blind


A couple that are dear friends of my wife and I are splitting up. Whenever I hear of divorce and infidelity in our circle of friends I invariably think of the pain experienced by the individuals. When I think of this angst and heartbreak, Etta's soulful and haunting song comes to mind. Seperation and Divorce is a tribulation for all involved and visits terrible emotional trauma on the children in most cases.
My ardent hope is that this struggling family can perservere and find the strength to cope with the legion of problems on the horizon.

Processionals: Repetitions, Situational Minimalism, and Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’

CCM Brass Quintet
T   he kind of learning that will define the 21st Century is not taking place in a classroom. Rather, it is happening all around us, everywhere. We call this the new culture of learning... a fluid infrastructure where everything is constantly creating and responding to change... This new type of learning process is a cultural phenomenon that underlies a large number of people’s experiences and affects them in myriad ways. It takes place without teachers, without classrooms, and it requires [virtual, networked] environments that are bounded yet provide complete freedom of action within those boundaries.”
  — Douglas Thomas & John Seely Brown.
F   arewell, the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality—
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!”
  —  Shakespeare, Othello, Act III, Scene III.
T here is a big challenge in shaping the performance, vamping as it must for an indeterminate length of time while the procession continues.

T he CCM Brass Quintet did an admirable job sustaining audience interest throughout, projecting every note with the necessary dignity and authority. They varied the dynamics, softer to convey an intimate feeling while still staying audible in the large arena, louder to convey more pomp and aggrandizement. They varied the instrumentation, the round timbre of lower brass to convey a magisterial attitude, the bright timbre of high brass to convey heraldic progress.

CCM Brass QuintetT he physical stamina required for what can be a very long performance is considerable, a gauntlet made all the more risky to run insofar as there are only five of you (or 4 at a time, if trumpets are alternating). The thing then amounts to a 20-min quartet or, in some passages, amounts to a trio or duet ordeal, depending on the arrangement.

W hen you are repeating and repeating the same short passage for 20+ minutes, there is a natural temptation to embark on small improvisations or decorate some figures a little. Somewhat like turning a word over and over in your mind until it looks nonsensical or silly, or until finally you wonder how the word was ever coined or came to be associated with the thing it names ... tangelo, tan-gelo, tan-ge-lo, tange-lo... t’angel-o.

T he CCM Brass Quintet played nice little fanfares throughout, for all of the graduates. But when graduates of the conservatory (CCM) approached the lectern, the Quintet’s fanfares mutated into ones that were longer by several ostentatious bars, with dilatory flourishes and a grand unpredictability… droll extra service, musicians proclaiming the specialness of other musicians, heh!

E stablishing a strong relationship with a faculty mentor is one of the most important factors in determining the success one achieves as a graduate student. Faculty members “know the ropes,” so to speak, and their guidance on research, and on professional and personal conduct, can be invaluable. Typically, a faculty mentor is someone whose research interests are similar to those of the student. As such, the mentor can be an excellent source for ideas and can serve as an informed reviewer of and advocate for the student’s work.

F or those who have succeeded in establishing a strong relationship with a faculty mentor, the prospect of that relationship changing—or becoming more distant—contributes to the tumult of emotions that well-up during the graduation ceremony. Well, not to worry, usually moving away and the resulting absence make the hearts grow stronger. They will remember you fondly, more fondly than when you were slaving away, nearly for free, in their face everyday.

F or those whose mentors’ neuroses aligned in perfectly perverse way with the mentees’ neuroses, graduation may feel like a long, badly-written fugue has concluded. Begin your next Prelude, ASAP, with Pomp and Circumstance marches played by brass quintet:
  • March No. 1 in D (1901)
  • March No. 2 in A minor (1901)
  • March No. 3 in C minor (1904)
  • March No. 4 in G (1907)
  • March No. 5 in C (1930)
  • March No. 6 in G minor
Will, with Dumbledore?
Elgar Chamber Music:
  • Romance for violin and piano, Op. 1 (1878)
  • Salut d’Amour for violin and piano, Op. 12 (1888)
  • Chanson de Nuit and Chanson de Matin for violin and piano, Op. 15 Nos. 1 and 2 (1897/1899).
  • Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82 (1918)
  • String Quartet in E minor, Op. 83 (1918)
  • Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84 (1918–1919)
  • Concert Allegro, piano, Op. 46 (1901)
  • Organ Sonata in G, Op. 28 ()



Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Sportsman's Chronograph


The recent Father's day post over at Tin Tin's place included some discourse about Rolex watches, buying them, throwing them away in disgust, their accuracy and styling.
I posted in comments that my Rolex GMT-Master II keeps excellent time. I purchased this model 16710 used from an Estate for a very reasonable price and have had it for several years. It has served well under adverse conditions encountered in many sporting pursuits. The 16710 GMT-II was made between 1989 and 2007 and I have been told the mid-90's versions were particularly good.
The Trad maligns the relative accuracy of a Rolex he used to own.I have heard similar complaints before about older models. My GMT is "dead-on-balls accurrate" ( ID the movie quote anyone??) I set it by the U.S. Atomic Clock in Colorado via the Website and the watch will only lose a second or 3 over several months. The thing about these self-winders is you have to wear 'em all the time or remember to wind them when you put them down in favor of another watch.
Tin Tin and I met for drinks a few weeks ago but neither of us has posted about our congenial drinking and bullshitting session. Suffice it to say, he is every bit as engaging and interesting as his Posts.I hope we convene another session soon. I was wearing my Rolex that evening in Philadelphia but the subject never came up....

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Nicholas Kitchen: Are Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin Scale-Invariant ‘Fractal’ Works?

Nicholas Kitchen, NE Historic Genealogical Soc, 18-JUN-2011
W   hen I was, I think, 8 years old, I first heard Bach’s Ciaccona, from the Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004. I could not stop listening to it. I wore out the record. Afterward, looking at that vinyl record across the room, you could see that that band on the record’s surface… could see that the grooves were completely gone.”
  — Nicholas Kitchen, remarks at BEMF recital, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 18-JUN-2011.
T   his page in the manuscript [of the Sonatas and Partitas], where the end of the Ciaccona is followed immediately by the beginning of the next Sonata, one right after the other, on the same page—this is what revealed to me that there is a ‘glue’ that Bach had devised that is holding these pieces all together. The multiple pairs and powers-of-2 in these pieces, the recurrences of palindromes and the inversions in these pieces—these are not [conveniences; mere expediencies]. All of these pairs form a great monumental ‘architecture’ upon which emotions can be expressed and better understood.”
  —  Nicholas Kitchen, remarks at BEMF recital, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 18-JUN-2011.
A lways when you listen to Nicholas Kitchen perform and/or speak, you will learn things that you would never have expected.

N icholas’s performance today of major portions of Bach’s solo violin works [Partita No. 1 BWV 1002; Partita No. 2 BWV 1004; Sonata No. 3 BWV 1005; Partita No. 3 BWV 1006] was a complete joy for us. And, amazingly, the acoustics were not bothered at all by the Stanley Cup-winning Boston Bruins and their more than 1 million boisterous fans jamming the streets just outside the recital hall.

K itchen vividly accounted for the correspondences among these works, noting the various plausible motivations for Bach’s G minor-B minor-A minor-D minor-C major-E major affective and intervallic progressions.

M ore than this, though, Kitchen discussed the ingenious sequences of meters and tempi, which constitute a Daubechies-like ‘wavelet’ Z-shape over the course of these pieces, performed in this order. Nicholas’s expressions were phrased in terms of geometric series (powers-of-2, and powers-of-3) in a way that is understandable for general audiences of all ages. And his explanations emphasized the sequences—the succession of structures that govern the architecture of these pieces—that is, he described things in a linear, narrative way that is the natural and preferred idiom when teaching or explaining things to people.

B ut it was clear from his gestures, and from the way that he plays these Bach works for solo violin, that Nicholas is also thinking of how these multi-scale structures look when the metric and harmonic time-domain patterns are transformed into frequency-domain by Fourier Transforms or Wavelet Transforms.

T he textural parallels—the sacred posture of the sonatas, juxtaposed with the equal/noninferior profane dance-tune posture of the partitas—occur on various scales, from ‘micro’ scales within a single measure, to ‘macro’ scales involving power-of-2 multiples of measures, to ‘hyper’ scales involving all 6 of these works. The works contain structures that are reminiscent of fractal scale-invariant symmetries where the smallest structure embodies features of the largest and all scales in between.

A  perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon! Bravo!

Daubechies wavelet[James Nicolson and Board of Directors present Nicholas Kitchen with the 2011 CSEM Arion prize]

Nicholas Kitchen

Daubechies wavelet



¡Sacabuche! Matteo Ricci: His Map and Music

Sacabuche, IU Jacobs School of Music
J   ust as western countries have never heard the teaching of the sages of China, so we Chinese have never heard of the books of their ancient sages. Both now enlighten each other; both benefit one another.”
  — Feng Yingjing, acquaintance of Fr. Matteo Ricci, 16th-Century China.
S acabuche! is an ensemble of Chinese and western instruments and voices directed by Linda Pearse. Sacabuche! performed a series of concerts and workshops in Beijing, China, in December, 2010, and yesterday at BEMF in Boston offered a multimedia performance of their work about the Italian Jesuit priest (and mathematician, scientist, cartographer, and all-around polymath), Matteo Ricci, whose decades spent in China in the late 16th century resulted in the first map in Chinese. Ricci’s detailed map, completed and presented to the Wanli Emperor in 1602, showed the entire world—eastern and western hemispheres—surprising and edifying both the Chinese and the Italians.

I U Jacobs School of Music faculty members Stanley Ritchie and Wendy Gillespie contributed to the collaboration, as did University of Minnesota professor of History, Ann Waltner. The performance combined historical readings with early music from both sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and China, along with new compositions by Oberlin/Juilliard-trained now-New-York-based composer Huang Ruo, commissioned for the Sacabuche! project.

T he multimedia performance reanimates the seminal political and cultural exchange between Italian Jesuits and Chinese literati in 16th/17th-century China and unifies (1) Italian music of Ricci’s Italy performed on period instruments, (2) Chinese music of Ricci’s China performed on traditional Chinese instruments, (3) Huang Ruo’s new music, (4) dramatic readings, and (5) historical imagery, including a projected digitized version of Ricci’s map (an old original, James Ford Bell Library, U of M) Chinese paintings and calligraphy and other artworks.
  • Linda Pearse, artistic director & sackbut
  • Ann Waltner, co-director, speaker, author of program notes/script
  • Qin Fang, speaker
  • Yang Yi, guzheng
  • Carrie Tsujui Chin, sheng
  • Eunji Lee, piano and organ
  • Sarah Barbash-Riley, Ray Horton & François Godère, sackbut
  • Martie Perry & Janelle Davis, Baroque violin
  • Wendy Gillespie, viola da gamba
  • Elise Figa, soprano
  • Andrew Rader, countertenor
  • Benjamin Geier, tenor
  • Huang Ruo, composer
  • Cathy Barbash, producer
T he thoughtful selection of 16th-Century Chinese imagery alternating with Italian Baroque Catholic Church imagery was accompanied by short descriptive and poetical Chinese and English texts read by Qin Fang and by Ann Waltner, respectively, interleaved with the Chinese and Italian Baroque music. The pace and the variety of sonic textures were really exciting—informing those of us who do not know very much about Chinese or Jesuit history; capturing and holding our interest throughout; and inspiring our expanding wonder about what the decades-long contact that Fr. Ricci and his Chinese hosts had with each other really entailed.

H uang Ruo’s “Fisherman’s Sonnet” is patterned after kun opera but includes a number of exotic orchestrations of Chinese and western instruments that have probably never been heard playing together before (sackbuts! viola da gamba! Baroque organ! with sheng and guzheng!).

C arrie Tsujui Chin’s sheng playing and Yang Yi’s guzheng were masterful and incisive—at times forcefully and at other times poignantly and delicately contrasting with the rest of the ensemble’s Baroque Italian harmonies.
  • Huang Ruo – Fisherman’s Sonnet
  • A. Gabrieli – Benedictus Dominus Deus Sabaoth
  • A. Gabrieli – Ricercar
  • A. Gabrieli – Alla Battaglia
  • Anon. – Tianfeng huanpei (Jade Pendants of the Immortals)
  • G. Palestrina – Quan pulchri Sunt
  • G. Nanino – Amor m’ha posto; I pensier so saette
  • G. Palestrina – Nigra sum, sed formosa
  • Bartolomeo de Selma – Vestiva i colli
  • G. Palestrina – Vestiva i colli
  • Anon. – Gaoshan liushui (Lofty Mountains and Rolling Waters)
  • A. Gabrieli – Ricercar arioso
  • G. Palestrina – Surgam et circuibo civitatem
  • Huang Ruo – My Promises are Above
Qin Fang, IU Jacobs School of MusicT he readings were graceful and passionately delivered. Some of the readings are excerpts from Ricci’s diaries and letters—poetical in their own way and manifesting not so much the worldview of a missionary of the Roman Catholic Church as the personal and good-hearted expressions of a human being who is deeply and continually interested in other people and how they live, continually interested in learning, and in Life. Over his 30+ years in China, Ricci was fluent in writing and speaking Chinese and came to be highly regarded by the local Chinese scholars with whom he came into contact.

R   icci [Li Xitai] … there is not a single one of our books that he has not read… In a noisy gathering of several dozen people with everybody speaking at once, the arguments he is following do not disturb him at all… [Other people] err through an excess of either inflexibility or compliancy… they are all inferior to him.”
  — Li Zhi, letter to a friend regarding Ricci, 1600.
I f one totes up the durations of the various segments of the performance, the Chinese texts and music occupy considerably less time than the Baroque western music and Ricci texts. This is, after all, a production about Ricci and his activity and travels and his map. But the Chinese material is not merely ‘context’ or ‘backdrop’ for the Ricci saga; it is aesthetically and expressively as strong as the rest. The guzheng and sheng music is, if anything, revealing of a greater depth of existential reflection and contemplation on the part of the Chinese—of a great intellectual openness and spiritual preparedness to receive whatever insights a new experience [with Ricci, or with others] might offer—contrasted with the still-transcendent-but-more-constrained conceptions of Gabrieli or Palestrina. From the performance, we get the strong message that the illustrious Chinese Ricci encountered and whose writings survive were extraordinary human beings, every bit as much as Ricci was extraordinary.

T here are, naturally, other, less sanguine perspectives on Ricci and his accomplishments (see some of the books linked below). Indeed, some of Huang Ruo’s music conveys the diversity of Chinese opinion about the Jesuit(s) in their midst. Ricci’s chronic reluctance to forthrightly state what his or the Church’s purposes and intentions were in China evidently wore thin at times—graciousness has its limits, and there has to be an acceptable bilateral flow of value, or convincing and ongoing prospects of future value flow, for the relationship/exchange/intrusion to be sustainable. Huang Ruo’s music and the ensemble’s playing provide a balanced and empathetic, speculative account of this cross-cultural give-and-take. This is not surface-level alternating now-Chinese-now-Western-sacred-music collage or ‘documentary’; instead, the dramatic tension of the work derives from the fact that the sequence of compositions does recreate this diversity, this give-and-take, complete with the politics and misapprehensions in it. Not inscrutable! Quite the opposite.

M any thanks to the IU and U of M for producing and performing this beautiful and exciting work! International Relations par excellence!

Sacabuche, IU Jacobs School of MusicCathedral Church of St. Paul Boston