Impassioned Threesome

From the Classical Vault Dept.: It was a rare treat to see and hear the Golub-Kaplan-Carr trio perform in 1984. They were a top-notch group essaying the heart of the piano trip repertory, but pianist David Golub died of lung cancer in 2000 at the age of 50. Violinist Mark Kaplan teaches at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and performs as a soloist and inchamber ensembles; cellist Colin Carr is professor of cello at the Royal Academy of Music and continues pursuing a solo career. Here’s the brief, interview-free advance I wrote, followed by the review itself.

                                                                                 

THREE YOUNG INSTRUMENTALISTS decided not long ago to interrupt their solo activities for a few weeks each year to combine their talents as the Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio, presenting the best of the repertory for the ensemble piano, violin and cello.

This trio will appear at Union College’s Memorial at 8 tonight in a program of trios by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms.

Pianist David Golub has performed with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and others here and abroad; he also has spent summers at Aspen, Marlboro and Ravinia. Violinist Isaac Stern called him one of the most gifted musicians I have met in many years of music making.”

Violinist Mark Kaplan’s list of appearances is similar to Golub’s. He also has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and others.

English cellist Cohn Carr came to the music scene in this country as a winner of the Young Concert Artists’ International Auditions. He was a first-prize winner of the Naumberg Cello Competition in 1981 and of the 1982 Piatigorsky Memorial Award. He is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory.

Dinosaur Dubbing

From the Tech Vault Dept.: Here’s another tech oldie, my how-to about compiling a videotape from your existing footage by using a 1994 software program to supervise the jockeying through individual segments that are then transferred ... it’s exhausting even to write this. And I can assure you that the result was just as primitive-looking as the process suggests.

                                                                                       

REMEMBER THE TORMENT of sitting through yet another slide show as Dad brutalized captive guests with scenes from last summer's beach trip? Every single shot he took was jammed into that projector, no matter how poorly cropped or focused it was. With one of those awful I'm-getting-too-old epiphanies, I realized that I've been inflicting the exact same pain on my guests, but the means of torture has changed. Today, they're forced to suffer through my videotapes.

And every scrap of footage is intact. Every time I accidentally pushed the start button and filmed two minutes of floor tile. Every shaky sequence of passing scenery. Had I not been asked to write about VideoDirector, all my long-suffering friends would have had to buy it for me. I can't live without it now.

VideoDirector is an elegant product because it gives you the means to edit tapes with your computer without consuming your hard drive in the process. Since you aren't actually capturing video, the computer simply functions as a control center to aid in the editing process, miraculously compiling choice material from those teeming tapes into well-paced episodes.

I had already tried video editing with my camcorder and VCR; a good VCR can pause and resume quickly, but controlling the camcorder is much more difficult, especially when you're trying to tweeze a two-or three-second scene out of a sequence. Fortunately, some camcorders have a special jack built in that allows them to be controlled by another machine—which can be a computer.

The Nominalization of Barbecue

From the Culinary Vault Dept.: Twenty years ago I was well into a barbecue craze that had me buying a succession of smokers and perfecting my dry rubs and sauces. Ironically, it also steered me away from barbecue restaurants, as I tended to enjoy my own fabrications more – but I remember Jr.’s BBQ in Burnt Hills as a particularly fine eatery. It’s long gone, replaced at that site by place selling sheds.

                                                                                     

BARBECUE INSPIRES SUCH PASSION in its fans that what once was adjective or verb is a richly portentous noun to those in the know. The only adjective regularly allowed beside it is “good,” and “good” means nothing less than excellent.

Generic Pulled Pork Photo

More elusive than good barbecue, it seems, are good barbecue restaurants. So it was a shock to discover that Jr.’s (that’s “Junior’s”) has been in operation for nine months, in a venerable Burnt Hills location that started life as a speakeasy, became one of the first establishments to sport a liquor license post-Volstead Act, then went on to become various restaurants, most notably Silvestri’s and Felicia’s.

Now it’s owned by Tom and Kristle DiPietro and it’s a seven-day-a-week barbecue joint that also serves sandwiches, wings, great desserts and a full spectrum of slow-roasted meats.

Because that’s the whole point of barbecue. You want to turn a tough cut of meat tender with a lengthy cooking process, and you want to impart flavors of smoke and a tangy marinade. Thus there are methods of grilling and smoking and roasting to use separately or in combination, the key ingredient being time.

Tom DiPietro has put a lot of that into the restaurant business, in which he’s been employed in one capacity or another for 33 of his 46 years. And he displayed his adeptness the evening I visited with family and a friend because mid-week business was slow enough for him to work it nearly alone.

Sweet Soldierly Stuff

From the Operetta Vault Dept.: Looks like the Bard Summerscape Festival will be back on its feet this summer (2021), and I look forward to learning more about the life and work of sisters Nadia and Lili Boulanger. Meanwhile, here’s a look back at a production there of the rarely seen “Chocolate Soldier” in 2010.

                                                                                  

IN THE BUILDING’S LARGER THEATER, the final acclaimed performance of Franz Schreker’s 1910 opera “Der ferne Klang” sent singers scurrying past, their faces grotesquely painted. But with an August too clogged to allow me to see both of this season’s operas, I succumbed to the part of me that likes froth and happy endings and sentimental tunes.

I hitherto only knew “The Chocolate Soldier” as a punchline, a payoff for a gag involving forgotten musicals if “The Red Mill” or “Naughty Marietta” won’t due. And I swear to you, during the drive home I was listening to a 1966 Jean Shepherd radio show in which he described dining at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, in a room that “featured four very proper musicians ... playing things like selections from ‘The Chocolate Soldier.’”

Bard’s Summerscape mission is to bring you the little-seen and rarely heard, and director-choreographer Will Pomerantz did another commendable job in putting this on the stage. As was the case with his production two summers ago of the Gershwin musical “Of Thee I Sing,” he was working with a property that no doubt clogged the stage with chorus and dancers; this trimmed-down version made intensive use of the hard-working chorus: it’s impressive how adaptable women can be with the mere addition of a mustache or two.

The operetta is based on Shaw’s “Arms and the Man,” although Shaw completely dissociated from the piece and insisted on no royalty payments, a decision he must have later regretted.

Are You Going to Finish That?

FIRST THERE’S A SMALL SENSE OF BETRAYAL. Mark Bittman’s cookbooks are reliable foundational items for any culinary collection, offering satisfying recipes described in a reassuring voice. His latest book, however, is almost an anti-cookbook insofar as it’s more or less an anti-food book. Animal, Vegetable, Junk looks at what have become the unhealthy dietary norms for most Americans, how they got that way, and what we can do to change it.

“Food drives history,” states Bittman, “and soil drives food.” His book-opening look at the history of agriculture is a fascinating journey through the millennia of evolutionary steps humans took to learn to localize their food production. And it sets the stage for the introduction of factory farming, which, among other nasty consequences, ruins the land beneath it.

In the mid-19th century, John Deere revolutionized plowing with a new design, better material, and a shift to retail sales, helping farmers with resistant soil break up their ground for planting. But this also was the beginning of an assembly-line attitude towards labor and production that served to increase yields (in good years, at least) even as the farmers who worked the land became less familiar with that land, thus less responsive to its needs.

“Before long, it took more land, more equipment, more chemicals, and more financing to become a successful farmer in the most prolific crops, like corn, soybeans, and wheat,” writes Bittman. “And as it developed, buying mechanized farm equipment did not guarantee prosperity, but rather debt ... ”

Slava’s Cello Show

From the Classical Vault Dept.: While poring through old pieces to post here, I play a game with myself: What did I venture out to review 20 (or 25 or 30) years ago? In this case, it’s 35 years, and it was a recital by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. I’d seen him about a decade before then, a recital at the University of Connecticut where he played the Prokofiev Cello Sonata, among other works, and it was just a dazzling as the concert I describe below.

                                                                                     

THERE IS A QUALITY characterizing a virtuoso performer that goes beyond elements of tone and technique. It’s been likened to a kind of sorcery; it certainly inspires awe. This is the quality cellist Mstislav Rostropovich brought to Proctor’s Theatre in his Monday evening recital.

Pianist Lambert Orkis was an equal participant in the success, a partner where too often you only find an accompanist. And the program was dominated, until the very end, by the musical personality of Brahms.

Mstislav Rostropovich and Lambert Orkis

Opening with an arrangement of the adagio from an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, Rostropovich came right out of the gate with a tone control that proved his arms and fingers were conduits of a remarkable singing voice.

The piece did not call for much piano assistance but Orkis came into his own with the three pieces in folk-style by Robert Schumann. Forming a mini-sonata of contrasting mood, the first was jaunty and whimsical, the second more lyrical, the third a grandiose conclusion.

They set the stage quite romantically for Brahms’s Cello Sonata No. 2 in F major, which concluded the first half. This is a piece that demands the attention of only the most thoughtful players and players whose personalities won’t get lost in the sweep of the work.

The Scarlatti Odyssey

MY SCARLATTI ODYSSEY began with LPs of Ralph Kirkpatrick’s recordings – on the Odyssey label, in fact – after which I was lured to the piano performances by Horowitz. But I reached nirvana with the Scott Ross complete set of those solo sonatas, so varied and so fascinating that listening through all 555 of them was a delightful voyage, not a chore.

There have been many, many recordings to discover and enjoy since that time, recordings that ask me to wrench my allegiance from harpsichord to piano and back again. So it was a welcome side-trip to discover that English composer Charles Avison, who lived from 1709 to 1770, turned a number of Scarlatti’s sonatas into concerti grossi that were published in 1744, while Scarlatti was still alive.

At that point, only 30 of Scarlatti’s sonatas had been published, but they still offered a rich source of material. And Avison didn’t let himself feel constrained by the pieces he chose to include. In modern parlance, we would say he “reimagined” them, re-harmonizing and expanding them where it seemed to make sense, even adding movements (typically slower ones) to round out the form of the concerti.

There’s a new recording that showcases four of the twelve of Avison’s “Concertos in Seven Parts done from the Lessons of Domenico Scarlatti,” featuring the Spanish ensemble Tiento Nuovo, founded in 2016 by harpsichordist Ignacio Prego. The ensemble, which varies in size according to each particular project, is made up of a traditional concerto grosso ensemble, with a string quartet as concertino and a ripieno of two violins, viola, and continuo – itself made up of cello, violone (a precursor of the string bass) and organ or harpsichord.

Born to Boogie

From the Theater Vault Dept.: Given my reaction to some of the recent musicals that I’ve been sent to review – recent to me meaning post-1940s – I was surprised to warm to “Billy Elliot” as much as I did when it hit the area during its 2013 tour. Elton John’s jukebox-ish score notwithstanding.

                                                                                

IT’S OFTEN SURPRISING how easily sentiment can go to work on you. While I’m fairly immune to dead-mom sentiment and dad-realizes-what-a-shit-he’s been sentiment, “Billy Elliot: The Musical” got me with its coal-miners’ strike. It took place in England in 1984, giving the odious Margaret Thatcher the opportunity to begin dismantling workers’ hard-won rights throughout the nation. Most of the West Virginia side of my family are miners; I’ve been down the pit and I’ve learned firsthand about the struggles they continue to wage in order to pursue a dangerous job.

Drew Minard as "Billy Elliot"

My mother escaped via the Navy. Eleven-year-old Billy Elliot is offered a way out of a future in the mines through dance, with all of the attendant preconceptions that will color the attitudes of his father, brother and friends.

It’s a good premise for a musical, with such a firestorm of energy during the first act that you easily can tolerate Elton John’s sound-alike score – after all, his music was part of the soundtrack of the Thatcher era. But once the plot threads are tied up at the top of Act Two, that energy flags and the score’s repetitiousness is cruelly overshadowed when an excerpt of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” underscores Billy’s dream dance.

Choreographer Peter Darling and director Stephen Daldry created a breathtaking ensemble number early in the show to the song “Solidarity,” in which the striking miners, the opposing police and a classroom of ballet students interact in an otherworldly manner, using the potential of costume pieces and chairs to the fullest (chairs feature almost as individual characters throughout the show).

The Fable of Why Essie's Tall Friend Got the Fresh Air

Guest Blogger Dept.: Indiana-born George Ade sprang to fame with the publication of Fables in Slang, which first appeared serially in the Chicago Record in 1897. Soon he was publishing other books as well as writing plays and, as the movies came to life, screenplays. His style of gentle satire was enhanced by his ear for the vernacular – but don’t let me blather on. Listen to him.

                                                                                  

THE OWNER OF A FURNISHING STORE gave employment to a Boy with Dreamy Eyes, who took good care of his Nails and used Scented Soap and carried a Pocket Looking-Glass. It was his Delight to stand in the Doorway and watch the Girls all Color Up when they caught Sight of him. He was said to be a Divine Waltzer at these Balls that cost the Gents 50 cents each and the Ladies get in free.

There was a Girl named Essie who was Hanging Around the Front of the Store about half of the Time, waiting to get a Chance to Speak to Bert. She Chewed Gum and kept her Sailor Hat pulled down to her Eyebrows and had her Name worked out in Wire and used it as a Breastpin. After she had waited an Hour or so, and he had Broken Away long enough to take her aside, she would want to know what it was that Net had said about her, or else she would ask why he had not Answered her Note. It was always just about as Momentous as that.

If Essie did not come, she sent some one with a Message, and sometimes other Floor Managers with Red Neckties and Forelocks would come in to see about the Arrangements for the next Grand Hop by the Eucalyptus Pleasure Club.

Special Here-Comes-Summer Drive-In Double Feature!

From the Culinary Vault Dept.: We’ve been very loyal to Jumpin’ Jack’s Drive-In, the one-of-a-kind burger joint in Scotia, NY, which is open only in the summer. I wrote about the place for Metroland Magazine four times, with my first review running in 1987, my second in 1990. To bring you up to date, here are the third and fourth, starting with the latter, from 2012.

                                                                                              

AMONG THE HORRIFYING IMAGES of Hurricane Irene’s devastation last summer was the sight of Jumpin’ Jack’s under water, many of its picnic tables rafting down the Mohawk, its ice cream building flooded so high that coolers floated up and cracked the ceiling.

Owner Mark Lansing was quick even then to put things in perspective, redirecting many of the offers of help to the hard-hit areas of Schoharie County and elsewhere. With the help of flood insurance, a loyal crew of workers and a mild winter, he worked doggedly to get the place ready for its traditional spring opening this year.

It took place the last Thursday in March, with an appropriate amount of media hoopla. Although we tend to give a place three months to get itself up and running before visiting to review, we figure that the nature of Jumpin’ Jack’s would allow a week to suffice. Besides, we were hungry.

It’s not great food. Never has been. And that has never been the issue. I have other stops for gourmet burgers, smoked burgers, fast-food burgers, whatever manifestation of beef between buns proves desirable, if you know what I mean.

Dogging the Scales

From the Classical Vault Dept.: Contemporary classical music has had a strong area champion in the Dogs of Desire, an Albany Symphony-based ensemble that concentrates on small, current, often commissioned works. Here’s a review I found nestling near the “Les Mis” piece I posted yesterday.  

                                                                                      

THE NAME OF THIS ENSEMBLE, drawn from the very fine ranks of the Albany Symphony, was chosen by music director David Alan Miller when it proved, of the many choices he compiled, most distasteful to his mom.

The Dogs of Desire is a large chamber group charged with playing new works, most of them commissioned by or on behalf of the ensemble. At this point in its nearly 20-year history, it has a long list of such works to draw from, but continues to seek out more.

Thus it was that we were treated to three world premieres, two of them written in collaboration with video artists. Putting music and moving image together creates an entirely different sensory experience that is provoked by music alone. Our eyes are sensory bullies, demanding the lion’s share of attention. Yet the addition of music, as film buffs know, deepens the emotional experience even when we’re not fully aware of it.

Amanda Harding’s “Venus Unhinged” also added the dimension of words, setting three poems by Eliza Griswold and one by Margaret Atwood, all of it exploring, as Harding explained, “the dark side of love.”

Mis-ing the Point

From the Theater Vault Dept.: This review speaks for itself, exposing me as the stick-in-the-mud that I am, a man whose early diet of Gershwin and Porter and Berlin scores inspired an oozing intolerance for more recent musicals. But I did my best to appreciate this experience eight years ago.

                                                                                        

I AM THE ONLY MUSICAL THEATER FAN IN THE WORLD who has not been exposed to any form of the phenomenon that is Les Mis. The sprawling English-language musical version of the even-more-sprawling Victor Hugo novel opened in London in 1985, hit Broadway two years later and probably has offered actors more production contracts than any other recent show.

It’s a three-hour distillation of the Hugo’s tale of sin and redemption, politics and faith, and it plays every note of sentimentality and offers every trope of melodrama that can be crammed into its nonstop score.

It’s impossible not to enjoy the experience. But it’s impossible to enjoy the show without surrendering your critical faculties to the well-crafted emotional manipulation employed by its story and song.

You know the story. Noble criminal, bastion of moral and physical strength. Dogged pursuer, obsessed with duty. Orphaned waif. Bellicose students. Sewers. You probably know the score. “I Dreamed a Dream.” “On My Own.” “Bring Him Home.” A musical progression that never strays far from resolution, a festival of V7 to I, with plenty of plagal cadences for that spiritual-experience feel.

Pleasures for the Few

From the Classical Vault Dept.: It’s no secret that the classical-music audience in New York’s Albany area is laughably small. There used to be classical-music programming at many of the area’s halls, but these days you’ll find nothing at Proctors while the Union College series soldiers own, its audience greying into obsolescence. Here’s a look at a pair of concerts I reviewed in 1986.

                                                                                    

THEY KEPT THE HOUSE LIGHTS ON at Proctor’s Theatre during the concert by L’Orchestre National de Lyon, probably so we all could see that there were some people in the house. Or maybe it was just to read the program notes. Whatever, the little club that gathered—there were, oh, maybe three times as many in the house as on the stage—rallied forth to do the clapping work of many.

Henri Dutilleux

Not that I think they should clap—this is a guilt thing that classical music concertgoers in the area seem to fall for. We’d better clap hard and make the orchestra feel good, make them think this isn’t a completely deadbeat town. But look at it this way—the fewer there are in the house, the fewer distractions you have to put up with. Let the unwashed stay home and yell at their TV sets.

It’s not as if the orchestra tried any less hard. If anything, there was a nice feeling of casualness, of spontaneity about the concert. We probably all could have taken off our ties and been that much happier.

Let’s face it—the crowd isn’t going to come out to hear stuff written by composers whose names they can’t pronounce. “So what’d you hear last night?” they ask at work the next morning. “Oh, the first symphony by Aw-Ree Duh ... Doo ... Duh-Tee-Yo!” Nope.

Dredging Up the ‘70s

From the Theatrical Vault Dept.: Wasn’t I the bitchy little critic here! Not that I’ve changed; I’m simply more inclined to avoid the shows that I know will anoy me. But here’s a glimpse of what was going around 35 years ago.

                                                                                   

HAVING A COLLEGE ROOMMATE who was a slob was easy compared to having one who was a poet. I’m talking about the kind of person who would utter bathos and call it profound, who bled for correct causes, whose own shallow depths were seen as somehow mystical.

Ben Vereen

“Pippin” is that kind of show. A product of Broadway’s confused 1970s, it has dated more rapidly than the fast-talkin’ stuff of the ‘30s (I’m thinking specifically of such shows as “On Your Toes,” seen recently in a successful revival.) At least chestnuts made no bones about being fluffy.

But “Pippin” attempts to celebrate basic values of self-confidence and conjugal love by lampooning the very vehicle that propels it: musical-comedy tradition. In doing so, it smirks at itself many, many times too often.

The production that played at Proctor’s last week was directed by and starred Ben Vereen, who made a deserved name for himself in the Broadway original. Too bad he doesn’t have better material to work with. He is presented as the Leading Player of a smart-mouthed troupe that tells the story of Pippin, son of Roman Emperor Charlemagne, a young man who (and isn’t this a metaphor for the ‘70s!) seeks to find some kind of personal fulfillment.

Identity Capers

From the Classical Vault Dept.: What was the classical-music world like in the Albany, NY, area before Covid? Let’s go back 34 years to find out. Although the pandemic nipped most live performances in the bud, it’s always been a rough slog for American composers, living and dead. But the Albany Symphony has made impressive attempts, over the decades, to rectify that. Here’s what was going on in April 1987.

                                                                                    

THE IDENTITY CRISIS that continues to worry American composers has at its root mixed feelings towards the music that truly can be defined as American.

Amy Beach

We heard two different reactions to that problem at Friday night’s Troy Music Hall concert by the Albany Symphony Orchestra, as Julius Hegyi conducted works by a pair of Americans.

Amy Beach's “Le Bal Masque” demonstrated an old style. Written in 1894 as a piano solo, orchestrated at the turn of the century, it is a pleasant, three-quarter-time work, American only insofar as it has none of the ethnic eccentricities that might identify it with a particular other country. It sounds nonspecific. European.

This impression could be partly the fault of the conducting, for Hegyi brought to it his characteristically inscrutable baton, resulting in wildly incompatible changes of tempo throughout the brief piece.

Ellen Zwilich wrote her Concerto for Piano and Orchestra for a premiere just a year ago. Like any contemporary American composer, she has the varied legacy of this century to reckon with: like many, she has “gone European” in the sense that her work has more in common with the tunelessness of the Virgil Thomson school than with our very melodic domestic heritage.

How to Live to be 200

Guest Blogger Dept.: Hey, here’s Stephen Leacock again, this time with an essay about health, a topic very much on our minds in these waning pandemic days. As always, let’s forgo our Zoom-errific day for a moment and take in the advice of the Canadian humorist.

                                                                                             

TWENTY YEARS AGO I knew a man called Jiggins, who had the Health Habit.

He used to take a cold plunge every morning. He said it opened his pores. After it he took a hot sponge. He said it closed the pores. He got so that he could open and shut his pores at will.

Jiggins used to stand and breathe at an open window for half an hour before dressing. He said it expanded his lungs. He might, of course, have had it done in a shoe-store with a boot stretcher, but after all it cost him nothing this way, and what is half an hour?

After he had got his undershirt on, Jiggins used to hitch himself up like a dog in harness and do Sandow exercises. He did them forwards, backwards, and hind-side up.

He could have got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one that he couldn’t do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour on his stomach, perfectly happy.

Remembering Ashley's

 From the Food Vault Dept.: In 1986, after I’d been writing for Albany’s Metroland Magazine for a couple of years, I proposed that we start a restaurant review column, with me at its helm. There being no budget for meals, I further proposed that we cadge a meal off the restaurant under examination, and promise them a good review. And make no bones about it in the column. This we did for 22 weeks, at which time a budget was created and the reviews became unannounced. But here’s my fourth-ever restaurant piece, written in 1986 following a meal with my wife, Susan, and good-natured photographer Drew Kinum. I wish I had a better record of his photos than the lousy photocopy reproduced here. Ashley’s is long gone, by the way, replaced by a succession of ever-less-impressive eateries in that hotel.

                                                                                            

ASHLEY’S, THE RESTAURANT at the new Albany Marriott on Wolf Road, has class. That’s more than good looks and tasty food: its a style that reflects a happy confluence of personalities on both sides of the kitchen door.

Like a good play, it’s a collaboration of dedicated people who aren’t constrained by close-minded management. The decor is classy, which means it’s not too rambunctious: multiple levels to give illusions of seclusion. with a pleasant deep violet color on the walls. There is sound thinking behind this: it buoys the traveler and neighbor alike.

One of my most-treasured dinner memories came from a visit to a five-star place downstate in which the entree was a disappointment. In spite of this, the ambiance and good fellowship prevailed. Ashley’s provided all that as well as terrific entrees, but lets start at the beginning and go through this meal.

My chief gastronomic assistant, Susan, was along to give the place what-for. She and photographer Drew sat opposite me at a long table on one of the upper levels and we unfolded the large, colorful menus to make the tough choices.

WWMHD?

WHAT WOULD MOZART HAVE DONE? We have so much evidence of what he did do that it’s almost unnecessary to ask, but there is a handful of fascinating fragments of works he wrote for violin and piano – piano and violin, if you use the ordering he gave to the pieces – that warrant some extra attention, according to Timothy Jones.

Jones is a Mozart scholar who has spent enough years immersed in the composer’s works that he can combine a sense of what should be with an adventurous exploration of what could be. Four of those fragments are featured on a new recording by violinist Rachel Podger and fortepianist Christopher Glynn, with three of those fragments presented in two different completions apiece – a total of seven pieces, then, averaging about eight minutes apiece.

Podger recorded Mozart’s completed violin sonatas a few years ago, with Gary Cooper at the keyboard, so this could be seen as volume nine of that series – but it’s taking us into such different ground that it demands to be considered apart from the rest.

In creating these completions, Jones declared his ambition as being “to recognise the ‘openness’ of the fragments, test contrasting hypotheses about the material and then seeing where different assumptions might take the music over the course of the entire movement.”

Flight of the Concord

From the Classical Vault Dept.: Here’s a piece I wrote about a youthful vocal ensemble that made its debut recording for the Dorian label in 1999. This wasn’t written as liner notes, and I can’t recall where it was intended to land, if indeed it was used anywhere. So I share it with you, along with a recommendation that you seek out and listen to this recording.

                                                                                         

BEAUTIFUL VOICES SOUND GOOD ALMOST ANYWHERE, but place them in one of the world’s finest concert halls and the effect can transcend all expectations. As the Concord Ensemble stands in a semi-circle on the stage of the Troy Music Hall, in a once-prosperous manufacturing city near new York’s Hudson River, they sing to an auditorium of empty seats, facing a pair of microphones.

Over the course of the past few hours, the microphones had been aimed and re-aimed countless times. Now they stand near a tall stepladder a few feet from the Music Hall’s high stage. Dozens of yards of black fabric muffled the balcony and orchestra seats when the ensemble arrived to begin the recording tests; now it’s gone, removed to give a brighter sound to the ensemble.

“It’s just you and the room and my mics,” says Craig Dory, co-founder of Dorian Recordings and designer of the microphones. “But it’s still going to take us a while to decide the best setup.” He paces the stage. “Please sing out as we’re doing this – don’t mark. And don’t worry about the noises you might hear. If the hall creaks or a truck goes by, we may be able to remove that. All you have to do is sing.” He pauses and grins. “This is going to be very intensive. You will want to hate me. You will discover that I’m a big, lovable teddy bear.”

Kiss the Ground

WE’RE FEELING THE HORRIBLE EFFECTS of a global climate crisis. We’re wracked with guilt over the lousy food we consume – or we should be. There are solutions, but how do you persuade the public to change its ways?

Get celebrities to give those answers. Or so believe filmmakers Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell. Their engaging documentary “Kiss the Ground” boasts a host of celebrity actors and musicians, beginning with narrator Woody Harrelson, who also has a small but significant on-screen presence. Does Patricia Arquette’s enthusiastic encomium for composting toilets prove persuasive? Does a song by Jason Mraz help make up your mind? Is a word from recent Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady enough?

If it works, great. But the true celebrities here are those who are out in the fields, farming and teaching other farmers. The message of “Kiss the Ground” is simple: We’re destroying our land with industrial farming methods, and when you destroy soil, you create an inhospitable climate.

Ray Archuleta is a Certified Professional Soil Scientist with the Soil Science Society of America. He spent over thirty years with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and then founded Understanding Ag, LLC, [https://understandingag.com] to teach strategies for soil improvement on a national scale. He also founded Soil Health Academy [https://soilhealthacademy.org] to share regenerative agriculture principles.