Music Review | jai Festival
The News Review:
- Music Review | jai Festival
- Miracles do happen
- Queens of the Stone age are still kings
- Summer reads | Salon Books
Music Review | jai Festival
New York Times – Jun 11, 2007
June 10 — Behind the rise of the all-powerful Romantic movement was the piano and its essential paradox: a percussion instrument (hit it and it makes noise) that would be tamed and stroked until it sang like the human voice. By the 1920s music had had enough of this romance and returned the instrument to its primary nature: hit it and it sounds like a drum. The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who thought up this year’s jai Festival has made the piano-as-percussion one of his principal policies. A duo-piano concert with Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams on Thursday night spent half its time doing violence to the instrument’s lyrical tradition and the rest acknowledging the closeness of nature in these unnaturally beautiful surroundings. The two pianists sat on their hands for Ligeti’s “Poème Symphonique” in which a reported 100 metronomes (I didn’t count them) were set off around the edges of Libbey Bowl’s outdoor premises and allowed slowly to tick themselves to death. Those less interested in deep thoughts about the passage of life and its alternative had the coarser pleasures of a passive demolition derby… The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who thought up this year’s jai Festival has made the piano-as-percussion one of his principal policies. A duo-piano concert with Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams on Thursday night spent half its time doing violence to the instrument’s lyrical tradition and the rest acknowledging the closeness of nature in these unnaturally beautiful surroundings. The two pianists sat on their hands for Ligeti’s “Poème Symphonique” in which a reported 100 metronomes (I didn’t count them) were set off around the edges of Libbey Bowl’s outdoor premises and allowed slowly to tick themselves to death. Those less interested in deep thoughts about the passage of life and its alternative had the coarser pleasures of a passive demolition derby. The surviving handful of swinging mechanical arms at the end made a touching kind of coda. Friday night returned listeners to 20th-century music’s two great adventures in keyboard banging the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion by Bartok and “Les Noces” by Stravinsky: four pianos more percussion and lots of singing. n both evenings there was music by Peter Eotvos the Hungarian musician long active in Paris who is this year’s featured composer and conductor.
Miracles do happen
Canada Western Catholic Reporter – Jun 11, 2007
After my husband was wheeled away I relocated to the waiting room where several grim-faced groups huddled together. I was by far the youngest spouse in the room. Undaunted I settled into a window seat overlooking the hospital’s main entrance watched the comings and goings listened to music sipped coffee. I felt surprisingly inexplicably calm. Suddenly a familiar face appeared in front of me. It was one of the nurses advising me that my husband was on his way to the recovery area. His report: one coronary artery was found to be narrowed… It was one of the nurses advising me that my husband was on his way to the recovery area. His report: one coronary artery was found to be narrowed. The doctor corrected this through balloon angioplasty and insertion of a stent (a permanent mesh tube made of metal). My husband could go home the next morning. Just like that the crisis was over. There’s a saying that miracles happen every day. When you or a loved one receive a life-saving medical intervention however routinely it may be performed you know beyond a doubt that this is true.
Queens of the Stone age are still kings
Vail Daily News – Jun 11, 2007
" "Turn of the Screw" tips a hat to "The Silence of the Lambs" by wryly recycling the line "it puts the lotion in the basket. "Previously Queens seemed like The Josh Homme Show but "Era Vulgaris" showcases the other bandmembers’ strengths and slowly but surely they’re all contributing integral parts to the mix. Troy Van Leeuwen’s slide guitar and keyboard trills serve as necessary bells and whistles and Joey Castillo remains a punishing drummer equally reliable for metal stomps and dance-floor romps. Perhaps the band’s best strength is also its weakness: Queens of the Stone Age have a knack for crafting brilliantly off-kilter melodies that seem off-putting at first but eventually wind their way into your subconscious never to leave. "Battery Acid" struck me as obnoxiously repetitive until I found myself singing it in the shower… If listeners can get past what annoys them at first they may just end up loving it. It helps that Josh Homme possesses on of the best and most versatile voices in rock music and he thoroughly knows how to use it. He sneers coos and yells like a carnival barker – sometimes within the same song – but he never swaggers at the sacrifice of melody. "Make It Wit Chu" is such a gentle soulful take on make-out R&B that you’ll be amazed it’s the same singer whipping up a frenzy in heated garage rockers like "3′s and 7′s. " Atmosphere has always played a huge part in the QTSA sound and nowhere is it more vital than on "Era Vulgaris. " Though the rock n’ roll offerings on hand differ there’s a dark sexy pulse that connects every song – it’s something unidentifiably evil and undeniably rock n’ roll.
Summer reads | Salon Books
Salon – Jun 11, 2007
“Good old Jody” her colleagues say. She has generally settled into a calm quiet life — except for her insomnia brought on by waves of loneliness and puzzled disappointment.