Mixed Media

A capella Africa

This video is making the internet rounds and since it's a slow Monday, it's worth sharing.

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Vivaldi: A Man For All Seasons

   Known as the "red priest" because of his hair color and his membership in the clergy, Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was the most original and influential Italian composer of his generation. He wrote more than 500 concertos, which make up the bulk of his output, and the techniques he used to keep these works interesting and lively — deftly varying the texture and figuration, and favoring angular, energetic rhythms that packed extra punch — were adopted by composers all over the continent.

The concertos of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, published in 1725, demonstrate a wealth of effect using nothing more than string instruments. Their imagery — of birds in the spring, storms in summer, huntsmen in autumn and icy landscapes in winter — remains as vivid today as on the day the notes were penned.

Vivaldi wrote an illustrative sonnet as a guide to each of the concertos. Accordingly, "Spring," in the bright key of E major, celebrates the sounds of "joyful bird song," briefly interrupted as "gentle breezes give way to a passing storm." In the slow movement, a shepherd sleeps in the "pleasant flowering meadow," while a dog (the solo viola) barks. Nymphs dance a graceful gigue through the finale as the sun emerges from behind the clouds. It's all there in the sonnet Vivaldi wrote, and it's there in the music as well.

Read the full article by Ted Libbey here.

Blues legend Koko Taylor died at 80

by Cheryl Corley, Morning Edition

Her name is synonymous with Chicago blues, and her voice was growling, thunderous and full of soul.  Grammy Award-winning blues artist Koko Taylor died Wednesday at the age of 80.

Born in 1928 on a sharecropper's farm near Memphis, she was called "the Queen of the Blues." Her given name was Cora Walton, but she acquired the name Koko due to a love of chocolate. During an interview with NPR in 2000, Taylor said she and her five siblings would sing gospel music on Sundays, but on Mondays it was the blues.

"My younger brother made himself a harmonica out of a corncob, and I didn't need no microphone," she said. "And we'd be back there singing and playing."

Later, Taylor would move to Chicago with her soon-to-be-husband. She worked as a cleaning woman, but says she and her husband would frequent nightclubs on nights and weekends. She told NPR in 1991 that musicians would invite her to join them on the bandstand.

"One Sunday, I was sitting in," she said. "And Willie Dixon happened to be in the audience. And when I finished, he says to me, he says, 'My God, I ain't never heard a woman sing the blues like you sing the blues before in my life. Where did you come from?' I said, 'Memphis.' "

Dixon, already a celebrated bluesman, helped Taylor sign with Chicago's Chess Records and wrote a song for her that became her signature. Sales of "Wang Dang Doodle" would reach a million, and Taylor hit the road to blues and jazz festivals around the country and abroad. When Chess Records went out of business, Taylor signed with Alligator Records.

Alligator president Bruce Iglauer was Taylor's manager for more than 30 years. He says the Queen of the Blues didn't fit the traditional image of a blues singer.

"She didn't party. She didn't live a wild life at all," he says. "What she did do, that was so much the essence of the blues, is that she sang directly from the soul."

Taylor also appeared in film and on television, and she more than held her own in the male-dominated blues industry, sharing the stage with other major blues stars such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf and Buddy Guy. Iglauer says Taylor knew she had to be tough, and she absolutely ruled her band.

"She would stomp out the beat with her right foot and, boy, the drummer better play Koko's beat," Iglauer says. "When she told them to bring it down, they better bring it down to a whisper. Because she was determined that she was going to make it and that nobody was going to say, 'Well, she's good — for a woman.' "

During her 40-plus-year career, the woman who could blast songs like a hurricane from her lungs won a plethora of awards, including a Grammy in 1984. She was inducted into the Blues' Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1997. Last month, Taylor was named Traditional Blues Artist of the Year at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis.

The Mighty Queens... on Off thePage

by Bill Jaker

Reading a biography, autobiography or personal memoir allows us to add someone else's life to our own.  We can follow them through the pages and share their struggles and pleasures, victories and defeats. Through autobiography we can get to know someone well, even strike up an intimate relationship with a great person, a Helen Keller, Ulysses Grant or Charlie Chaplin. 

Sometimes their cautionary tales will be so good that we learn to avoid similar mistakes. In her new memoir, "The Mighty Queens of Freeville," Amy Dickinson recounts the stresses and analyzes the forces that took her through marriage, divorce and raising a daughter as a single mother -- all experiences common in our society.  

During her marriage she lived in London, and later moved to Washington, DC with daughter Emily.  She also worked her way through several jobs (including, at one point, receptionist and then a commentator at NPR) and went through periods of unemployment. But Amy emerges steady and victorious.  Today she writes a nationally-syndicated advice column.  She's now a regular on NPR's news quiz "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" (heard on WSKG Radio Saturdays at 11 AM) and on "Talk of the Nation" (WSQX 91.5 FM, weekdays from 2 to 4 PM).  But it's clear that she might not have landed with her feet on the ground if that ground hadn't been in the village of Freeville, NY, about fifteen minutes up the road from Ithaca.

Amy's family has lived and farmed in upstate New York since the 1790s.  The family history has lately not been easy.  "In my family," she writes, "the women tend to do the heavy lifting while the men -- well, the men are nice and fine and they love us for a time.  Then at some point, it seems that they tire of their indeterminate role in our lives, so they wage a campaign of passive resistance, and then they leave."  Her father suddenly left the family, and then in another act of abandonment sold off their herd of Holsteins.  But the women pull together.

The women of my family taught me what family is about.  They helped me pick up the pieces when my life fell apart, and we reassembled them together into something new.  They celebrated my slow recovery, witnessed my daughter's growth and development, and championed my choices.  The women in my life showed Emily and me in large and small ways that they would love us, no matter what.  They abide. 
                                                                  --from The Mighty Queens of Freeville

The wisdom and support Amy feels from the women in her family shows through in her daily column "Ask Amy" , which replaced the late and legendary Ann Landers, now appears in over 200 newspapers nationwide through the Chicago Tribune syndicate (in this area in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, the Ithaca Journal and the Elmira Star-Gazette).

Amy Dickinson joined Bill Jaker on OFF THE PAGE to talk about coming home again, drawing on the strength of family and sharing that with the nation. Click here to listen to the program online.

Funding opportunity for local artists

SOS, a project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, working in collaboration with arts councils and cultural organizations across New York State, is designed to help individual artists of all disciplines take advantage of unique opportunities that will significantly benefit their work or career development. Participating counties in our region include: Broome, Chemung, Schuyler, Stueben, Tioga and Tompkins.

Artists working in all disciplines (including literature, media arts, visual arts, music, and theater) may request support ranging from $100 to $600 for specific, forthcoming opportunities. These do not include works-in-progress.

The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes will work with artists individually to help them learn to write the best possible grant application. The ARTS provides technical assistance guiding artists through the funding program and offers suggestions for other funding.

 Applications must be received by 5:00 pm on May 28, 2009 for opportunities in July-October 2009. This is NOT a postmark deadline.

Who can apply?

• Artists 18 years of age or older.

• Artist must be a full-time resident for the past year from date of application deadline in one of the participating counties. All recipients must show proof of residency status before receiving award money.

Who cannot apply?

• Any past SOS recipient who has outstanding final reports or retains unused award money.

• A graduate or undergraduate student enrolled in any degree program at the time of application, including highschool students.

• A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship award in the previous year.

Applications should be submitted to:
The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes
32 West Market Street
Corning, NY 14830

You can download copies of this application and find more information about SOS here.

CMOG offers new exhibit of contemporary glass

A new survey of one of the largest collections of contemporary studio glass in the United States will open at The Corning Museum of Glass on May 16, 2009. Part of a year-long series of contemporary glass exhibitions and programming at the Museum, Voices of Contemporary Glass: The Heineman Collection, will present 240 works in glass by 87 international artists.

Voices of Contemporary Glass will showcase the collection donated to the Museum in 2006 by Ben W.  Heineman, Sr. and his wife, Natalie G. Heineman. Mr. Heineman collected with a discerning eye, thoughtfully assembling a grouping of works that represents the full breadth of a defining period in contemporary glassmaking. He was intrigued by the extraordinary potential of the material to take on a broad range of expressions and forms. Although interested in all kinds of art in glass, he was drawn primarily to works that explored abstraction and color.

The exhibition features video interviews with a selection of artists represented in the Heineman Collection, exploring their individual ideas, or “voices,” in glass. This multitude of voices and perspectives celebrates the infinite possibilities of glass as a medium for contemporary vessels and sculpture, and documents the ongoing process of discovery and innovation that has shaped the story of the Studio Glass movement.

“The Heineman Collection reflects the remarkable achievements made in studio glass over the past 35 years,” said David Whitehouse, the Corning Museum’s executive director. “The collection is distinguished by its in-depth focus on a key group of individuals whose work has been influential to artists working in glass worldwide. The exhibition explores the appeal of glass and its essence as a creative medium for artists of all backgrounds. At the Museum, visitors can always experience the energy of artists at work but, this year, the artists will be even more present.”

Throughout the summer, Museum visitors will be able to participate in gallery tours led by artists who teach at the Museum’s glassmaking school, The Studio, such as Paul Stankard, Amy Rueffert and Gianni Toso. Daily live demonstrations by Corning Museum glassmakers will help visitors understand many of the techniques behind the works on view in Voices of Contemporary Glass, and guests will be able to make their own glass in hands-on experiences.

 “This extensive collection allows us to present the story of studio glassmaking, and to examine the variety of ways in which artists have used glass to find their artistic voices,” said Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass and of the exhibition. “The exceptional compilation of objects displayed in the exhibition documents a remarkable material and a deeply introspective process of working that helps to explain the often indefinable, but always captivating, allure of glass.”

The Heineman Collection nearly completely documents the chronology of the American Studio Glass movement, with objects dating from 1969 to 2005, and it presents the work of several artists over the course of their careers. Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Architectonic sculptures by Thomas Patti, who pioneered the exploration of industrial and architectural glass as a sculptural medium.

• Blown vessels by Lino Tagliapietra, considered to be the world’s foremost glassblower and one whose influence has had a lasting impact on American studio glass.

• Glass sculptures evoking elements of architecture and industry by Howard Ben Tré, who led the way in the use of cast glass as a sculptural medium in the United States.

• A rare group of “Navajo Blanket” cylinders blown in the mid-1970s by the internationally recognized artist, Dale Chihuly.

• Iconic sculptures by the acknowledged “fathers” of American studio glass, Harvey K. Littleton and Dominick Labino, who, in 1962, introduced the first studio-sized glass furnace that enabled glassworking to move outside of a factory environment, launching the American Studio Glass movement.

Voices of Contemporary Glass, which runs through January 3, 2010, will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog of the collection by Tina Oldknow. As part of a year-long celebration of contemporary glass at the Museum, it is complemented by the exhibitions, Favorites from the Contemporary Glass Collection, and Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Craig Meitner.

The installation, designed by Paul and Barbara Haigh, is inspired by the Heinemans’ Chicago residence in which the collection was originally displayed. The exhibition design transforms the large and open spaces of the Museum into a more intimate setting, reminiscent of domestic interiors, with the objects arranged primarily by artist, rather than by artistic theme, chronology, or technique. 

 

Listen Again: Music of Monks and Drunks

by Ted Libbey

(Click here to listen to the audio story and excerpts from Carmina Burana)

Carmina Burana was the title of a collection of medieval Latin and German lyrics published in 1847,   taken from a 13th century manuscript then in the possession of a Benedictine abbey near Munich.

To this day, the original manuscript remains the richest source of secular poetry by the goliards — itinerant scholars and monks active in Europe from the late 10th century to the early 1200s. In 1935, the German composer Carl Orff (1895-1982) encountered the collection and was immediately seized by the earthy, unbridled imagery of its material. He made use of some two dozen texts (though none of the melodies in the manuscript) to fashion one of the 20th century's most popular works for chorus and orchestra. The score, completed in 1936, received its premiere in Frankfurt on June 8, 1937.

Orff's Carmina Burana invites the performer and listener alike to participate in the hedonistic enjoyment of rhythmically catchy and frequently repeated tunes, as well as equally simple forms, consonant harmony, powerful singing and colorful scoring marked by unstinting use of percussion.

'Burana' With A Bang

German conductor Eugen Jochum's picturesque recording has a Germanness that is exactly on the mark. The orchestral playing sounds clean, characterful and suggestive; the choral singing suitably lusty. No one has ever done the Bavarian beer hall bit any better, and the whole performance is fun from start to finish. Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau brings the nuance of a Lieder artist to his solos, while tenor Gerhard Stolze, in spite of some liberties with phrasing, proves unerringly comical.

This article is from NPR's Classical 50 series, a weekly guide to essential classics. For the full archive of NPR's Classical 50, click here.

Another potential future for books?

It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signaling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton's Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

"This could change bookselling fundamentally," said Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings. "It's giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon ... I like to think of it as the revitalisation of the local bookshop industry. If you could walk into a local bookshop and have access to one million titles, that's pretty compelling."

Read the full article here.

Listen Again: Why 'The 27s' Made Early Exits

Eric Segalstad has spent the past few years researching a group of musicians who have been dubbed "The 27s" — rockers who died at that age, either through tragedy, misadventure or excess. The club includes Kurt Cobain, who took his own life 15 years ago Sunday.

The king of grunge is just one of the more than 20 musicians featured in Segalstad's book, The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll. It includes artists across all genres — from Jim Morrison to Robert Johnson.

So, what is it about the number 27?

"It's a strange number," Segalstad tells NPR's Robert Smith. "It also happens right around that time in your life where most people go from the stage of youth to the stage of maturity."

Some of the subjects of The 27s — like Hole's Kristen Pfaff — didn't make that leap, turning instead to the cliché of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll that led to early deaths.

"But they weren't all victims of rock 'n' roll stardom … living life fast and furious," he says. "There were also quite a few accidents and other tragic events that cut their lives short." Take, for example, the case of punk singer Mia Zapata, who was murdered in Seattle in 1993.

Others, says Segalstad, were victims of the business side of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle — like Pete Ham of Badfinger.

"I found him compelling because he did live life pretty purely," says Segalstad. "He didn't have any strong drug addictions, and he didn't live life any harder than you or I did at the time. But he was victim to crooked managers and record label quarrels that rendered him penniless and frustrated, and he ended his life by hanging himself in his studio garage."

In a way, the early deaths of so many of these stars have changed the way we look at performers.

"Janis Joplin said that, whether people know it or not, they like their blues singers miserable. And I think that's part of it," says Segalstad. "We need these musicians to be out there for us, to feel what we feel and to be what we want to be and can't. It is a dangerous profession."

But Segalstad says that, overall, The 27s is not a depressing book.

"It celebrates the lives and legacies of all these musicians," he says. "We want people to remember who they were and the music they created while they were here."

Listen to the full interview here.

Looking for something to read?

Check out You Must Read This, a series from NPR, which features authors talking about their very favorite books.

And if you're still catching up from last year, don't forget about Summer Books, which features picks by Susan Stamberg and Maureen Corrigan. And to catch up on all the latest book reviews from NPR, just visit the book section of their website.