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In: Born On This Date, Life
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Today is The Wife’s birthday! As is my usual tradition, below is the post that I reuse every year and keep adding to in really ungainly fashion. This post actually first lived on the old BlogSpot incarnation of this site and now it’s over here on WordPress…and I’m not using the old-school WordPress interface anymore, I use the one with “blocks”, and this post, as Dr. Cox might say, ruh-heellly does not work well in blocks, so if the formatting here is a bit “janky”, as the kids say, that’s why. As I write this, she and I are approachingDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Music
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Oh, is THIS piece a “banger”, as the kids say! (A really good song is a banger now. Up ’til now, if you said “banger” to me, I’d have assumed you were talking about a British breakfast sausage.) Composer Kevin Day‘s Concerto for Wind Ensemble is a thrilling virtuoso showpiece that puts every section of the wind ensemble on full display. It is energetic and jazzy and rhythmic and lyrical, and it’s one of the most purely enjoyable pieces I’ve listened to as a new (to me) work in a long time. I have really enjoyed hearing this piece, and I’m sure I’llDown the rabbit hole….

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And now, a Sequence. Increasing detail from Fjall, by Anna Boberg (1864-1935). This painting was recently on display at the Buffalo AKG. I found its depiction fascinating by the way more detail is revealed with each step you take toward it. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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In: Newsletter Announcements, Occasional Quizzes, On Food and Cooking
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First, the announcement: I sent out a new installment of the newsletter the other day! This one was in remembrance of actor/director/playwright Tom Noonan, who died recently. Please check it out and subscribe! I try to send it twice a month, with usually a long piece or essay. Now, for the weekly quiz-thing that I don’t always do weekly but this week I am because it’s prompt-based, which is interesting. Here’s the details: This week we’re playing word association as suggested by a blogger named Dawn Camp. She said these words “tickled her fancy,” and let’s see if they inspire you.Down the rabbit hole….

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No, I do not care that Alysa Liu dropped an f-bomb on live teevee. How could I? I personally tend to swear like a sailor, and honestly, her statement perfectly captured that moment, didn’t it? She just skated out onto the ice and proceeded to execute on the kind of flawless level we only expect from the very greatest of athletes. We’re talking, oh, that game in the NBA finals that year when Michael Jordan just started raining down three’s against a hapless opponent (I think it was the Trail Blazers). The only thing I’ve seen like Liu’s performance yesterdayDown the rabbit hole….

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Last week I featured Donna Summer. This week, I’m going to do so again. This one’s pretty trippy: It’s a suite of three songs, joined together to make one big nearly eighteen-minute suite. The main attraction is “Macarthur Park”, a song that weds an amazing tune to some of the weirdest lyrics ever written. But the way Donna Summer sings this stuff…I’d listen to her sing the Alphabet Song, to be honest. And I’ve just learned that “Macarthur Park” is the music for figure skater Alysa Liu’s long program, so I might hear it tonight! Don’t spoil the results forDown the rabbit hole….

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Courtney Bryan is a composer from New Orleans, born in 1982, who is currently a professor of music at Tulane University. She holds a doctorate and was a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. She is also, by the evidence of the piece featured here today, an amazing composer with a thrilling approach of mixing Gospel, jazz, and soundscapes to create something modern and new. Sanctum is meditative and haunting, which is almost certainly exactly what Dr. Bryan was attempting to achieve. The following is from her website: Sanctum, for orchestra and recorded sound, explores the sound of improvisation in Holiness-preaching traditions. IDown the rabbit hole….

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OK, I’m a bit behind on my posting this week because I usually write at least some of my posts ahead of time on the weekend, especially Sunday, and this week we went to Rochester for a day of fun and buying stuff at Trader Joe’s. (Yes, we have a Trader Joe’s in Buffalo. We actually have two Trader Joe’s, but we don’t like the main one (actually the store itself is fine, but its location on Niagara Falls Boulevard is really a pain to get to) and we haven’t been to the new one that opened a few months ago yet.) SoDown the rabbit hole….

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In: On Music, On People
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The other day, someone posed an interesting question over on the Threads platform: Dear white people, It’s Black History Month. Who made you see us? Who was your first Black celebrity crush? It didn’t take me long to figure out my answer, because it was Donna Summer. What follows is the post I wrote when Donna Summer died. I remember that day very well, and when I learned she was gone, I had to go outside and…well, here’s the post. Donna Summer was my Whitney Houston. I never realized that, until earlier today, when I went outside toward the endDown the rabbit hole….