Are there food trucks in Krakow?

...from Krakow 

You bet! With food that ranges from huge stuffed baked potatoes (kumpir) to cakes to fish n' chips, burgers, Belgian frites, pulled pork, the legendary (and seemingly hard-to-find) blue trucks that sell kielbasa, and more, Krakow has a thriving food truck scene and even a food truck square or few. I've been with two dedicated blue truck hunters, who at last report hadn't found their local blue truck nirvana.  But the kumpir that I had (at Krakowski Kumpir last night after our concert) was certainly delish--and more than one human could finish--although we all tried!

A few more photos:






                 and  also

(No, I haven't eaten at even half of these.)

What I'm reading: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Str

What I'm listening to: klezmer in the Kazimierz, music by Feldschuh, Kapralova, Delej, and Vandor from today's lecture-recital with Dr. Teryl Dobbs and E4TT.

What I'm working on: the latter ;).

Krakow-Kazimierz

Karski statue

... Czećś from Krakow!

We (E4TT) are in Krakow, specifically in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter. We're appearing at the 26th Jewish Culture Festival from June 26-28. It's the perfect location for us, as our two venues, the Galicia Jewish Musem and JCC Krakow, are all of 10 minutes away on foot. At night, klezmer music wafts into our windows from the restaurants on the square: the renovated birthplace of a famous cosmetics magnate (Can you guess who?), the hotel is great, with friendly, helpful staff.

On our street (Szeroka) there is a life-like statue by Karol Badyna of Jan Karski (above, as Jan Kozielowski was called), the Righteous courier for the Polish government in exile during WWII who brought news from Poland to the West. Passing tourists flock get their pictures taken sitting next to him on the sculpted bench.... Dale and I may not be able to resist joining them.

Old synagogue

As we're so far north--a little north of Calgary and Moose Jaw in Canada, but still south of Alaska--sunset doesn't come until late, officially 8:54 p.m--but in fact there was still enough light for photos until past 9:30 p.m.--and there's a heat wave on. But it's very pleasant in the evening.


Enjoy another photo or five of "our" street in Kazimierz. It's pleasantly hopping--and nothing like what I'm told it will be like in 2 days, when the Festival starts on Saturday, June 25. Last year nearly 30,000 folks are said to have attended. And this year...who knows? More photos to come--at least, I hope so...

Finally, here's a quick shout out and dziękuję  and to the SF-Krakow Sister Cities Association and also to E4TT's generous supporters, who helped make this tour possible. Na razie!

 What I'm reading: Just finished a beautiful, unbearably sad book, When Breath Becomes Air; read The Little Paris Bookshop and The Museum of Heartbreak on the plane; am currently reading In Gratitude and Sweet Bitter.

What I'm listening to: klezmer music from outside my Krakovian window, natch ;).

What I'm working on: Music by Garner, Kapralova, Vandor, and Winterberg for our programs on the 26th and 27th.

More Yosemite views

...from Berkeley

I'm back post-wedding for two wonderful concerts last week with E4TT in the SF Bay Area. Still, I can't help but continue last week's pictorial paean to the amazing paysage of Yosemite.  Look carefully below and you may even spot a glimpse of a double rainbow--and check out the amazing volume of water in the falls...

Yosemite!

...from Yosemite

where I've been for my son's wonderful wedding.  Just a few lovely photos for the sharing with everyone!

With the rainfall we've had this year, the falls are flowing and the mosquitoes are growing.... More blogging in weeks to come, with concerts May 31, June 2, and June 11.  And probably some more Yosemite pics, too.

Musings on "important"

Talya at a refugee camp

...from Berkeley

Today I've been pondering the word "important" and what it means, especially for projects, initiatives actions, and the arts.  To ground my musings, I started out with the OED (Online Etymology Dictionary, whose acronym apes another, more august tome, and which does, indeed, list its word-ly cousin among its sources.).  I'll call the online etymology version OED2.

At  OED2, I read that the modern English word "important" comes via Middle French (15th century) from Medieval Latin, importans, importantem and ultimately derives from the verb importare, "to bring in, convey or bring in from abroad." It was first used to mean "be important" in English around 1580.

How does that definition apply to artwork, projects, or even governments.  It doesn't even seem relevant--until we realize that important initiatives bring us understanding and perhaps bring help to those in need. (There's that word from the definition, bring.)

If a project is a major one, that can mean many positive things, such as pathbreaking, innovative,, or just plain excellent. But when it's an important one, that usually means it deals with hard topics, ones we know we need to look at but shy away from as joyless and non-celebratory, problematic issue-laden subjects that the world needs to address.

At a refugee camp

So, for example, when my wonderful niece, Talya (shown above and left, too), worked with Syrian refugees in Lesbos and Idomeni through IsraAID, it was important work (and courageous for a young woman). My friend, Paula, too, for that matter.

An important project probably deals with the four horsemen of the apocalypse--traditionally war, famine, pestilence/conquest or death--in one way or another, or at least mini-me versions of them. (Pestilence vs. conquest has to do with translation differences and dissemination through popular culture, both  topics for other days.) See below right for Albrecht Durer's woodcut depiction.

Albrecht Durer (woodcut, 1498)

An important project makes us look at things most of us want to sweep under the rug, or at least to say, "Yes, yes, we know and agree. It's awful. Glad you're dealing with it.  Sigh. Too much to bear thinking about it. Don't know what to do about it. Now go away and let the rest of us relax." And I should know, as that is a slightly over-the-top caricature of my own sometimes past-attitude, despite my having somehow found myself doing an "important" project over the last 6+ years, the JMPP (some of which were recorded on our brand new CD, Surviving:Women's Words).

An important project often has to work extra hard to draw an audience, as who enjoys emotional flagellation? Catharsis is one thing, but to deliberately go to an event that focuses on bad things happening to good people? (Actually, that's a partial definition of what happens in many an opera or tale, so maybe that's not such a bad plot device...) Or on revisiting unhappy history, so that we aren't condemned to repeat it? (Ditto.)

MOR's Jake Heggie

As another example, in yesterday's mail, I received a postcard for Seattle-based Music of Remembrance's Out of Darkness: an Opera of Survival, the new chamber opera by Jake Heggie about the Holocaust that will be produced on May 25-26 at the SF Conservatory of Music.  MOR is an important project and MOR's mission is much in alignment with that of the JMPP; I like both Jake Heggie and his music. So although I fear that it may be an emotionally wrenching evening, I will try to go, and on today, the eve of U.S. Holocaust Remembrance Day, I encourage those of you reading this who are in the SF Bay Area to go, too.

To answer the question I started with, what does the word important really mean, at least in this context?  In other words, what does a project, action, or initiative that's labeled important really deal with?

Tragedy. Misery. Suffering.

What I'm reading: More Inspector Gamache mysteries by Louise Penny. (Now about midway through the series)

What I'm listening to: Mozart, Shostakovich, Prince.

What I'm working on: works by Martha Stoddard, Judith Shatin, Hans Winterberg, and Frederic Sharaf, for May and June concerts--plus Mozart for my son's wedding :).

Surviving: Women's Words and a play with few survivors

New CD cover: photo by Michael Halberstadt

...from Berkeley

Today's post starts with a flat-out plug for E4TT's new CD, released on Centaur Records
on April 8, "Surviving: Women's Words."

The CD features pianist Dale Tsang, cellist Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, and--as Miss Piggy would say--moi, performing four song cycles written by composer David Garner for the group, to poetry by four different Jewish women poets. The  culmination of an ambitious five year commissioning project, the CD gives a musical voice to these women's viewpoint and experiences of wartime, the Holocaust, exile, and displacement.

Stephen Smoliar in Examiner.com  describes "Surviving: Women's Words" as "a fascinating project within a project"--alluding to the fact that the project is itself a project of E4TT's Jewish Music & Poetry Project--and goes on to say that "...this album offers four passionate meditations on the Holocaust experience, delivered through a unique and highly compelling pair of voices, those of both composer and singer."

(For the curious, the CD's title, "Surviving," comes from the fourth song in the final cycle on the CD ("Song Is a Monument"), which sets words by Polish-American Holocaust survivor, Yala Korwin. We were honored to be able to use poems written by Korwin, who passed away in May, 2014, only two months after E4TT premiered the cycle. The other poets  whose texts are set muscially on the CD are Mascha Kaleko, Rose Auslaender, and Else Lasker-Schueler.)

"Surviving: Women's Words" is available from Amazon, HBDirect, Arkivmusic, and E4TT. Check it out now or starting May 13, when streaming and downloading will be available for purchase!

And the play with few survivors? Shakespeare's Hamlet, which I saw this evening in a fabulous production by the England's National Theater Live with the inimitable and multiply talented Benedict Cumberbatch (of "Sherlock Holmes" and "The Imitation Game" fame).

Watch the trailer.  Watch Prince Charles deliver Shakespeare's arguably most famous line.

Partly a ghost stoy with a great fight scene, Hamlet is a "greatest hits" play, and deservedly so: much as the opera "Porgy & Bess" is filled with hit after Gershwin musical hit, so too is Hamlet filled with quote after famous Shakespeare quote.  The NTL's stunning production--albeit often very loud--brings out an important sequence in "Hamlet" about the army led by the character Fortinbras--well nigh the only principal character left standing by the final curtain, other than Horatio, whom Hamlet has begged to stay alive to bear witness to his story.

That sequence?  To set the scene, Hamlet has happened upon the Norwegian army on its way to attack Poland and asks the Captain what they're up to. The interchange:
"Hamlet: Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, Or for some frontier?
Captain: Truly to speak, and with no addition/ We go to gain a little patch of ground/ That hath in it no profit but the name./To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;/Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole/A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
Hamlet:Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
Captain: Yes, it is already garrison'd..."

Thus does Shakespeare four centuries ago emphasize the insanity of war--so often waged for "a little patch of ground"--and the suffering that results, and that, you see, is the connection with the CD, as well.

What I'm reading: More Louise Penny Inspector Gamache mysteries

What I'm listening to: Mp3 after mp3 for making the final vocal decisions for E4TT's call for scores :).  Plus the wonderful artist known as Prince, may he rest in purple peace.

What I'm working on: new music by Judith Shatin and Emma Logan, plus Hans Winterberg and songs by Vitezslava Kapralova

In memoriam Brian Asawa (1966-2016)

Brian Awasa (1966-2016)

...from Berkeley

Today's post is a heartfelt farewell to the wonderful and wonderfully talented pathbreaking countertenor Brian Asawa, who passed away this afternoon (April 18)  at the age of 49 from  advanced cirrhosis.

Brian was the first countertenor in SF Opera's Adler program, the first to win the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the first to win Placido Domingo's Operalia, Seattle Opera's Artist of the Year award...his accomplishments are legion and myriad. He was also a kind, generous colleague. He was so very supportive to me at the memorial for  Zheng (mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao), and now sadly, the memorial will be for him.

You can hear two different sides of his artistry in Rachmaninoff (Vocalise):

and Handel (the gorgeous duet "Son nato a lagrimar" from Giulio Cesare):

And here, he is working with his (and my) voice teacher Jane Randolph, which is how I met him years ago.

As singer after singer after friend after colleague posts remembrances and farewell messages in social media, you can read a lovely tribute here.

The musical world mourns his passing.

What I'm reading: Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mystery novels
What I'm listening to: Brian Asawa
What I'm working on: music for CD release concerts

In Praise of M.T. Anderson and his Symphony for the City of the Dead

...from San Francisco

First, a big shout out to all the wonderful performers and the enthusiastic audience at David Garner's fabulous Faculty Artist Series program on Monday night!  If you weren't able to join us, I hope you were able to watch the concert stream instead.

Leading up to Monday's concert, I could not put down M.T. Anderson's  YA historical novel, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad--a mouthful of a title that says it all. 

Now, first off, I have to admit that I've been a fan of M.T. Anderson's books for years, beginning with his equally engaging dystopian Feed--written before dystopia had completely taken over as the style-du-jour, and Handel, Who Knew What He Liked and continuing with Strange Mr. Satie, Whales on Stilts, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. (He has many more, but those are some highlights.)

Dmitri Shostakovich in 1925

Returning  to Symphony...What a brilliant concept! Who'd a thunk one could use the history of a 20th century classical Russian composer to talk about World War II?  It's an obvious call in retrospect, and beautifully done in Anderson's hands.  Symphony works well on a number of levels: at its core, it's a biography of composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) combined with a history of the seige of Leningrad, and it's also a short history on the rise and continuation of Communism in Russia--all informed by and focused on  how both of the latter influenced this enigmatic, great composer who managed to survive in a situation where so many others didn't. (The photo to the right is the young, Harry-Potter-like composer at the age of 19.)

Anderson is honest in his evaluation of what Shostakovich may nor may not have believed and how the exigencies of pleasing Communist dictates may have affected his writing--questions I remember from my own readings in music history. He concludes that we may never know the whole truth in either direction. Nonetheless, we still have the composer's musical testimony, and now we have Anderson's commentary, along with his explanations along the way for non-musical young readers, about musical meaning and meaning in music (not the same thing) for his readers.

Perhaps best of all, reading Anderson's descriptions of Shostakovich's music makes the reader want to go and listen (or re-listen) to his music, especially his towering symphonies and string quartets. How terrific is that, when prose about music--or visual art for that matter--inspires one to go listen to the music itself!

Thank you, M.T. Anderson, for your latest work in cross-arts fertilization...the ultimate in coolth.

What I'm reading: Still Life (the first Inspector Gamache mystery); Margaret Atwood's latest (The Heart Goes Last)

What I'm listening to: Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (this week at SFSymphony!)..but Shostakovich very soon

What I'm working on: Songs by Hans Winterberg, John Harbison and Frederic Sharaf.

Live Streaming!

David Garner

...from San Francisco

This week's post is late--mea culpa! But the good outcome of my tardiness is that I can give you the live streaming link for Monday's concert if you can't be there in person, as I just received it...That link and the instructions are at the bottom of this post.

The concert? Ensemble for These Times' composer David Garner's Faculty Artist Series program on APRIL 4, at 8:00 p.m., Caroline Hume Hall at the SF Conservatory of Music. You can also read Stephen Smoliar's article in the SF Examiner about the concert here. Admission is free, but it's open seating, so David recommends folks get there early.This is a bit of a plug post--surprised?--but keep reading for interesting info about civil rights figure, Mary Pleasant.

Monday's concert features four works, all by David Garner:
First half:
* Vilna Poems (2014), with texts by Avram Sutzkever, sung by soprano Krista Wigle, and played by cellist Evan Kahn, along with members of the SF Conservatory Faculty.
* Mein blaues Klavier (My Blue Piano, 2015), with texts by Else Lasker-Schueler, performed by Ensemble for These Times, i.e., me, pianist Dale Tsang and cellist Laura Gaynon. This is on our new JMPP CD, Surviving: Women's Words, which will be for sale at the concert and is being officially released on April 8 on Centaur Records (Centaur CRC 3490), already available from the group or online for pre-release sales.
*Judith Masur Songs (2016), written for mezzo-soprano Crystal Philippi, to texts by Berkeley poet Judith Masur.

Second half: excerpts from Mary Pleasant at Land's End (2015),  his fabulous, brand-new opera, Semi-staged by Jimmy Featherstone Marcheso, and performed by  mezzo-soprano Crystal Philippi, soprano Julie Adams, tenor Michael Jankosky, and bass-baritone  Philip Skinner with pianist Kevin Korth.

Here's what David writes:
"Mary Pleasant --one of the most complex, mysterious figures in the history of the nation--comes to life in Mary Pleasant at Land's End...with libretto by Mark Hernandez.  The opera traces much of Pleasant's astonishing life, beginning with her days as a shepherd for the Underground Railroad.  Arriving in San Francisco, she becomes a beloved leader in the young city. Eventually, this daughter of slaves stands as one of the richest and most influential individuals of the time. Her championing of people and causes, however, brings her into conflict with a familiar face of wealth and power, and the ensuing struggle plays out in a notorious courtroom drama that mesmerizes the public. Sensationalist press coverage demonizes Pleasant, playing on attitudes towards her race and gender. An essential figure in the founding of San Francisco, and indeed the state of Californi, she is forgotten even as the city bursts into world prominence..." More info at David's website.

If you can't come on 4/4x8 (i.e., April 4, at 8:00 p.m.),  you can watch the livestream. Streaming will start about 5 minutes before the concert. When it begins, you'll see "Live now" below the name, Caroline H. Hume Hall. Select it to automatically see the video with the live stream...at least in theory.

What I'm reading: M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Seige of Leningrad; Elizabeth George's A Banquet of Consequences; Terry Pratchett's final Tiffany Aching novel, The Shepherd's Crown.

What I'm listening to: Mozart's Jupiter Symphony and Beethoven's First.  Also the many, many (did I say many? We received 275!) scores from E4TT's call for scores. Winners to be announced June 1.

What I'm working on: Mein blaues Klavier, of course, along with songs by Winterberg, Sharaf and Garner for April and May.

In honor of Brussels

Brussels

...from San Rafael

Today's blog post: short, simple, and sweet but sad. A moment of silence in my tiny corner of the blogosphere for those who suffered or are suffering as a result of the bombs in the beautiful city of Brussels, Belgium.