What’s it like to record an aria on 120-year-old technology? Met tenor Piotr Beczala and soprano Susanna Phillips give it a try.
Author: David Gorsline
Silver Line progress report: 43
Defects in precast concrete panels at five of the six stations under construction threaten to delay a 2020 opening of Phase 2 of the Silver Line.
Underground Railroad Game
This play is not the first to treat its audience like children, but it is perhaps the first to do so literally, when the house lights come up and the house is addressed as a fifth-grade class beginning a teaching unit on the American Civil War.
Shallow, lacking nuance, weakly manipulative, and not nearly as shocking as it wants to be, the piece is not without its good moments.
- Underground Railroad Game, by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard with Lightning Rod Special, directed by Taibi Magar, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington
Prairie
What do you see?
Always good advice: from Elisabeth Sherman with the Whitney:
So, if you have a… negative gut reaction, one of defensiveness or fear or anxiety or rejection, maybe try to move past that and see what’s available afterwards.
Broadsides
Many-headed
Friends
Peirce Mill river herring 2018
Neil Fitzpatrick and Bill Yeaman led a walk to Rock Creek and the fish ladder established in 2007 to enable migratory river herring to swim around the man-made barrier of the dam at Peirce Mill. And our luck was great! Despite some muddy conditions in the stream, many Gizzard Shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) could be seen, working their way upstream. Alas, no acceptable photos acquired. (Note to future self: bring a longer lens and a little more patience.)
On our walk down the somewhat trippy Melvin Hazen Trail, the group spotted a single Louisiana Waterthrush (Seiurus motacilla).
At the park: 94
From my report for last Sunday:
The birds appear to have hit the snooze button in response to the variable weather conditions. None of the nest has hatched out yet, while three new nests have started. Ever-popular box #62 is still incubating.
Unfortunately, it appears that the nest in box #67 has been abandoned. And the predator guard for box #60 was no match for a determined Common Raccoon (Procyon lotor), who consumed the eggs in the box. Box #60 is set rather low to the ground, on the bank of the channel; we should think about raising it or otherwise repositioning it.
We chased some paper wasps from box #67. I was cautious about seeing a wasp with yellow bands on the abdomen (as well as some wasps showing the more common all-black coloration), but it seems that several of the Polistes wasps in our area may show that feature, including the introduced P. dominula.
Fall zone
Benjamin Strauss et al. present a harrowing quiz: outline maps of various coastal states under one possible climate change scenario, in which sea level rises by 170 feet over the coming millennia. The geophysical boundary between Coastal Plain and Piedmont is unmistakable; farther south, other states would be obliterated.
Still ticking
I wrote up some notes on A Portable Cosmos, by Alexander Jones, a summary of what 120 years of studying the Antikythera Mechanism (one of my obsessions) have revealed to us.
Angular
Cecil Taylor’s passing reminds me of my favorite passage from Craig Lucas, from scene 2 of Blue Window. It’s a good thing that I have a printed copy to refer to, because my recollection of the dialogue, from a production I saw 22 years ago, is faulty.
At a small gathering/party of friends, Tom has put a recording of Cecil Taylor on the sound system.
TOM. But I don’t know if you can hear it, but I mean, he’s literally rethinking what you can do with melody. He’s changing all the rules from the ground up.
* * *
TOM. Like a painter. He’s breaking it up, you know, and putting some parts of it in front of where they belong and he’s splitting up tonalities and colors, shapes —
ALICE. Splitting up did you say?
TOM. Splitting.
ALICE. No, I know, I was…
TOM. He’s literally challenging you to hear it, you know, rehear it. What is music?
GRIEVER. No, I know, but this isn’t like a famous melody? Or –?
TOM. Why not?
GRIEVER. I mean it isn’t like “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” backwards or something.
TOM. No…
For some reason I always want to remember that as “‘Mairzy Doats’ upside down and backwards.”
The Pavilion
The Hub’s simple staging well serves Craig Wright’s wistful, spiritual three-hander, using a single movable set piece (a bench attached to pair of dock railings) to achieve some variety and levels. Helen R. Murray’s Kari shows some flintiness; but she takes her time with Kari’s tender, giddy closing monologue (“Do you remember that day in the spring of junior year…?”) and the result is masterful. Nora Achrati is called upon to embody a gaggle of different Pine City, Minnesota denizens, and she does a good job with the more naive characters like Pudge and Lisa, but she lacks the gravel and venom that Carla needs. Her second act opening monologue is quite thoughtful and fine.
Director Kelsey Mesa has chosen to present the show without the scripted intermission, blunting the force of Kari’s explosive first act closer.
- The Pavilion, by Craig Wright, directed by Kelsey Mesa, the Hub Theatre, Fairfax, Va.
Deep shadows cast by the house lights make this black box performance space a bit too literal.
No thanks
Elizabeth G. Knight, writing in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 11:11/12 (November-December 1884), p. 134:
Salisburia adiantifolia Smith. [a synonym for Ginkgo biloba] — Although it has been known for several years that the ginkgo fruits abundantly each year in Central Park, yet, as a recent copy of Henderson’s “Handbook of Plants” states, that “there has been no fruit borne in this country,” and as Josiah Hoopes in “The Book of Evergreens” does not note the fruiting of any of the trees he knows, I venture to say to all who are interested in seeing the fruit and desire to obtain specimens that they will be supplied upon application to me at the Normal College, N. Y. City.