Category: This ‘n’ That

miscellanea

Site-Reading

“…many, perhaps most of the great things that get done in this world, especially in the realm of art, are done by people with no common sense whatsoever.”

so writes Terry Teachout in the mailbox section of today’s blog post. He was responding to an email he received wherein the correspondent mentioned some young dancers “who had so little common sense and so much passion for dance….”

Family and friends may wonder why we toil at projects that hold so little hope of substantial financial gain, and I guess passion is as good an answer as any. The image of a starving-artist-in-the garret loses its allure with age and the fires of idealism may be reduced to smoldering embers, but creative passions never die.

***

Rifftides offers a short list of recommended holiday music so I thought I’d tell you what’s coming through the speakers at our house during the holidays:

  • Leon Redbone – Christmas Island
  • The Three Tenors Christmas (Carreras, Domingo and Pavorotti)
  • A Jazz Piano Christmas (Benny Green, Junior Mance, John Lewis, Tommy Flanagan…)
  • A Nancy Wilson Christmas
  • Christmas with Etta Jones
  • Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song
  • Jimmy Smith – Christmas Cookin’ (smokin’ big band arrangements by Billy Byers)
  • Stevan Pasero – Christmas Classics for Guitar (tracks range from Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” to “Deck the Halls”
  • Guitars for Christmas — Joe Negri (MCG Jazz)

If rock music is your thing, best check in with Carl over at Cahl’s Juke Joint

***

Meanwhile Anne, over at Just Muttering, has discovered Classical Trumpet?! I was glad to see a comment mentioning The Canadian Brass. I love that group. Luther Henderson wrote some really wonderful arrangements for the quintet (2 trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba). I’m posting here the first two-and-a-half minutes or so of their rendition of Brass Toccata as performed at a memorial celebration for Luther. (Sorry, the recording quality is not great.) They’ve done lots and lots of recordings — from Pachelbel and Vivaldi to Fats Waller and Gershwin — so I’d be surprised if you don’t find one that includes some of your favorite selections.

Dad Gets Another Award

On Monday, November 27th, at the New Morning jazz club in Paris, Jim Hall was was named a “Choc Jazzman de l’année 2006.” According to Editor Alex Dutilh:

Jazzman is the best seller of French (and European, actually) jazz magazines. Every month we give quotations (like Down Beat stars) in our CD and DVD reviews. The higher one (equivalent of 5 stars) is called “Choc Jazzman”. At the end of the year, the editorial staff look at all the “Chocs” given between January and December and decides which will be “Chocs de l’année” (best of the year). They are 15 : 1 is elected by the readers sending post cards (Patricia Barber’s “Mythology” is their choice for 2006), 1 DVD, 1 reissue or never released historic session… and 12 “new recordings”.

Dad was not able to attend the Parisian ceremony, but he sent this message:

Un Petit Discours de Remerciement

Mes chers amis qui aiment le jazz:

J’ai été très content l’annee passe quand j’ai gagné un Choc Jazzman 2005 — l’idée que j’ai gagné une autre cette annee me comble.

C’est un privilège de jouer la musique et quand l’audience dit “bravo” – dans les clubs ou sur les pages des publications périodiques – c’est une gratification extraordinaire.

Jouer du jazz, c’est une exploration, et quand je reçois un honneur comme un Choc Jazzman ca me dit que vous etes avec moi dans le voyage — alors je vous remercie beaucoup!

J’écrivais ces mots avec l’assistance de ma fille qui parle français une peu mieux que moi; nous esperons que vous comprenez bien la gratitude énorme que je me sentais.

Je suis désolé que je ne peux pas etre la, en personne, pour accepter ce prix.

Encore une fois, je vous remercie beaucoup.

Jim Hall

Alex will be in New York for IAJE in January and plans to attend the January 11th ceremony at the French Embassy when Dad will receive his Chevalier medal. I’m betting he’ll bring with him the Choc Jazzman trophy.

Party Excuses and Sleep Deprivation

I don’t have time to spend trolling the Internet for sillies like this one, but my daily dose of news story ideas and resources (Al’s Morning Meeting: Story ideas that you can localize and enterprise) sometimes includes an amusement such as this online Holiday Party Excuse Generator created by a company called Enlighten.

Answer a few simple questions and in the time it takes to warble “fa la la la la”, you’ll have an excuse that will either endear or enrage a prospective host….

Al said: Always trying to be helpful, I want to get you out of attending the crummy parties that you want to avoid. Thanks, Al.

Of course, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to go to a party. Maybe you don’t like the host, or maybe you’re a Scrooge, or maybe, just maybe, you have so much work to do that you can’t take time out to play. It seems that time is the issue for lots of folks who want, or need, to pack more into a day, and they are using drugs to keep them going and to help them sleep. This is nothing new, but the drug choices are new…some still in the research phase. My friend, Phil, who remembers “the programmers anti-sleep potion of choice, Mountain Dew,” pointed me to “Get ready for 24-hour living,” an article at NewScientist.com.

Mind you, I am a self-confessed workaholic, and as it is my natural sleep cycle these days averages 6 hours a night. Would I be interested in a pill that would let me get 4 hours of good, refreshing sleep, and do me no bodily harm? Let’s forget for a moment that bodily harm part, because there are always three-dozen side effects, the worst of which won’t be discovered for 10-20 years. I might be tempted. But at this stage in my life I am pondering how I should be spending my time and questioning the endless hours spent at the computer. Having more time in the day is useless if it is not time well spent. And therein, as they say, lies the rub — how to define well spent. What’s your definition?

Son of Jazz Man To Be Governor

Laurie Goldstein writes in with this tidbit that is making the rounds of jazz afficiandos; she cites the original source of the info as coming from Ira Gitler via a mutual friend.

Laurdine “Pat” Patrick (1929 – 1991) was a baritone saxophone player best-known for his over forty years’ association with Sun Ra. As well as his long-term membership of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Patrick also played with John Coltrane (appearing on Africa/Brass in 1961), Mongo Santamaría (appearing on the hits Watermelon Man and Yeh Yeh), and in Thelonious Monk’s quartet in the early 1970s. His son is Massachusetts governor-elect Deval Patrick.

Laurie is a music publishing administrator handling the catalogs of Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Letta Mbulu & Caiphus Semenya, Freddie Hubbard, Turbintons, Buddy Williams, Joe Williams, Joe Zawinul, Carl Allen, Skip Anderson, Donald Brown, Adela Dalto, Vincent Herring, Javon Jackson, and others. Her company, L’oro Music, is devoted to protecting musical copyrights while encouraging the licensing of its music in film, tv, recordings, print, commercials and other uses, and the website includes a very informative guide to obtaining licenses for mechanical, synchronization, print, performing rights, grand rights, samples and permissions, plus a FAQ with brief outlines of copyright, licenses, permissions and music publishing terms, and links to additional sources for more detailed information.

Uniquely Yours

It amazes me how much time people spend creating neat stuff to see and do on the World Wide Web. And my mind boggles at the amount of time very busy people spend surfing and discovering these things. Bloggers do it a lot, and they may be the chief disseminator of such – myself among them. How Many Of Me is a goody I picked up from Terry Teachout, who got it from Tinkerty Tonk, who got it from Charles, who got it from Swirlspice, who got it from Lauren. Seems like I’m in good company.

HowManyOfMe.com
Logo There are:
0
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Based on data from the US Census Bureau, no one on their list has my first name, but then they say that “around 1 out of every 10 people will have a first name not on the list” and over the years I have met a few others with the name Devra. Their list includes 599,937 people in the U.S. with the last name Hall and by their calculations it is “statistically the 26th most popular last name.” But the kicker is they list 12 famous people with the last name Hall, and notonly was Jim Hall not among them, but I had never heard of any of them! So, of course, I googled them all:

1. Alexander Hall: Director/film editor/actor born in 1894. (Ancient as I might feel, he was a little before my time.)

2. Anthony Michael Hall: Star of The Dead Zone. (Not my speed.)

3. Dante Hall: (courtesy of Wikipedia) an NFL kick/punt returner, and wide receiver, known as the “Human Joystick” in the NFL for his moves during kick returns. (I don’t watch much football; lost interest after Joe Namath started hawking panty hose.)

4. Jerry Hall: the supermodel/actress a/k/a Mick Jagger’s long-time companion/wife. (I should have known this one, but I was thinking “Jerry” was a guy’s name.)

5. Jon Hall: Beefcake co-star of Maria Montez in the most popular movies in Technicolor which were made between 1942 and 1945. (Again, this predates me.)

6. Kevin Peter Hall: Actor who was frequently cast in monster roles due to his extremely tall stature—he stood 7′ 2½” – at age 36 he died of AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion. (Monster flicks are not a part of my limited movie experience.)

7. Michael C. Hall: Young tv actor on Six Feet Under and Dexter. (I’ve heard about Six Feet Under, but never seen it. I don’t like having to pay for tv reception and refuse to pay for “premium” channels.)

8. Patrick Hall: Could they mean the kid in his mid twenties who was on American Idol?! (Fame ain’t what it used to be.)

9. Philip Baker Hall: Character actor. (Didn’t recognize the name, but the face is familiar. I probably saw him in recent years on TV — Without A Trace, Boston Legal, and/or West Wing. Now you know what I watch.)

10. Regina Hall: Actress (She’s in a bunch of movies I’m not likely to ever see.)

11. Toby Hall: baseball catcher for the Dodgers. (I still think of them as the Brooklyn Dodgers, so you know that I’m not a good source for the current roster.)

12. Robert David Hall: Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Al Robbins from the original CSI. (Finally, one I knew – not by name, but unlike Philip Baker Hall who merely looked familiar, I could positively ID this body.)

Having nothing better to do – and desiring to perfect my skills in the craft of procrastination – I then tried my married name. They note 41,996 people in the U.S. with the last name Levy (tied with 57 other last names for 831st most popular last name) and cite three who are famous. Again, my cultural IQ seems lacking as I never heard of Canadian actor Eugene Levy; football coach Marv Levy, now general manager for the Buffalo Bills; or Shawn Levy, another actor/director with a list of credits for things I’ve never seen.

And now folks, I really do need to get back to work. With any luck, I’ll catch up with myself and get back to a more regular/consistent blogging schedule. Until then…

Rules of Engagement

“The divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist, worrying, or yawning… The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it.”

–from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice, by A.S. Byatt

Movie vs YouTube

While the world wrestles with YouTube — good for us, not good for us; fair or unfair, fun or futile — some people are still going to movie theaters. My friend Valerie is tauting “an incredible film” in a real movie theater…if but only for a moment — she writes:

I’m giving a “heads-up” to as many folks as I think might be interested and in close enough proximity to see this incredible film. It’s playing at the Music Hall on Wilshire & Doheny in Beverly Hills only until this Thursday. It is about five Black dancers who were the divas of Harlem in the ’30s at places like the Apollo Theatre and the Cotton Club. They were also strong activist-types who rose to the occasion when needed and protested at the Apollo from which resulted the AGVA union. After the big band era came to a halt, they got jobs as bartenders, etc. You’ll just have to take it from me that their lives are fascinating. They are now in their 80s and 90s and reunited about 18 years ago and are dancing once again!! I am seeing this film for the second time tonight! If you want to check out the website, it’s: www.tootscrackin.com/braml.htm

It’s not scheduled to play in this area again until next April when it will be in San Diego for one night. It’s already played New York and Boston.

Note: Her reference to “in this area” means Southern California. Looks like the film is making selected rounds, so keep your eyes open. I’m not going to have the chance to see it just yet so I’m hoping maybe it will appear on DVD.

As for the YouTube reference, I’m sure you’ve read by now Terry Teachout’s piece in The Wall Street Journal. If not, go here. I’m not sure that I’m in complete agreement, and I expect that I’ll have more to say on this subject down the road.

In Context

“Such things…as the grasp of a child’s hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or a lover, the silk of a girl’s thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind — what else is there? What else do we need?”
–Edward Abbey

I saw this quotation in a magazine. Curious about the source, I turned to Google and found it. It’s from Desert Solitaire (1968). What I also found is the preceeding sentence.

“For my own part, I am pleased enough with surfaces — in fact, they seem to me to be of much importance. Such things, for example, as the grasp of a child’s hand …”

When I read the lines in the magazine, surfaces were the farthest thing from my mind. My brain connected the word surface to superficial and unimportant, completely contradictory to the thoughts evoked by images of sunlight and music and the grasp of a child’s hand. Now, even more context was required for proper understanding. Desert Solitaire is a narrative nonfiction book about Abbey’s experiences as a park ranger in Utah, and in nature, as in all art, surfaces are indeed beautiful. How pleasant to have my synapses redirected on a more positive pathway.

Road Weary

It’s 5:40 am and we’re heading for the airport–more than ready to go home. The days at MCG were well-spent and Clairdee’s new recording project is off to a great start, start being the operative word. Her project will be a part of the new ArtistShare site that I’ve been talking about and working on intensely for the last few weeks. More about that soon.

While in Pittsburgh I got to see one of my writing mentors and that was like a shot of B12 (the Starbucks didn’t hurt either). Leslie Rubinkowski is the author of Impersonating Elvis, a wild book that brings to life the world of Elvis impersonators. She got to know quite a few of them and their world is one that I could never have imagined without reading it for real. She’s agreed to do an interview for my ArtistShare project about how to bring people to life with words.

Well, that’s it for the moment. Just wanted to check in and let you know that I’ll be back tomorrow.

Chief Cook and Bottle Washer

I am sorry that a whole week has blown by without a blog posting. I have been wearing so many hats these past many days that my head hurts. ArtistShare requires a tremendous amount of preparatory work (yes, I really am very close to launch) and the road is steep the first go-round because of the learning curve. I may be comfortable with words, but this being a technology-driven multimedia affair, I have been now been thrown into the deep-end of audio production, video production, and graphics design.

With still pictures I am not a complete novice, but it’s a very good thing that the final images are relatively small and of low-resolution. The human eye fills on so much that is actually missing., and 72 dpi (dots per inch) may look horrible when printed, but it looks great on a computer screen. A little trial and error and we’re good to go.

Motion Pictures, on the other hand, are more than a concept and I am suddenly the writer, director, cinematographer, on-camera talent, and film editor. I bought a little Canon vidcam that has a remote control. My friend came by with a light on a pole, scoped out my little office and place it strategically for best effect with my camera on a tripod across from my desk. (Thanks, Phil.) Now all I have to do is plug in the light, turn on the camera, sit in my assigned spot, click on the remote and begin speaking. Lights. Camera. Action. Of course that’s after I attempt hair, make-up and wardrobe. And did I mention that the camera makes you look 5-10 pounds heavier than the scale indicates?

After a few takes I stopped to figure out how to transfer the digital video onto my computer. (It helps to install the software first.) Then it’s time to edit. Unfortunately, it’s a one-shot, just me talking, so any cuts are jump-cuts…not good. I could use a disolve or some other transition, but truth is that when you’re done and have to compress the video for internet, the reduced quality made the transitions look especially crappy, so I gave up on that idea. I won’t bore you with all the video and techno-jargon I had to learn. Actually, the hardest part was being able to stand looking at and listening to myself over and over…you can’t help but notice all the tics and imperfections.

For the ~10-minute streaming audio talks I’ve been preparing, again I had to be writer, director, engineer, on-air talent, and sound editor. My first few attempts went nowhere, or so I thought. I’d turn on the mic, see that the sound appeared to be registering, deliver my pages, click on stop…and then I’d see nothing in the window. Click on play…hear nothing. Adjust a cable, reconnect, try again. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I changed mics and tried yet again. This time I heard something, but ever so faintly. So I ‘selected’ the whole 10 minutes and “boosted the gain.” Magic! But don’t ask me how long it took me to figure out what to do — why can’t they use simple words like volume? What is “gain” anyway? I thought it was a verb. Well, once I figured that out, the rest went much easier. It also helped when I realized that whenever I stumbled on a word, rather than rush in to correct myself it was better to pause for a few beats, back up to the beginning of the sentence, and repeat. That way I could simply edit out the bad seconds.

So, I have some more content to prepare before I’m ready to launch the ArtistShare site and I hope to get it all done this coming week. Meanwhile, I will don again my DevraDoWrite hat and post at least twice more this coming week. I hope you’ll hang in here with me.