Posted in paterfamilias, reseña, tagged DIY, reseña on June 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »
This review comes from a certified non-handy guy with minimal practical skills. I was fortunate enough a year ago to discover a fine window guy. As a result, we have excellent Pella window replacements in our 1930 Indiana home.
I bought this book to help me with next steps: specifically, what do do about our crumbling main entrance way and our on-again, off-again internal doors. It all has charm, you understand. The problem is it only works half the time. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged music, R.E.M., reseña on June 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Can it be 16 years since this brooding, sinister, insightful CD, opening memorably as it did with the softly sung lyrics to `Drive’?:
Smashed!
Cracked!
Bushwacked!
Tie another one to the rack.
Baby ….Hey!
Kids!
Rock and roll!
Nobody tells you where to go!What if I ride?
What if you walk?
What if you rock around the clock?
Tick … Tock … Tick … Tock …
Posted in reseña, tagged Gloria Estefan, music, reseña on May 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Sometimes an artist with formidable cross-genre credits returns to her roots, as much for her own soul’s sake as to mine a promising market. The results are often mixed, for spanning multiple blocks of fans is more than just a technical feat. As often enough, the broadening loosens the soil that surrounds the roots. To be widely admired is, often inevitably, to be far from home. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Steven Curtis Chapman on May 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »
An album of the caliber of Steven Curtis Chapman’s Declaration worms its way deeper into an appreciative listener’s soul with every new pass-through. Its appeal is multi-layered. Each new encounter with this kind of music reveals a new facet, a previously unheard sound, the pleasure of an allusive turn of phrase that had gone undetected.
Chapman winks and nods a fair bit in this CD, a hobby that doesn’t distract him from exploring life-and-death themes via some very fine music. The album’s opening track–the jaunty, witty, `Live Out Loud’ starts the winking in earnest, but you get the idea he’s just getting down to business and having a bit of meaningful fun while he arranges his desk. (more…)
Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged creation, Ian McCallum, reseña, stewardship on April 16, 2008| 5 Comments »
Ian McCallum worries about the human species. He worries broadly, deeply, poetically, mystically, entertainingly, passionately, and challengingly. We are deeply diseased, McCallum believes, and we are inflicting our plague on the earth we inherit as the evolutionarily privileged human animal. In Ecological Intelligence, McCallum tells us that healing—as opposed to quick-fix mending–will occur only as we remember where we have come from and then learn to look ahead with a new rationality, a new language, and a chastened connectedness to the environment we inherit. Indeed, the ten chapters of his beguiling book are divided into sections entitled ‘Remembering where we have come from’ and ‘Looking ahead’. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged jazz, music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection on April 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The eyes of my father’s generation still light up when the occasion arises to speak of Duke Elington, Harry James, Benny Goodman, and Django Reinhardt. These are the artists who, with their bands, contribute to this remarkable entry in the mid-90’s CD-a-week collection offered to subscribers by London’s Sunday Times.
Frankly speaking, the first four tracks—by the Duke—are enough to make you think we’ve been in terminal cultural decline ever since the likes of ‘Sophisticated Lady’ went silent. This is smooth, sophisticated, textured jazz with an enormity of understatement that commends it to repeated listening. Bombast was out, smooth was in. I have never heard a trombone sound so alive as the one in Ellington’s band on this album.
This remarkable 1994 release brings the sounds back with varying degrees of remastered clarity. No matter, even with a bit of static between some tracks and these ears, the music is golden.
Posted in reseña, tagged Hilliard Ensemble, music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection on April 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »
In the mid-90s, it was possible to receive a CD each week from London’s Sunday Times Music Collection. The eclectic library of music that results now seems a treasure.
One of the finer anthologies and one of the few to record a single collection of artists on a themed CD was ‘Medieval Music’, all of it performed by London’s Hilliard Ensemble (www.hilliardensemble.demon.co.uk). Four-part a capella men’s singing in the style of what will strike the novice as close to Gregorian Chant is an acquired taste. But it can be acquired and there exists no better cluster of singers to help with the acquisition than the Ensemble. Rarely does one hear a more disciplined vocal music than this.
It’s ear candy for disciplined ears.
Posted in reseña, tagged G.F. Handel, J.S. Bach, John Nelson, music, reseña, Stephanie Blythe on April 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The inimitable John Nelson, conductor of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, has a knack for giving little known musical pieces and as-yet uncelebrated artists their due. He has made good on this worthy capacity by conducting his consort in a debut recital CD of one of our moment’s finest contraltos.
Stephanie Blythe works her way sensuously through this Baroque repertoire with all the gravitas of an ancient mariner, yet as well with the supple litheness of youth. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Mozart, music, Neville Mariner, reseña on March 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »
One grows accustomed to approaching the `last’ works of an artist with an aging master in mind, perhaps resting just a bit on laurels accrued over a lifetime of meritorious productivity. Not so with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of those giants who was taken early from his craft. Perhaps, from an aesthetic point of view, an early demise was not purely tragic. Given what we think we know of Mozart, a long life might have represented endless artistic decline. He died at something close to the apex of his trajectory. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged i musici, J.S. Bach, music, reseña on March 14, 2008| Leave a Comment »
While living in Costa Rica, my only convenient place to buy classical CDs was a bookstore that was heavy into the Philips Duo package. As a result, I now own many recordings in this series. Nobody beats Philips Duo for producing affordable recordings of venerable performances at the highest artistic and technical standards.
I musici playing all of Bach’s Brandenburg and Violin concerti is no exception. The oldest performances on this double-CD set are a half-century old. Yet they sound as crisp and clear as you’d hear them this evening in the concert hall. That’s simply awesome. (more…)
Canter Bridge 