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seeline

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Posts posted by seeline

  1. Opera

    in Classical Discussion

    Posted

    I think that there's a big social class issue in the US as well, in that the only people who can now afford to buy tickets are (at very least) upper middle class.

    It was different not all that many decades ago, when there were many small touring opera companies that went barnstorming all around the country - they did operas and operettas. I know that my grandparents enjoyed going to operettas when they were young (back in the 19-teens and 20s), when traveling companies had gigs at area "opera houses."

    Theater used to be much more accessible re. Broadway stage stars going on extended tours with touring companies that were able to mount a number of shows, depending on audience interest and so on.

    But that all died out some decades ago, shortly after the end of WWII.

  3. Adapting Brasilian rhythms

    in Musician's Forum

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    This might sound a bit beside the point, but .... there are now a fair number of Brazilian TV shows that center on live music available on YT. So far, I've mostly come across shows focused on samba, but there are others - even some that dig deep into folkloric music that has very deep African roots.

    I don't have names or URLS handy right now, but you can probably turn up some good material just by browsing around over there... the thing is, the more you immerse yourself in the music (and language), the more you'll "get" - by osmosis if nothing else.

    Of course, there's no substitute for hanging out with people who make music - and in NYC, it shouldn't be that hard for you to find at least a few bars where there are samba jams (rodas de sambas) and whatnot, though maybe those will be happening in Brooklyn, Queens (etc.) and not necessarily in Manhattan. It seems to me that in Brazil (and other Latin American countries), music is more a part of daily life than here - and there are many, many talented musicians who've never played in "professional" groups. Meeting some of them could be a game-changer for you.

  6. Cajon recommendations please

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    Also... I've never played Meinl's top of the line instruments, but I'm sure they're good.

    However, they make their money with the cheaper instruments, which are primarily bought by schools. If you look at a good selection of them, you'll see that many are quite flashy-looking.

    Better to go with higher-quality materials and build, imo.

    fwiw, this guy makes some beautiful cajons out of tone woods - http://tonecajon.com/ Have never had the chance to play one of them, but maybe someday...

  8. Cajon recommendations please

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    It depends on what you want...

    Peruvian-style cajons (the original) are literally boxes, with no snares.

    Snared cajons developed in the 70s in Spain via the flamenco nuevo movement. Essentially they put snares on Peruvian cajons.

    There are also Cuban-style rumba cajons, but that's a whole different ballgame.

    do you want the snared sound (which can often be adjusted or dampened altogether), or aa deep bass sound, or...??

    I would recommend staying away from mass-produced cajons (like Meinl and Pearl and, to a lesser extent, LP's boxes - that's Latin percussion) and going with smaller makers, like Fat Cajon (for the Cuban sound; made by Fat Congas), Gon Bops... whatever works for you, really. The market is flooded with cheap cajons (Meinl, anyone?) made from woods that aren't the greatest (look out for so-called "Siam oak," aka rubberwood - timber from rubber plantations in SE Asia). You probably would like a birch head, which is the standard on most of the better cajons.

    And there are different types of tuning/adjustment systems. Some of the flamenco-style drums have loose upper corners for making sharp slap sounds. others don't.

    It's really a matter of personal taste, and I would encourage you to get out there and try out some drums.

    Edited to add: I haven't had a chance to try out Swan percussion's cajons, but they look like they're very nice drums. The guy whose "bare snare" design they've adopted has a small shop and makes some very nice drums - quite varied lineup, too. And less expensive! His site: http://www.cajongo.com/index.html (Navigation is kinda clunky, but he's got good sound samples for everything and is more than happy to answer questions.)

  10. Am I the only one who finds Fred Hersch......

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    Yes, totally different, and so consistent he gets a bad rap as being boring-like many consistent, productive people. But he was stable and a worker, and that doesn't make sexy copy like the ever-popular self-destructive wastrel model. Hart was a genius, but Hammerstein had that '99% perspiration' that might as well be...

    I think Hammerstein wrote some truly beautiful lyrics that are deceptively simple... and then there are the songs (like the ones I cited above) with extremely witty wordplay and some bite - the one about political and personal compromise is very mordant.

    And even though many of the songs from the R-Hammerstein musicals have been performed in an overblown manner (Some Enchanted Evening, for example), those same songs can be sung in a quiet, nuanced way - and can be absolutely devastating as a result.

    "Oklahoma!" has never been my cuppa, though... (But it has some marvelous songs.)

  13. Am I the only one who finds Fred Hersch......

    in Artists

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    I wonder how much of the seeming resistance to Rogers-Hammerstein songs in the jazz world has to do with their work being perceived as being overly sentimental, even corny. (Which it is sometimes, but not always.) It certainly doesn't fit with the "hip" ethos of the 50s and 60s...

    I think that's much closer to the mark. Those musicals are extremely sentimental - I wouldn't go near 'The Sound of Music' for decades after an infatuation with it as a ten year old. But I watched it again a couple of years back and was enchanted.

    The streetwise wise-crackers of Rodgers and Hart songs are always going to have more kudos than nuns and kids dressed in curtains. But I think that disguises a richness in Rodgers music that the knowing music fan often misses but the general public gets without even thinking about it.

    Oh, there are some "wise-cracker" songs in at least one Rodgers-Hammerstein show, but those songs were cut from the movie version. Cue "How Can Love Survive" from one of the original cast albums (stage) of "The Sound of Music"...sung by Max (booking agent) and the Baroness:

    No little shack do you share with me,

    We do not flee from the mortgagee,

    Nary a care in the world have we;

    How Can Love Survive?

    You're fond of bonds and you own a lot.

    I have a plane and a diesel yacht,

    Plenty of nothing you haven't got

    How Can Love Survive?

    No rides for us on the top of a bus

    In the face of the freezing breezes.

    You reach your goals in your comfy old Rolls

    Or in one of your Mercedes!

    Far, very far off the beam are we,

    Quaint and bizarre as a team are we,

    Two millionaires with a dream are we,

    We're keeping romance alive.

    Two millionaires with a dream are we,

    We'll make our love survive

    No little cold water flat have we,

    Warmed by a glow of insolvency,

    Up to your necks in security.

    How Can Love Survive?

    How can I show what I feel for you?

    I cannot go out and steal for you,

    I cannot die like Camille for you.

    How Can Love Survive?

    You millionaires with financial affairs

    Are too busy for simple pleasure.

    When you are poor it is toujours l'amour,

    For l'amour all the poor have leisure!

    Caught in our gold plated chains are we,

    Lost in our wealthy domains are we,

    Trapped by our capital gains are we,

    But we'll keep romance alive.

    Trapped by your capital gains are we,

    We'll (You'll) make our (your) love survive

    Back to the overall take on the shows: I think another thing that changed drastically - re. musical theater in general - is that the Rodgers-Hammerstein shows wedded the book to the songs, and vice versa. This is a major change from the era of Rodgers-Hart, the Gershwins, et. al., when the plot and characters were thin, one-dimensional, disposable - and often, interchangeable.

    Not so with Rodgers-Hammerstein, or much else in musical theater from the 50s on.

  15. Adventure Music Label Sampler

    in Recommendations

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    Their Moacir Santos releases are *really* worth picking up - one (Ouro Negro) came out in Brazil in a limited edition and is o.p. now.

    I also really like Orquestra Popular da Camara and Hamilton de Hollanda's discs. "Samba Meets Boogie Woogie" is really fun and well-done - sambas from the 1930s-50s that have witty lyrics about the collision (and, sometimes, assimilation) of Brazilian music and N. American jazz. (João Gilberto fans will recognize some of the cuts, like "Adeus America.")

    On the others in their catalog, well... I think some are really nice, and some are tailored to fit a certain niche market in the English-speaking world, while others are by gifted artists but not quite "there" for me.

    I hope the label survives... so many small labels have gone down the drain over the past 10 years.

    I think the owners of Adventure are working with some good small labels (mostly artist-run) in Brazil, and that many of the things they issue have had just about zero exposure down there. Really, they're releasing a lot of stuff that's - at best - niche music in Brazil itself.

  20. Sandusky Investigation Findings

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted

    The trustees probably wield more power at a large public institution like PSU, but I doubt it's enough to oust Spanier from the faculty completely.

    I was (in my thinking if not my words) being a bit sarcastic about the power of the PSU board of trustees, as it appears that a number of them were complicit in shielding Sandusky, per the Freeh report. And the current governor of PA is on the current board - not a good thing, I think.

  22. Sandusky Investigation Findings

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    There was actually a huge controversy over the town's name back in 1953 ... PSU wanted the town to change its name when the school was given university status. The university ended up calling its "town" University Park. It has a separate post office and Zip code.

    As for the local housing market, it's really brutal... and nobody has come up with feasible ways to solve the many problems re. that as yet. State College is still a small town. It irks a lot of people (obviously, I'm one of them) that so many properties are tied up.

  23. Sandusky Investigation Findings

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    In a story that is getting almost no play in national media, Graham Spanier got himself a job working for the feds on national security issues.

    :wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

    edit - this actually happened back in April. Does anyone know if anything changed about Spanier's plans to work on projects with the government after the Freeh report came out?

    Local media are keeping very quiet about this, too.

    And... Spanier is still a member of the PSU faculty - which is just plain wrong.

    Per local sources (and probably some national as well), Erickson (PSU pres.) said that they accepted the lesser sanctions in order to avoid a 4-year death penalty sentence.

    My take: I think they should have gotten the death penalty, on top of all the rest, and that the Big 10 should tell PSU goodbye. PSU regularly plays teams like Temple University's Owls and runs roughshod over them... I think it might be a good idea to bust them back down to the same level as the Temple Owls for a few years as well.

    I used to find PSU football enjoyable prior to Paterno's huge push to get the team admitted to the Big 10. There were a lot of crazy alumni (spending huge amounts of money) coming to home games in those days (70s and early 80s), but it was still - mainly - a family picnic tailgating thing.

    The number of apartments and townhouses owned by out-of-towners and used only on home game weekends is staggering. I can't imagine how many rental units would be available on and around State College if even half of those properties came back in the market.

  25. The Elusive Girl From Ipanema

    in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...

    Posted · Edited by seeline

    There's nothing like the real thing, and that applies to the whole genre of Bossa Nova.

    completely agree with that and i think i said it here before. i don't like the american versions of many brasilian albums nor much less those made specifically for the US market. they were made for the american market only, and they don't translate the original songs correctly (they add nasty orchestrations or are oversugared or don't translate the balanco). but it always has to be said that in many cases it was in the brasilian musicians interest to be sucessful in america, after the sergio mendes mould.

    Very much agreed. One album that I really have difficulty with is "Cannonball's Bossa Nova." He and the all-Brazilian rhythm section are on two different planets, pretty much... If he had worked with them, it could have been a great album.

    I think she's making fun of Astrud.

    To some extent, yes, but the way she phrases that part is (imo) more of a satire of all the English-language "lounge"-type recordings of the song that had been made to date. There's no balanço; everything is deliberately right on the beat.

    IIRC, the music in the film is presented in pretty much pure samba style rather than the modified bossa style, then many of the songs became bossa nova staples as interpreted by Joao Gilberto and others, but I'll have to listen to the soundtrack to test my memory.

    I'd have to go back and listen to it again to confirm - but I think that a case can be made for the soundtrack as an intro. to a lot of the composers/lyricists and their work. That + João Gilberto = popularity. (Which is what I was trying to convey earlier, albeit in a less nuanced and maybe inaccurate way.)

    Something that I didn't realize until I started spending lots of time listening to Brazilian music is that JG loves to sing sambas from the 30s and 40s. Many songs that we think of as "bossa nova" are actually not... "Doralice," "Pra que discutir com Madame," "Falsa baiana" and lots more.

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