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We Are the World. We are the Cello.
Bao was rightfully back to her baton — this piece got so crazy, and oftentimes so fast, it would have been impossible to keep these bunch of drunks in sync without a stick with which to beat them!
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SUNDAY COMIC: BOYCOTTS ARE NOT CENSORSHIP
While you are most definitely fired, might I suggest joining with Pepe and clownface-emoji … and Elon Musk, turns out….
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Sunday (AI) Comic: the Early Bird and the Nightowl
Message to all of you military types, to the fishermen, and the farmers, and all those kids who deliver Sunday morning papers…. To the early-service-7-am-church-going types, and all of you insane chipper folks who jog before work! To all of you, we say — “For too long have we let you ruin our lives! We…
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Sunday (AI) Comic: Flood-Drought
By S.E. Barcus Copyright 1-29-2023 Man 1: “Climate change neologisms! Good idea! … How’s about: ‘flood-drought?’ … Or … ‘ffff-rought?’ Or, maybe — ‘drrr…ud?’” Man 2: “Hmm…. That sounds like ‘fraught’ and ‘dread.’ … … Perfect.” For more, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/10/california-climate-atmospheric-rivers-drought/
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Sunday (AI) Comic: What do you think of George Santos as a Drag Queen?
What do you think of George Santos as a drag queen?
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Set Antiphaser to Killing It
Mexico City composer Enrico Chapela had a world premiere tonight in Seattle of his new electric violin concerto, Antiphaser. What is that, you ask? Some sort of guitar pedal, (or anti-pedal)? Or was CCM Chapela going to explore the phasing techniques of Steve Reich? No!
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House of the Dragon Review:
House of the Dragon dramatizes the foolishness and dangers of caveman Autocracy and poorly thought out means of power-succession, taken straight from real events in human history. As Santayana reminds us, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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Sunday Comic: GOP Promises “Payback” for Subpoenas and the January 6 Committee
They have refused to speak to the committee, FOR SOME STRANGE REASON. (Are they not “Patriots”?!) And thus … subpoena. The Committee is effectively demonstrating collusion for a VIOLENT COUP, with these GOP Congressional leaders and Trump deeply involved. Oh, but what a horrible partisan committee! We need “investigative revenge”.
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Ultramontane Catholics Oppress Women. Surprise, surprise.
Over the decades, they successfully got tens of millions of dupable Americans to believe that what is essentially the physiologic-equivalent of a frog is in actuality a full-fledged human being (“think of the precious, innocent babies!” … ribbit…)
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Macbeth and Macbeth and Macbeth: Three Weird Macbeths
More power to Daniel Craig for trying to get our butts in the seats for a Shakespeare play! He doesn’t HAVE to do this. You get the feeling he WANTS to do this. I take it back – give the tickets out to the unruly high school kids. It’s the whole point. Go stars, go! …
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Sunday Comic: Critical Race Theory
Well, I stand corrected. I guess the reactionaries were right. Someone just sent me a sample page from one of those math books Florida and Ron DeSantis banned…. They definitely had some sneaky CRT information tucked in there, after all….
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Ghosts — The Play that Returned
Thus, on the topic of religion oppressing women, we need a MUCH more impassioned art, that speaks to all women, not just the Gen X and Boomer Rep audiences. An art that really captures today, the here-and-now. While I love the idea of this play, this production just doesn’t do that for me. It feels…
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Jan Lisiecki, A Tale of Two Washingtons
Chopin Piano Concerto in DC; Chopin Nocturnes and Études in Seattle March 17, 2022 By S.E. Barcus Over the past two months, I had the chance to check out pianist Jan Lisiecki, a relatively young man (about to turn 27) who is marketed as pretty hot stuff. He is Polish-Canadian, and his claim to fame…
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Beethoven and the War of February 24
Night at the an der Vilar Review of Colorado Symphony performing Beethoven’s 5th and 6th Symphonies Beaver Creek, CO By S.E. Barcus (and Vladimir Putin) February 24, 2022 The Colorado Symphony (CS) perform Beethoven’s 6th and 5th Symphonies for the (mostly) wealthy skiers of Beaver Creek and Vail, February 24-27, 2022, at the Vilar Performing…
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Music in Time, Spoleto Review 2001
Conductor John Kennedy and Pianist Sarah Cahill, and others, team up for an amazing Spoleto performance of contemporary classical music. (Photo credit — hinnk — of Ms. Cahill performing at Berkeley Art Museum.)
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Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Spoleto Review 2001
Many in the audience seemed truly touched by this “jewel of Western opera repertoire,” as Director Chen Shi-Zheng has called it.
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Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Spoleto Review 2001
“For all the kitsch and Brecht, what I would’ve loved to see was a critique of this dopey and insulting take on women….”
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Philip Glass’ “New-World-Fusion-Chamber-Music-Quartet”, a Spoleto Festival Preview
“CP: How insulting is it to you when you hear “New Age” or “trance music”? PG: “Oh, I don’t care, really. I’ve been called all sorts of things. Those things come and go.”
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Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Piccolo Spoleto Festival Review
Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was made for “firsts”, it seems. The concert at the Angel Oak last weekend marked the first time the 1,400-year-old tree has been used as a venue by Piccolo Spoleto, and the first time the Charleston Ballet Theater has performed their magnum opus to live music.” From the S.E. Barcus Charleston…
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Kurt Weill’s Die Burgschaft, Spoleto Festival Review
“Die Burgschaft is the story of Mattes and Orth, two men in the mythical land of Urb who witness the gradual and tragic degradation of their trust in one another because of the dividing and corrupting influence of money and power.” From the S.E. Barcus Charleston City Paper archives, 1999.
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Laurie Anderson’s Moby Dick, Spoleto Festival Review 1999
“Up front, like Ahab guiltily admits in the beginning of Laurie Anderson’s Songs and Stories from Moby Dick, “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never read the book! It’s too big!” … Unfortunately, the show’s not much more than that: a “reading’s cool” PSA for technophiles.” From the S.E. Barcus Charleston City Paper archives, 1999.
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John Adams and the Noir of January 6
Composer John Adams conducts the Seattle Symphony on the anniversary of the insurrection, January 6, 2022.
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Yuja Wang don’t give a shit.
LA Philharmonic brings back the piano prima donna. By S.E. Barcus Perhaps you do not know who “Yuja Wang” is…? Well, judging by her commanding performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall February 18, 2020, in Los Angeles, along with her confident demeanor and skyrocketing fame over the past decade … I really do not…
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Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Pelléas and Mélisande” is a French-styled “Total Work of Art”
The “hero’s welcome” for composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at the opening night performance of the L.A. Philharmonic’s production of Debussy’s “Pelléas and Mélisande” hit with a refreshing coolness of modesty; with an apropos absence of fanfare perfectly suited to the production at hand. Salonen so casually enters while other philharmonic members are still trickling in that…
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Sunday (Generative A.I.) Comics: Midterm Elections 2022!
Hey, everybody! Look what my generative A.I. software came up with when I put in, “fundamentalist Christian voters now have more Faith in the criminal GOP than they do in Jesus.”
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