Music – Page 3 – the coffee philosopher

Posted on September 18, 2015September 15, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

The Gypsy Baron

A friend and I went to a small theater in Rockville to see the Victorian Lyric Opera Company (specializing, as you might expect, in nineteenth century opera) perform Richard Strauss’ The Gypsy Baron.

The plot is suitably preposterous and if all you know of this particular Strauss is the music used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, you’ll be very surprised if you see any of his light opera or operettas. The performers and the orchestra (which was live) were amateur, but the music is so fun, it carries you along. The libretto was translated in English in (more or less) rhymed couplets. This made it rather like a traditional musical, only instead of the music being written by an irritating Andrew Lloyd Webber wannabe (or, even worse, actually trying to remake an opera), it’s by Richard Strauss.

It’s not the same as seeing a professionally produced and well-budgeted opera at the Kennedy Center, but it was fun and it scratched my itch for opera.

Posted on September 16, 2015September 11, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Midweek Staff Meeting: Vinteuil

According this fellow, the Saint-Saens sonata above if the little piece by ‘Vinteuil’ that so inspired Swann and Odette. I’d read it was something by Franck, but this a nice piece… so whatever.

Make yourself feel bad with personality tests.

Fredric Jameson has really gotten into the philosophy of SF lately.

I feel like album covers, maybe, used to be cooler.

Posted on September 3, 2015September 2, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

#LittleSalonDC

There’s a nice article on Little Salon in the WaPo today – and thankfully, no pictures of me (I don’t photograph well; my charms only appear after much time and gin).

It was a wonderful night, this time with free beer.

And I bought this small painting (acrylic on paper) for my better half. The artist, Dana Ellyn, had a number of frankly disturbing pieces (not an insult, though the Madonn and Child-esque painting of Hillary with a naked baby Bill on his knee must be seen to believed), but I turned around and I saw this three small works featuring pigs and the first one I saw was just so… cute. That’s it, really. It was cute. And I’m not immune to cuteness.

But, with my better half having been out of town for a while (I keep on thinking that people secretly think that she left me and I just haven’t come to grips with it), after buying the piece, I felt myself becoming a little maudlin and not such good company, so I left a little early.

Posted on August 30, 2015August 30, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Romantic Wuxia

For some reason, I’ve been into the more romantic martial arts films on Netflix these days. I’m acting like it’s somehow surprising. I love a good wuxia and I’m a romantic at heart. House of Flying Daggers and The White Haired Witch made me teary and I’ve been looking for more like them (and don’t tell me Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; yes, I’ve seen it and I’m trying to look for something new; I tried 14 Blades, but while I give Donnie Yen an amazing amount of credit for looking like that at age 52, he’s not the romantic type).

They’re all silly, of course, but I’m an opera fan and a sad (someone always dies in the really good ones) kung fu film is more like opera than it is like a Lethal Weapon movie. Grand, sweeping, melodramatic statements of overwhelming emotion delivered via medium outside of the standard romantic medium. The plots are silly, but that’s missing the point. If the plots of La Boheme or Madam Butterfly were explained in prose, you’d groan in embarrassment, but even a half decent production of either will make you sob if you have any soul (I recently saw a quintessentially mediocre La Boheme and I still sobbed when Mimi was dying).

Feel free to pass on any suggestions.

Posted on August 6, 2015August 5, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

My First Little Salon

I went to my first Little Salon on Tuesday night, at a condo in Parkview (a neighborhood near Columbia Heights that I didn’t even know existed before Google Mapping my directions).

There were some very nice paintings (okay – ‘mixed media,’ but can we just say they were things on canvass with paint and other stuff? because the term ‘mixed media’ makes me think there should be some electronics in there; actually, she was going to bring some music and computer accompaniments, but apparently there was some theft/car break-in thing happening, so that didn’t happen) by a Casey Snyder.

Bellwether Bayou, aka Laura Schwartz played violin and sang – using a loop machine to create a background and plucking her violin like a mandolin as much as she played it (or maybe it’s nothing like a mandolin; I have no music talent and while it might look like similar techniques to me, perhaps I’m just dead wrong).

Then a bit of a short story from a Lily Meyer and up to the roof deck to listen to a New York City based band called Rookin that has a lot of songs based on scraps of things by nineteenth century, Civil War era folks (note to Rookin: Drum Taps was by Whitman, not Melville). And they closed with Amazing Grace and that’s always awesome (the lead singer had one of those soft, fairly high pitched but still masculine voices that goes very well with something like that).

My only complaint is that it would have been nicer had been better half been around (she would have loved it, too).

Posted on July 5, 2015June 11, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Still Not Blogging For A While, So Here’s A Poll

Posted on June 17, 2015June 12, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

Midweek Staff Meeting – The Man Who Taught Proust To Speak English

Not literally, but if you’ve read and English translation of Remembrance of Things Past, as I have, you probably read his translation (as I have).

The Enlightenment’s most prominent unenlightened.

A review of Charles Simic’s latest books (it’s a generally positive review, but I have become less and less enamored of the poet over time; honestly, most of his poetry from this millenium feels lazy and recycled, whereas his best work is arresting, comic, and faintly melancholy).

And some poetry by Monica Ong. I love that Hyperallergic publishes the occasional poem. Appropriately, for a website focusing on the art world, these poems might be best described as vispo.

Another study of a hypothetical link between madness and creativity (in this cause, examining whether a correlation between increased likelihood of schizophrenia and participation in artistic a/vocations is the result of a shared, causative, genetic root).

Yes. Yes, it can.

On disliking poetry. And, maybe, on learning to love it.

Posted on June 4, 2015June 3, 2015 by the coffee philosopher

‘L’Épreuve Villageoise’ From The Opera Lafayette

This is the third time I’ve seen a production by the Opera Lafayette, who specialize in eighteenth century French opera, but it was the first opera-comique I’ve seen by them.

A small cast (four singers, a ‘chorus,’ and a dancer) and minimal sets for a small, gem-like romantic comedy. Pascale Beaudin as the female lead, the country girl Denise, was absolutely darling. You wanted to take her home to meet mother. Her eventual beau, Andre, impressed me less, but his buffoonish romantic rival, a baritoned Thomas Dolié, was a great comic foil. The production was performed in the relatively intimate terrace theater (I have no idea how many stages there actually are in the Kennedy Center… but there are a lot).

I’d say go see it… but it’s too late. Suckers.

I actually was not going to go, but I won free tickets from WETA, our local classical music station. The five dollars a month I donate has been more than paid back. I actually found out that I’d won through a suspicious sounding email (apparently, the original winner never responded, so I was next in line – I was told to reply back quickly, because they needed to get the name to will call) and right up until I they handed me the tickets, I had an itch at the back of my head that this was all a phishing scam. But it wasn’t and it was great d–n day.