Yes, you are welcome to listen along. We would like to make this available as a podcast and also put links in the blog timeline. However, until we secure permission from the publisher to record and podcast, we can only share the recordings privately. If you would like to listen in the meantime, please do […]
Posts
announcing and explaining the ground rules of “a kaddish in two-part harmony,” a collaborative project lasting a year and a day
I was all set to play a nice, meditative Kaddish this afternoon when technology decided to mess with me. It took me an hour of fiddling just to get the program to launch so I could record my dulcet tones for you. After all that, I was in no mood to be prayerful. But here […]
Mira Amiras’ blog “and this part is true” had a recent post entitled “war stories” about translating the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourner’s prayer. She asks, “What does this really mean?” It’s a good question, because the Aramaic text doesn’t say a thing about mourning. It’s a pretty generic prayer, in fact. Here’s the basic […]
Here, for the benefit of my fellow left-leaning progressive egalitarian voters in the Montclair District of Oakland, is the answer key for Tuesday’s election. For the rest of y’all, this is an opportunity to learn why you should be glad you don’t have to vote here, where democracy is not a sport for amateurs. If […]
[This is a cross-post from my business blog, Global Pragmatism. I posted it there because of all the math-geek tie-ins, but since it’s about music, it belongs here, too.] Benoit Mandelbrot died this month. He was the guy who came up with fractal theory, which led to all those gorgeous computer graphics like this one: […]
My recent Multilingual column mentioned tuna noodle hotdish. For those readers who aren’t familiar with this snowbelt classic, here’s a recipe. This is an old standard for Norwegian-Lutherans in the USA snowbelt—it’s what we make when our neighbor’s recovering from surgery, or when a friend has just had a death in the family, or when […]
Pride and Prejudicesky.
In Act I, a geezer wants to off himself because he’s a geezer. Handsome bass devil who sings better and is several feet taller talks him into sticking around, exchanging youth for some dubious duties later on. Spotting a beautiful, young woman who is actually just a soprano and neither of those things, he agrees, […]
(If I’m any good at this, it will be obvious that my nano-operas owe a great debt to Anna Russell. There’s no point trying to outdo Dame Russell’s great analysis of the Ring of the Nibelungen, which you must immediately view here, here, and here if you haven’t already. My own humble effort here is […]