Friday, October 31, 2008
The Art of Govspeak
If I hear the terms "tool kit" or "injection" once more in reference to the banking bailout, I will never take the speaker seriously again.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Iran and The Bomb
The defining American tragedy of the 20th century was the dropping of the atomic bomb over civilians in Japan. John Adams and Peter Sellers created the libretto for their new opera, Doctor Atomic, directly from the players themselves, drawing on historical documents. Adams spent several years researching the opera before turning over the libretto work to Sellers, his collaborator for "Nixon in China." The result, performed today at the Metropolitan Opera, pulled back the curtains on the excruciatingly tense days in the top-secret Los Alamos project and allows Americans to consider the doubts and fears surrounding the start of the nuclear age. Sellers allows us enter a world of thought not Strangelovian but oddly familiar. Like me, Adams grew up in a suburb overshadowed by the terror of the missiles aimed at America from behind the Iron Curtain, and the charade of routine bomb drills and "family" fallout shelters. All of us who grew up then were marked by the experience.
Later that evening, I attended the Carnegie Hall concert of Kayhan Kalhor, a traditional Iranian musician who plays on something translated inelegantly called the "spike fiddle" with stunning virtuosity and poetry. The man has only four strings, and his tradition has very little harmonic change; yet he is so expressive that when I was carried away by the music I sometimes realized with a start that he was playing only one pitch. He performed with a vocalist, a drummer and a player of a flute-like instrument called the ney. Persian classical musicians memorize 200 fundamental collections of music in 12 different modes; and then they begin their real artistry, improvisation. Any Western clasical musician could learn much from their indescribable sensitivity, spontaneity and expressivitity. And indeed, Kayhan is much in demand as a crossover musician, playing with YoYo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, composing for the Kronos Quartet and joining diverse Middle Eastern musicians of other traditions for recording projects. I am glad I was able to hear him in his own ancient tradition, the songs of which date back to the 1100s and the poetry of Rumi during the Mongol invasion. Kayhan's initial number, a solo, was marred by a feedback tone from the sound equipment. He didn't seem at all disconcerted; his imperturable manner seemed to say: "This music has been strong enough to survive things that you would never guess." I wondered, looking at these magnificent players, how the music survives now, as the Iranian community seems bent on obtaining its own nuclear weaponry.
As I went through the program notes tonight, I noted that John Adams was particularly impressed by Kayhan.
Later that evening, I attended the Carnegie Hall concert of Kayhan Kalhor, a traditional Iranian musician who plays on something translated inelegantly called the "spike fiddle" with stunning virtuosity and poetry. The man has only four strings, and his tradition has very little harmonic change; yet he is so expressive that when I was carried away by the music I sometimes realized with a start that he was playing only one pitch. He performed with a vocalist, a drummer and a player of a flute-like instrument called the ney. Persian classical musicians memorize 200 fundamental collections of music in 12 different modes; and then they begin their real artistry, improvisation. Any Western clasical musician could learn much from their indescribable sensitivity, spontaneity and expressivitity. And indeed, Kayhan is much in demand as a crossover musician, playing with YoYo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, composing for the Kronos Quartet and joining diverse Middle Eastern musicians of other traditions for recording projects. I am glad I was able to hear him in his own ancient tradition, the songs of which date back to the 1100s and the poetry of Rumi during the Mongol invasion. Kayhan's initial number, a solo, was marred by a feedback tone from the sound equipment. He didn't seem at all disconcerted; his imperturable manner seemed to say: "This music has been strong enough to survive things that you would never guess." I wondered, looking at these magnificent players, how the music survives now, as the Iranian community seems bent on obtaining its own nuclear weaponry.
As I went through the program notes tonight, I noted that John Adams was particularly impressed by Kayhan.
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