Regina Carter on Saturday, MacArthur Genius & Jazz Violinist

Sat. Afternoon 2/11: WAMC's Joe Donahue live in conversation with MacArthur Genius, Jazz

Violinist Regina Carter, FREE EVENT
February 11 (Saturday):
Regina Carter, jazz violinist
Conversation — 4:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, UAlbany Uptown Campus, 1400 Washington Ave., Free Parking.
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Classically trained, Regina Carter is considered the foremost jazz violinist of her generation. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and Oakland University. She lived and played in Germany and Detroit before moving to New York City to play with the New York String Trio for six years. She then launched her career as a band leader, releasing several albums of contemporary jazz, and drew attention for her work on the recording of Wynton Marsalis’s composition “Blood on the Fields” which won a Pulitzer Prize. She toured with Marsalis in 1997 and went on the road with jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson in 1998. In 2001, Regina became the first jazz musician and the first African-American to play the 250-year-old Guarneri violin once owned by Niccolo Paganini when she performed in a special benefit concert and recorded her CD, Paganini: After a Dream, a mix of classical music and jazz. In 2006, she was selected as a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Award.” Her current project is “Simply Ella,” celebrating the centennial of Ella Fitzgerald’s birth, which she will perform at The Egg at 8 p.m. on February 11.
For more about the conversation contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620.
(For ticket information contact The Egg Box Office at 518-473-1845.)

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Rick Moody: Novelist Turned Music Critic

Howard Hampton in the NY Times is won over by novelist Rick Moody's new collection of essays on rock and pop bands, On Celestial Music (2012).

"The book’s best essays wrestle with performers and songs as if they were Moody’s better angels and personal hellhounds. He plunges in, thoughtful and reckless, psychoanalyzing the sounds and lyrics and singers and his own reactions, caught in a blissful, bleary tug of war between the heights of intoxication and the depths of hangover. He writes with enormous reserves of empathy and grace about the Magnetic Fields (fickle, arty, doubling back on themselves like serpent-shaped licorice), Wilco (a time-exposure wedding photo, Mathew Brady via Diane Arbus), the Pogues (an Alcoholics Unanimous meeting) and the deeply peculiar Danielson Famile (a Christian cult band or a band of Christian cultists or maybe some kind of crypto-born-again art project). This is doubly appealing for me because these happen to be bands I’ve never had time or affinity for...."

More.

Moody reads tonight 7/26 at Skidmore with Francine Prose.

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New York Sings!

New York Sings! Awarded Grant from NY Council for the Humanities

Capital Repertory Theatre and the UAlbany Department of History and Documentary Studies Program are thrilled to announce receipt of a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities, to support their presentation of New York Sings!, an afternoon event featuring musicologist Rena Kosersky and folklorist/musician George Ward.

Saturday, March 24, 2012
1 pm – 2:30 pm
Capital Repertory Theatre
111 North Pearl Street, Albany (free on-street parking and various paid lots nearby)

Discussion with visuals by Rena Kosersky; music performances by George Ward
Q&A session to follow
Free and open to the public
No tickets required

For details: http://www.proctors.org/news/2012/02/new-york-sings-capital-rep-mar-24-free-all-welcomed

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Livesey: Music to Read By

Margot Livesey, who visits Thursday, March 20, recommends a playlist of music to accompany her novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, on the blog, Largehearted Boy.

"Gemma's earliest years are spent not in Scotland but Iceland - her father is Icelandic – and in thinking about that lonely, volcanic country I spent a good deal of time listening to the Icelandic band Sigur Ros (Victory Rose). The voice of the lead singer, Jonsi Birgisson, has an almost other worldly quality which seems to fit perfectly with the fact that many Icelanders believe in the existence of elves. And Jonsi himself is obsessed with birds and animals. Two evocative songs stand out for me: 'Go Do' in which Jonsi insists 'You should always know you can do anything,' and 'Saeglopur' which means lost at sea, or shipwrecked." More.

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William Kennedy: Summer Tuxedo in February

Salmagundi magazine recounts a recent Havana-themed celebration of William Kennedy's new novel Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes held at Skidmore. The event also featured musicologist Howard Fishman and his trio playing some of the period songs that appear in the novel, as well as period performances by other musicians.

"On the first of February, William Kennedy sported his white 'summer tux' for the first-ever Salmagundi Salon. He wasn’t committing an off-season fashion faux pas but dressing the part for a night at 'La Floridita North,' a club conjured out of the crush of mint for mojitos, hot jazz, and two-tone shoes."

"The weather cooperated (a practically tropical 52 degrees in the dead of an Upstate New York winter), making the conceit of a night in Old Havana c. 1958 feel like more than a species of wishful thinking. Dressed to kill, we gathered for a night of music, theatrical business at the bar, and top-shelf literature courtesy of William Kennedy’s most recent novel, Changó’s Beads and Two-Toned Shoes with its compelling frame of revolution and racial tension." More.

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A Character Walks Out of a Short Story

[Elston Gunn]: HONEYDRIPPER is based on your short story "Keeping Time," correct?

[John Sayles]: I consider HONEYDRIPPER to be an original screenplay, though it is inspired by a character who appears in "Keeping Time," just as MATEWAN was inspired by a character who appears (in about four pages) of my novel UNION DUES. The only time I've adapted a short story I've written into a movie was CASA DE LOS BABYS.

Elston Gunn of Ain't It Cool News interviews director/screenwriter John Sayles about the sources of inspiration for HONEYDRIPPER, his film about the birth of rock and roll in the American South.

HONEYDRIPPER will be screened this Friday, Feb. 17 at the Performing Arts Center uptown. John Sayles himself will visit on Feb. 27.

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