The Fredösphere

That slightly fruity, slightly sickening aroma you've noticed around here lately was the smell of a blogroll gone stale.  This week, I've freshened it up a bit.  First, I've finally changed Lynn's link to her new url (and thanks to her for the recent link).  Renewable Music has been added, along with Iron Tongue of Midnight (what the heck took me so long?).  Forrest Covington has neglected his website for a while, but I'm going to keep him around a little longer, in the hopes he will return, since we belong to the same blog cohort.

Tom Monaghan, Ann Arbor resident and founder of Domino's Pizza, wants to create his answer to Celebration, Florida:  it's a nice little Catholic community called Ave Maria.  (Via Crunchy Con.)

Here's the Meyers-Briggs personality typing system, presented in a manner that is slightly more honest than usual.  What do they say about me?

The INTJ sees life as a problem to be solved. For that reason, the INTJ is the person a company brings in from the outside to streamline production processes and identify redundant assets for termination. The INTJ's combination of analyticial problem-solving skills and complete and utter disregard for the morality or consequences of his actions also make him ideal for the job of hatchet man, CIA operative, and helpdesk operator.

It's always enlightening to look at one's exact opposite.  Here's the ESFP, "The National Enquirer Headline:"

An ESFP is a spontaneous, outgoing, charismatic, fun-loving person like the guy you used to room with in college--you know, the one who was found floating face-down in the reservoir with the homecoming queen's underwear in his teeth.

Yep, that's definitely not something I've done.  That I remember.

At the Sequenza 21 Forum, Daniel Gilliam is lovin' Ned Rorem's opera Our Town, premiered at Indiana University this month.  In the comments, Daniel Wolf (I imagine it must be this one) describes the virtues of a modestly sized orchestra:

Modest resources would seem to match the modesty of his subject matter and the economy of means has other practical and musical uses. Personel costs can be real impediments to productions and it's reasonable to assume that the smaller pit will make the piece more attractive. A lighter orchestra, however, creates some interesting opportunities for flexibility with vocal types. A lot of the discomfort audiences and composers alike have with operatic voices comes directly from the development of a vocal technique designed to compete with a large orchestra (even then, at Bayreuth, of all places, the unique construction of the pit attenuates the orchestra considerably so that singers don't need to overproduce), while often sacrificing comprehension of the text. If opera is going to renew itself in any major way, I think that either a more "natural" vocal technique combined with a more intimate orchestra, or an electronically amplified and mixed environment is going to be part of the equation.

Our Town calls for six winds, three brass, piano, and strings -- but no percussion.  Meanwhile, Aworks links to an Our Town preview by Ben Mattison with a few nuggets of interest.

Finally, Don found the ultimate musical nightmare.

It's been a fine birthday week, with the Sea Symphony performance, and a gift of this CD of Sofia Gubaidulina's Johannes-Passion.  The latter begins with massive chords for the organ that may have sounded good on Gubaidulina's home piano, but are not completely satisfying on the instrument they were written for.  Then the bass cantor begins intoning his recitative, and things start getting spooky in an appealing way.  The ghostly feet of one thousand years of Old Russia seem to have trod on Genady Bezzubenkov's voice, producing a vintage with hints of sorrow, vitality, and peace.  [Now that you ask:  why, yes, I am aware that metaphor is the most ridiculous thing you've read all day.  As metaphors go, it's overripe.  It's a hedonistic fruit bomb.  It's not just larger than life, but realer than reality.]

Anyway, I'm going to spend more time with this huge piece before I attempt a more coherent description.  Purely by accident, I now own three of the four passions commissioned by the International Bachakademie Stuttgart to observe the 250th anniversary of the death of J. S. Bach -- I've got Gubaidulina's, Tan Dun's, and Osvaldo Golijov's.  Should I be a completist and get the one by Wolfgang Rihm?

But enough of this boring classical music crappe.  You came here for the VW unpimp my ride link, and to see this unusually lame attention-getting headline.

Last night's performance of Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony was exhilarating.  I think I'd like to end every day by listening to a live performance of it -- although practical considerations may prevent me.  Quite by accident, I sat next to Chris Grapentine, a local baritone who has sung as a soloist and in a touring quartet, and also pastors a church and tunes pianos on the side.  I have met him a couple of times in the past, but it was nice to be able to talk with him more at length during the intermission.  I also enjoyed one fan who sat in the third row (the rest of the crowd started around row six).  At the end of the Shostakovich concerto that started the program, he gave the soloist a standing ovation even before the soloist herself stood up.  From the embarrassed grins of the orchestra members, it seemed clear he was shouting admiring words they could hear.  I think I see a restraining order in his future.

What might have been.  Through the arbitrary forces of history, pianos and harpsichords flourished, but this instrument died off.  (Via Instapundit.)

It's not the movie I remember seeing.  Mark another step forward in the art of dishonest movie trailers (like this one for The Shining).  My friend Victor recommends you watch Brokeback to the Future.  (It's safe.)

Behold, Hill Auditorium itself,
And on its limitless, fixèd stage, the Choral Union;
See, with the University of Michigan Choirs, bellying in their wind, speckle the maize and blue,
See, the orchestra coming and going, steaming in or out of tune,
See Jerry Blackstone, he who tonight conducts Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony.

O we can wait no longer,
Joyous we too hurry over to the auditorium,
O my brave butt, park thyself in a seat on the main floor,
In one of the cushy seats, renovated to allow more room for thy legs.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the sea symphonies of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

"No one would tell him, 'suns aren't wearing happy faces this year.'"

I'm watching the kids over my lunch hour while the wifeösphere takes care of some business, so I'm blogging remotely, using pen and paper, what you might call a mature technology.  I suppose when I'm done writing this, I'll have a delivery boy haul it via bicycle to a coding clerk who will transcribe it onto IBM punch cards, which will be sent via pneumatic tube to a UNIVAC facility, wherein the elegant stream of ones and zeros will be recorded onto handy ten-inch reels of nine-track tapes, which will be placed in a diplomatic pouch to Los Angeles, where the spirit of Orson Wells will read the text aloud and his voice will be captured on a vinyl record, after which ... well, I'll let you have the fun of finishing this.

The search for texts for future choral compositions continues.  I was working my way through yet another poetry anthology -- a particularly unpromising one -- when I found myself marking three poems in a row for further consideration.  They were all by Gerald Manley Hopkins.  Saaaaay, why does that name sound familiar?  Maybe because a helpful visitor named "Danny" left a comment suggesting I look at that very poet.  Thanks; I'll stop procrastinating and get right on it.

Hopkins seems odd and experimental for a 19th century poet, if this example is representative:

The Windhover

To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom
    of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy then off, off forth on swing.
    As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:  the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind.  My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle, AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

    No wonder of it:  shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

I guess it must be religious, given the dedication.  Beyond that, I'm pretty sure it is about a bird.  Otherwise, it is getting close to glossolalia.  Strangely compelling glossolalia.  I can hear opportunities for word play and note play.  Maybe a post-minimalist approach would work.  Anyway, I'll be thinking a lot more about ol' Gerald Manley Hopkins.

Five minutes ago, I couldn't even spell cow bellist -- now I are one.  Back in the late 80s a Christian pop trio called First Call, backed up by an African choir, recorded a Swahili chorus called O Sifuni Mungu.  Yesterday my church choir got a chance to sing it for my congregation.  I was pleased that so many people appreciated it; one person reportedly sat through part of a second service just to hear us sing it again -- a miracle!  I indulged myself a bit by singing the opening solo, and by playing cow bell.  I hope my conducting with a drum stick was not too distracting.  Here the Choirs Sing has several performances of O Sifuni Mungu which vary widely in approach and quality; maybe its just me, but I found the unsuccessful ones fascinating like a accident on the side of the road.

Meanwhile...

A Cappella News tells the story of Solomon Linda, a Zulu migrant worker who composed the song MBube, which we know as The Lion Sleeps Tonight.  His lawyers took Disney to court, and won.  Posthumously.

I'm so glad I don't work for an organization that provides a public website for people to say bad things about me, like some people.  These complaints are fascinating like a accident on the side of the road.

Many admire this translation of the Bible for the power of its language; others call it outdated, anachronistic, irrelevant.  I'm refering of course to God Is For Real, Man.  Here's The Lord is my Probation Officer and "give me some skin, Lord" and maybe even Gabriel greeting Mary with "Yo, Foxy Momma".  Similarly earnest, and therefore similarly tragically flawed, is the Cotton Patch New Testament.  These are fascinating like an accident on the ... oh, you know.

I have a note here that says "google caffeinated soap."  I'm not sure what that means, but I better do what it says ... [sound of furious typing] ... well, bless my boots, the stuff exists!

Engraved with a glorious "C" for Caffeine, scented with peppermint oil and infused with caffeine anhydrous, each caffeine soap bar contains approximately 15 servings per bar with 250 milligrams of caffeine per serving. No, we're not kidding and no you don't eat it. The caffeinated soap is absorbed through the skin.

Continuing this theme of personal hygiene, I see "the most important collegiate a cappella album to be released in a decade" includes the song Everyone Pees in the Shower.

The iPod-compatible jeans would be noteworthy on their own, but when the news article mentions "joystick remote control built into the watch pocket," it catches my attention, for reasons I don't completely understand.

Roger Bourland's website has the usual composer stuff:  mp3 files of his music and a smartly-written blog, with more analysis of the Rufus Wainwright œuvre than most people really need.  It's the navigational system that blows your mind:  pure animation fluff, but still, wow.

Here's your retro-futurism fix:  the Brussels Atomium has reopened.  Like the Eiffel Tower, the goofy tinker-toid monument is a temporary structure that they never got around to dismantling.

Now we know why the big orchestras won't attract the young audiences:  they're using these things.

Dang!  If only I could impose this kind of discipline on my church choir:

A nun must participate in all choir duties and in the execution of divine rites. Should a nun shirk her religious duties, she would have to declare her fault publicly in the refectory. A second infraction would entail rations of bread and water. A third would trigger corporal discipline. Should these measures fail, her veil would be removed, and the offending nun would not be allowed to approach the altar (unable to practice her religious faith in the house of God), the parlor (unable to see visitors), the service entrances (prohibiting the nun from the only physical contact she could have with the outside world), or the kitchens (where scraps of delicious pastries were sometimes handed out), until she changed her ways.

Someone calls it one of the best songs you didn't hear in 2005.  Another calls it "Serge Gainsbourg conducting the Langley Schools Music Project through a rendition of the Mikado."  Or maybe "epic, exotic, metronomic and dare I say it 'proto-psychedelic-hip-hop that defies categorisation'" gets at the heart of it.  Dare I say it -- it's the first song I've ever downloaded via iTunes.  A Japanese children's choir sings Yama Yama, and Fat City has an excerpt.

Speaking of children's choirs, 60 teenage girls from Belgium have recorded an album covering pop tunes like... heavens to Murgatroid!  What was their director thinking?!!

A gig so easy, and yet so unsatisfying:  Helen Radice tunes someone else's harp.

Look out, church:  the worship critic may visit you this Sunday.

"Anti-rock-star rock star" Mike Patton plans to collaborate with composer Eyvind Kang on a classical choir piece.

Composing an opera requires many skills.  Musical literacy is not one of them.

The cover art hooked me.  At the library, on the DVD shelf, I saw this wonderfully detailed drawing of a man wearing a stunningly tasteful charcoal gray uniform.  Could an entire anime series be drawn this good consistently?  As it turns out:  no, it can't -- but meanwhile, I had checked out the first twelve episodes of Last Exile, a steampunk sci-fi story from gloriously weird and alien Japan.

I don't think western productions can achieve this level of inventiveness.  This is a story of warships, using 19th century technology (speaking tubes, Morse code signals via flashing lights, muskets) and formality (the captain of a battleship sits at a tall desk like a judge and bangs a gavel after issuing each order).  There is one difference:  thanks to a mysterious anti-gravity material called Claudia, the warships fly through the air.

Opposing fleets must get permission from the mysterious and all-powerful "Guild" before initiating hostilities.  Only one ship, the Silvana, is free of the Guild's control -- how?  Its captain is Alex Row, who spends a lot of his time pouting -- what for?  The Silvana's crew kidnaps a little girl named Al -- why?

The relationships seem very alien, very Japanese.  A two-seater fighter plane is flown by the teenagers Claus and Lavie.  Maybe I missed something, but very late in the game it was revealed that they are brother and sister -- I spent a lot of time wondering why they were so close, yet romantically not involved.  (Apparently some are still wondering.)  Another flying duo are women with a strong lesbian vibe, but that's never made explicit -- why?  Then there's a member of the Guild, Lord Dio, who is so effeminate, I assumed he was a woman for several episodes.  He gloms onto Claus and generally makes a pest of himself, yet because of his status, he must be tolerated.  Lord Dio is a thoroughly repulsive character -- what is the Japanese attitude here?  Lavie shouts her way through life -- did they really intend her to be so obnoxious?  Finally, Alex Row's "vice-captain" (an inelegant term) is a young, wholesome woman who makes granny glasses seem chic.  She's obviously in love with Alex, but all he can do is sigh and whine -- what's his problem?  How can military discipline work with so many sparks flying?  How can Alex command effectively without a stoic attitude?  This unreality is a failure of taste; I see it related somehow to Japan's national weakness for all things cute.

Last Exile is part of a trend toward hybridization of animation styles.  Human figures are hand-drawn; complex objects which need to rotate frequently (such as the flying ships) are computer models; some special effects, such as smoke, appear to be live action.  Sometimes these disparate inputs are blended impressively, other times they clash.  One sequence of hand drawn animation involving a race of giant chickens was downright embarrassing.  I imagine it's a case of big talents working against a tight TV production deadline.

Only the first 12 episodes are currently available from my library, and #12 ends with a cliff hanger.  Some reviewers complain the plot is hard to follow, but anyone familiar with sci-fi conventions should be comfortable.  For example, if you've read Frank Herbert's Dune you know all about power-hungry guilds already.  I'm perfectly willing to forgive this show its flaws, and I'm still jazzed about the uniforms of the Silvana.

Vice President Cheney's shooting accident recalls all kinds of fascinating historical trivia, for example, this is the first time a vice president has failed to kill the person he has shot.  I was going to riff on the theme, recalling the vice president whose lack of responsibilities while in office allowed him also to serve as organist for a Washington D.C. church.  But ....

But I was unable to get google to confirm this "fact," even though it has been bouncing around in my head for years.  I kinda, sorta think I heard it on the Prairie Home Companion, which might mean mean this fact is simply a product of Garrison Keillor's sense of humor.  Or it could be purely a product of my disturbed imagination.  Which is sad, because I was going to propose a slight modification to the U.S. Constitution that would require all future organists of that church also to fill the VP office.  Which would be cool, and would also completely solve so many of the political problems we have in this country now days. 

Anyway, my research lead me to the Carbolic Smoke Ball, which is filled with lots of great Cheney jokes, plus obscure references to Pittsburghian "celebrities," and a report on Van Cliburn who is still seething "after having been bypassed for the fortieth time to perform at the Super Bowl half-time show."  Wow.  This blog's got it all.  I'll just give up now and redirect all my traffic to it.

Kudos to the University of Michigan for the Grammy win.  I should have blogged this last week, but better late than never I suppose.  Fellow music blogger Brian Sacawa is one of two saxophonists on the recording, a live performance of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Der Drübermensch has been taking piano lessons from me for over a year, and it's been an exercise in virtual dentistry, which is to say, it's been like pulling teeth.  That's okay, he'll thank me in the long run.  Well, no, this is a parent-child relationship, isn't it -- by all the laws that govern such things, I will never receive proper thanks.  But I'll deserve it, and that's enough for me.  Enough for me to harbor a richly deserved parental resentment for the rest of my life.  Ah, the rewards -- I savor them.

Anyway, a sudden illness on the wifeösphere's part resulted in both children accompanying me to a men's choir rehearsal last week.  Der Drübermensch suddenly put down the book he brought along and asked to sing along.  He demanded a copy of the score.  I was astounded and thrilled.  O joy:  my son thinks something I'm doing is cool.  He likes something I like.  This is not supposed to happen.

Tomorrow I'll blog a Japanese TV series Die Frauösphier and I have been watching on DVD.  As a result, Don will find himself unable to resist linking to me.  It's sad, really, how easily I can manipulate him.  One word, as a teaser:  Schteampünksamkeit.

Now that is flying!  (Via Gravity Lens.)  At last, we will fulfill our dream of an airliner that requires a crew of 155.  But one question remains:  does it have a swimming pool?

You can buy anything at Target!  But not crime lab services; those they give away free!  (Via Tinkerty Tonk.)

Divertimenti has nice animated illustrations of tracker organ mechanisms.  (Via Musical Perceptions.)

Only in Waco:  "Surprise me, God."

Great choir urban legends, true, false, and otherwise:

The Exploding Nebraska Church (True)
Post-It Notes First Used in a Chorister's Hymnbook (True)
Red (Double) Cross (True)
Choir Boy Sat as Model for Da Vinci's Jesus and Judas (False)
Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire (If Only)

Musical skills:  fine.  HTML coding skills:  lousy.

Thanks to those who have begun suggesting poems on religious subjects for a choral setting.  Let me further define the need.  I hope more of you will jump in with suggestions.  This is my task:

An a cappella choral work a wee bit on the substantial side (i.e., six minutes instead of three or four)...

With a sacred text with orthodox Christian theology implicit or explicit...

And also (this is the interesting part) set to music with a strong rhythmic drive.

A rhythmic drive.  Hmmm.  How to pull that off?  Spirituals have it, but not much else in the a cappella world, not unless you go the collegiate route -- which is very appealing, don't get me wrong, but it is simply not an option in this case.

Now you see better my irritation with the ocean of introspective, meditative stuff I've waded through this week.  Even if I was temperamentally inclined to like poems like...

God's good
The Devil's bad.
Homeless people make me sad.

...they would still be useless for my present purposes.

What's wrong with a good solid narrative?  Apparently narrative poems are out of fashion these days, and that is a darn shame if you ask me.  Is it so wrong that I enjoy reading about Satan going for a walk...

How, then, was the Devil dressed?
  Oh! he was in his Sunday's best;
His coat was red, and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where his tail came through.

...or that I enjoy poems where things actually, you know, happen?

Regarding spirituals, I've been thinking especially about Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, and wondering if I couldn't adapt one of the more phantasmagoric prophetic visions into something lively and snappy.  That would require me to arrange the text myself, and I'm not sure I should try.

How about it, folks?  Anyone know of a poem, not too short, with a theme or a story that would lend itself to a lively, driving setting?  Something not begirded, yea even beweighted, by bad 19th century idioms?  Something with a bit of spooky imagery, possibly visionary or mystical, to make it novel?  But still within the Christian tradition?  Surely there's something out there, no?

I continue to search anthologies of religious poetry for texts suitable for setting to music.  Lord ha' mercy!  A chapter on poems of faith was a desert of solipsistic piety.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  a man with real faith never regards his own faith; he has eyes only for the object of his faith.  The authors in this chapter are so self-absorbed, they should be bloggers, not poets.  This example by Wordsworth is typical:

I have faith!  I have faith!
Yipee!  Yipee!  Yippee!
Good for me!  Good for me!
I have faith, faith, faith!!!!

The faith chapter put me in a foul mood -- a Carl Sandburg mood (this one is no joke):

You come along... tearing your shirt... yelling
        about Jesus.
      I want to know... what the hell... you
    know about Jesus.

(Billy Sunday was a pro baseball player in a time that baseball players lacked the nobility and grace for which present-day athletes are known.  A dramatic conversion to Christianity did not rub off all his rough edges.  His boisterous vulgarity, plus his relaxed attitude toward extreme wealth -- so long as the wealth was not illegally obtained -- enraged the hard-left sensibilities of Sandburg.)

Finally, anyone desiring a comprehensive knowledge of religious poetry must not overlook Gerardus.

Here's my question:  how many dinosaurs did they find?

I'm working my way through an anthology of religious poetry, looking for a settable text (see yesterday).  I have found some real clunkers.  This one offers feeble apologetics:

There is no unbelief;
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
And waits to see it push away the clod--
He trusts in God.

(I notice that word "clod" showing up a lot.  English is deficient in words rhyming with "God," apparently.)  Then there is this illustration (from Robert Louis Stevenson) that we really didn't want inside our heads:

God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire[....]

Or a sentiment by a woman poet that, on its face, would make Naomi Wolf's hair curl:

A little bird I am,
Shut in from fields of air,
And in my cage I sit and sing,
To him who placed me there;
Well pleased a prisoner to be,
Because, my God, it pleases thee!

But then you notice it was written by Madame Guyon in the Bastille, and suddenly the entire character of the poem changes before your eyes.

And what's with Carl Sandburg, poet of the people?  They never told us about his angry streak:

The put up big wooden gods.
Then they burned the big wooden gods
And put up brass gods and
Changing their minds suddenly
Knocked down the brass gods and put up
A dough-face god with gold ear-rings.
The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads,
The didn't know a little tin god
Is as good as anything in the line of gods[....]

Anthologies of poetry fill my shelves this week.  I raided the public library for them, and now I'm searching them for settable texts, something I have not done in a deliberate, systematic way in quite some time.  One reads poetry in a very different way in this situation:  whole poems can be eliminated at a glance simply because of length.  Personally, I end up reading the last line first; if that last word isn't friendly to a musical ending, the whole poem is lost.

This exercise helps me understand my own limited tastes in poetry.  I'm always looking for descriptions of the tangible.  Call it vulgarity if you will, but I am drawn to poems about rats eating a bishop alive or a baby set on fire. 

Emily Dickinson had a strong, distinctive view of the world, but let's face it, that view was framed by her bedroom window.  However, there is one little-known Dickinson poem containing the kind of action I look for:

I could not stop for death because
My foot reached not the brake.
Instead I swerved my Porsche to force
His Saab into the lake.

Note the assonance in "Porsche" and "force."  Exquisite!

Here's my first discovery so far:  a poem by Pushkin, translated by Babette Deutsch.  It's a good length, its beginning and end are strong, and its imagery is intense, painful, and even weird, in a way that sucks me in.  On the other hand, lo!  I see it is begirded with Victorianisms long out of fashion.  Will I set it to music?  Not likely.

THE PROPHET

I dragged my feet through desert gloom,
Tormented by the spirit's yearning,
And saw a six-winged Seraph bloom
Upon the footpath's barren turning.

And as a dream in slumber lies
So light his finger on my eyes, --
My wizard eyes grew wide and wary:
An eagle's, started from her eyrie.

He touched my ears.  And lo! a sea
Of storming voices burst on me,
I heard the whirling heaven's tremor,
The angle's flight and soaring sweep,
The sea-snakes coiling in the deep,
And sap the vine's green tendrils carry.

And to my lips the Seraph clung--
And tore from me my sinful tongue,
My cunning tongue and idle-worded;
The subtle serpent's sting he set
Between my lips--his hand was wet,
His bloody hand my mouth begirded.

And with a sword he cleft my breast
And took the heart with terror turning,
And in my gaping bosom pressed
A coal that throbbed there, black and burning.

Upon the wastes, a lifeless clod,
I lay, I heard the voice of God;
"Arise, oh prophet, watch and hearken,
And with my Will thy soul engird
Through lands that din and seas that darken,
Burn thou men's hearts with this, my Word."

Memo to Pepsi Inc.:  please take my music without my permission.  If you know what I mean.

UPDATE:  Please scroll down to "Vocal Group Wins" to understand the link.

David Salvage reports on his attempt to mix a little Ligeti into his love life.

Naomi Wolf is talking about a vision of Jesus she received a few years ago.  Via A&LD, I just found out -- you people are supposed to tell me these things.  I'm approaching it with open-minded skepticism.  Seeing herself as a 13-year-old male disciple is quite unorthodox, but it may not be heterodox; the mystics typically turn to fairly bizarre metaphors, even erotic ones, to hint at the ineffable.  What makes this story especially fascinating is that Wolf cannot possibly be satisfying any group; not religious conservatives:

"I believe absolutely that every single one of us is here with a spiritual mission. We come in knowing it and then we forget. If we’re lucky, we re-remember. That’s part of what this book is about, helping people re-listen to their soul because their soul knows exactly what they’re supposed to be doing, even if it is not always clear it knows the direction in which to pull.”

not Jews:

[W]hen one of the foremost feminists in the world, who is Jewish to boot, says she has met Jesus, the ultimate figure of Christianity and the redeemer of lost souls, it’s more than a little disconcerting...."On a mystical level, it was complete joy and happiness and there were tears running down my face. On a conscious level, when I came out of it I was absolutely horrified because I’m Jewish. This was not the thing I’m supposed to have confront me....[It is] completely not the appropriate spiritual experience of someone of my background”.  

and certainly not other feminists:

"I am not going to be in the closet about this any more. I’m on a spiritual path, I answer to a higher authority....I wasn’t myself in this visual experience,” she continues. “I was a 13-year-old boy sitting next to him [Jesus] and feeling feelings I’d never felt in my lifetime, of a 13-year-old boy being with an older male who he really loves and admires and loves to be in the presence of. It was probably the most profound experience of my life.

I'm not thrilled by the "listen to your soul" talk, but this is not the first time Wolf has resisted pressure to parrot her peers' talking points, and in that she serves as a model for all of us.

The public school system in Saline, Michigan has an unusually healthy music program.  All middle school kids must choose orchestra, band, or a choir and theater class.  In high school, these classes become optional, yet 40 percent stick with it, which is quite a bit more than is typical.

How do they do it?  (It must be something in the water -- get it? -- it's Saline, yuk yuk!)  They have teachers who know how to motivative, like Ben Culver, who directs the orchestra for the upper middle school grades.  Ben believes in disguised repitition; he uses rhythm tracks from a midi keyboard to accompany scales. 

Ben also directs the Saline Fiddlers, a very active group independent of the school, which I have blogged with extravagant admiration here and here.  A typical month for the Fiddlers includes six performances, which is an astonishingly busy schedule for teenagers with lots of extracurricular options.  Ben says his goal is to make each Saline Fiddlers' rehearsal the best part of the day.  I suspect many 5th graders pick up the violin with the dream of playing for the Fiddlers some day; this makes Saline's school orchestras as popular as its marching bands.  Ben keeps parents heavily involved in the group, and his helped by a staff of four administrators, two assistant directors, and a choreographer.

Ben's work is that of maintenance; keeping a good thing going.  Here's the question that fascinates me:  how do you get something like this started?  Ben credits a former superintendent of schools, the "visionary" Ellen Ewing, who believed in arts participation and its link to improved academic performance.  This was no naive "Mozart Effect" theory; she knew sports have a similar effect, and promoted them too.  Ewing was also a gifted consensus-builder and leader.

Ben also gives great credit to Bob Phillips, the founder of the Saline Fiddlers.  Phillips is an energetic musician with unusual personal appeal.  "When he walked into a room, he could convince each person he was their best friend."  Ah yes, that handy skill; I wish one of you knuckleheads would teach me how to do that.

Justin Davidson is embarrassed by lame-o attempts to attract the 18-34 demographic, and singles out a Michigan Symphony.  A bit of background information:  our governor, Jennifer Granholm, was an early adopter of Richard Florida's Creative Class theories, and St. Joseph, Michigan has been a focus of her resulting "cool cities" initiative.  (So is Ann Arbor -- cool!)  Thus, the locals see the word "cool" within that context; perhaps the symphony's marketing people feel they cannot avoid it.  If Mr. Davidson finds it all cringe-making, it's because he hasn't been desensitized like I have.

Did this make the rounds already?  In keeping with this week's theme, Choirs Featured Prominently In TV Commercials, I give you the Calton Draught Big Ad.

Note, your browser will warn you the big ad is about to take over your computer.  As far as I can tell, it's safe to let it do so.

One more warning:  as my friend Alan first noticed, although you will hear a mixed chorus, you will see nothing but men, lip-synching Carmina Burana.  Big, burly, beery males wearing robes inspired by the Polyphonic Spree.