Aisle Be Seeing You

Zurich Opera names Fabio Luisi its next music director

Conductor Fabio Luisi, seen last in Boston this past November conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle (under the auspices of the Celebrity Series, ahem), has been chosen to be the next music director of the Zurich Opera.

My SPAM friends #214

I've said it before, I'll say it again:

"BU YATAK BAK YATAK."

It's one's closest friends that can say the things that truly need to be said.

National Archives now on YouTube

Start your browsers, there is a new Tuber in town. The National Archives has joined the YouTube fray and promises to dole out weekly videos that will make us feel just a little bit less like we are wasting bandwidth: US National Archives Channel.

Malcolm Gladwell takes technology utopianists to task

He isn't a luddite, but he is a realist - and a thorough one at that. When Malcolm Gladwell takes technology utopianist and author Chris Anderson gently, insistently to task, as he does in this week's New Yorker, you know who's been schooled: Read Priced to Sell.

Street piano launch, Leicester Square

I want pianos on the streets of Boston! Thx to the well tempered blog for the heads up.

Kind of HOT

I don't think I've ever enjoyed having my shirt stick to me quite so much ...

UPDATE: So much for the hot weather. Back to cool and rainy ...

Soprano Measha Brueggergosman has emergency open heart surgery

Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman underwent emergency surgery on June 10 to repair a split aorta, a rare and often fatal hereditary condition:

"'I am alive, and I'm quite good, I've got to say. Thankful,' she said by telephone Wednesday. 'But [the surgeons] did saw through my sternum, so that's going to take a little bit of time.'"

Read The Globe and Mail article.

Ms. Brueggergosman made her Celebrity Series debut in November 2007.

Worker finds letter to the future in Museum of Fine Arts wall

A worker doing demolition as part of construction of the new American Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has found a letter written by a worker from 1926. Thomas F. Crowley left his typewritten letter inside of two envelopes between two sections of terra cotta wall where it stayed, undisturbed, for 83 years. Maureen Melton, historian and director of the museum’s libraries and archives has been researching Thomas Crowley and is piecing together the details of his life.

Read the Boston Globe story and watch video.

Financial Times eats Simon Rattle's lunch

Sir Simon Rattle

It was a sort of summit meeting between two venerable institutions, with salami. Andrew Clark of The Financial Times sat down to lunch with Sir Simon Rattle, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, at his house in Provence. The column, called "Lunch with the FT" (hey, why stay up late trying to be cute?), is a Financial Times staple.

Clark's conversation with Rattle is, predictably, not merely a chat about cooking and, say, the next series of concerts, with a publicist sitting quietly in the corner to smooth out the rough places. For example, Rattle gave the FT this analytical comparison of German and English culture:

"Rattle ponders the challenges of running a German institution. In England, he says, people like to be indecisive and then, after making up their mind, they can be relied on to go through with it. Germans, by contrast, like to be decisive and then change their mind.

'The necessity for rules and strictness is a way of dealing with an enormously powerful impulse: Germans are among the most emotional people on the planet. Maybe it has to do with the fact that as a nation they are always drawn back to nature and the forest.'"

Then there was this greyish job description:

"What does a conductor actually do, beyond coordinating and motivating musicians? 'I have no satisfactory answer because whatever you say, the opposite would also be true. It’s to do with controlling and not controlling, allowing and not allowing. It’s essentially to do with balance – responding to each other and finding where that balance lies.'

Rattle suggests a coffee. 'Every drug helps,' he says, alluding to the prospect of a long and arduous Wagner rehearsal 20 minutes away at the Aix theatre."

Read all of Lunch with FT: Sir Simon Rattle.

And here is the menu, by the way:

Simon Rattle’s house
Provence

Cherry tomatoes and salami
Shoulder of lamb
Aubergine ragout
Melon
Château Yon-Figeac 2003 x 2 glasses
Jug of water
Coffee

My Spam Friends 6/19/09

Today's edition of my SPAM friends opens up a new world of possibilities: Subject line: "Jack Wright: New Model!" I had two reactions: 1. When were my 8X10s taken? 2. Can I get the new 20-something model?