Reviews: Tokyo String Quartet, Chamber Music and Brian Brooks
In the photo above from last Saturday night, Catherine Cochran and Hanna Arie-Gaifman of the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts toast the Tokyo String Quartet backstage on another successful season as the Y’s String Quartet-in-Residence. The upcoming 08/09 season marks the start of an ambitious three-year cycle, in which the Tokyo String Quartet will perform all 16 of Beethoven’s string quartets. Subscriptions are now on sale. Their recent CD of the Beethoven Op. 18 quartets has received glowing reviews.
The Chamber Music at the Y concert on Tuesday night was also favorably reviewed by Steve Smith in the New York Times: “Ms. Josefowicz was a fiery presence; Mr. Tree’s playing was sage and genteel. Between those poles the trio provided a solid foundation: Mr. Laredo and Ms. Robinson offered sweetly spun lines, and Mr. Kalichstein’s contributions were buoyant and refined. Intonation suffered in climaxes, but spirit won out.” More info on their 2008-09 subscriptions is available here.
In the last series of performances for the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, the Brian Brooks Moving Company impressed critics from the Advocate (here’s their preview and photo below) and the Village Voice: “Brooks’s brilliant escalating repetitions call for endurance, not to say heroism, on the part of the performers...But everyone’s running and leaping at once, barely avoiding collisions, grunting and gasping. Smart, utterly unpretentious heroes, they make your eyes water and your spirit soar.”
Brian Brooks, Edward Rice, Weena Pauly, Jo-anne Lee in Acre
New York City, for me as for many, is filled with family and friends. But it is also a city of ghosts. My father, Jacob Gordin Kaplan, was a left-wing New Yorker who had to move to Canada in 1950, thanks to Joseph McCarthy. Every year, we flew or sailed back from Nova Scotia to visit Dad’s birthplace, making the rounds of countless relatives - many of my grandmother’s ten brothers and sisters, and my grandfather’s six. All of that generation, now, are gone.
Luckily, though, some were still furiously alive when I began work, in 1982, on my book about my great-grandfather Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: the Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin. In 1983, how amazed I was to discover that Jacob Gordin’s youngest child, my father’s Aunt Helen, was still living in Queens. We had never visited and I knew nothing about her because she and my grandmother often argued, as did so many of the Gordins. I went immediately to Queens, to hear a woman of 87 tell stories of growing up in the household of the greatest Yiddish playwright in the world.
All my life, going to New York has been a thrill, but this time – coming to speak at the 92nd Street Y about my great-grandfather’s titanic, tragic life and about my search for him – is especially momentous. This is a New York story, the tale of an immigrant, forced into exile, who arrives penniless on the Lower East Side, and transforms not only his own life but the lives of his fellow Jews around the world, with his dramatic words.
I have dreamed of honoring my Great-aunt Helen, and all the others who gave me their memories, by bringing their stories back to New York where they belong. On April 8th, thanks to the 92nd Street Y, I will be flying in to do so.
What You Missed: Dennis Prager’s Case for Judaism (and Shabbat)
The Timothy Birdnow blog has an exhaustive recount of popular radio talk show host Dennis Prager’s event last week at the Y where he presented “The Case for Judaism”:
Mr. Prager went into a discussion of the Sabbath by first stating the word “holy” means separate in Hebrew, thus the holy day (holiday) of the Sabbath must be separate from the rest of the week. An event that changed his life occurred when he was twenty-one, traveling in a train to Helsinki. Living as a somewhat secular college student then, the days “started to run into one another” for him. Friday night was just like any other day - and he realized he missed the holiness of the Sabbath, where he can leave the world one day a week - and he considers that “awesome.” Prager feels sorry for people/kids that play video games frantically seven days a week. On Saturday, Mr. Prager doesn’t read newspapers, even though Judaism permits it. Reading newspapers to be informed on world and local events is part of his job as a radio host and he wants his mind turned away from his weekday job on the Sabbath. He has been asked to appear on the Larry King Show on Friday night more than once, and has refused that valuable media exposure. Prager didn’t consider it a conflict. It gives him “inner peace not available outside the practice.” And he stated that the G-dly punishment for missing the Sabbath - is missing the Sabbath. It gives him happiness, he stated. He urged people to “don’t’ go with the flow of society.” He also once turned down a very lucrative offer to be an afternoon radio talk show host in drive-time because half a year, he would be required to work when Friday afternoon turned into Sabbath time.
John Hudson, Artistic Director of the experimental Shakespeare company, the Dark Lady Players, has put forth the theory that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a Jewish woman. He writes on Jewcy.com:
For hundreds of years, people have questioned whether William Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name. The mystery is fueled by the fact that his biography simply doesn’t match the areas of knowledge and skill demonstrated in the plays. Nearly a hundred candidates have been suggested, but none of them fit much better. Now a new candidate named Amelia Bassano Lanier—the so-called ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets and a member of an Italian/Jewish family—has been shown to be a perfect fit. Here are eight reasons that are sure to convince you.
Read the full article to judge the evidence for yourself. Rebecca Honig Friedman of the Jewess blog followed up with Hudson for a Q&A. Here’s an excerpt:
How did you first hit upon Amelia Bassano as a candidate for author of the plays we’ve come to know as William Shakespeare’s?
If the plays contain Jewish satires and allegories, then there was only one Jewish candidate.
How much knowledge of Jewish texts was Bassano likely to have as a Marrano and a woman?
There was only one Talmud known in England, it was in westminster cathedral library; however, Talmudic teaching was also oral, so individual quotes could have been transmitted that way. There are several quotes from the Pirke Avot which was available as a standalone volume in Latin, similarly the Zohar. There were of course women scholars at the time, including one who was a distant relative of the Bassanos–Donna Ana (Reyna) de Nasi continued her mother’s vision and support for Torah scholarship, and in her 50’s set up a printing press at Belvedere Palace that published a dozen Hebrew books over 1592-99 including an allegorical drama and a Talmudic treatise.
Man or woman, Jewish or not, it definitely gives Shakespeare scholars something to ponder over a sonnet or two. If you’re looking to dive into the classics, look no further than Robert W. Smith, an internationally known director and expert on Shakespeare, who has been teaching his “Best Loved Plays” classes at the 92nd Street Y for 11 years. You can still sign up for discussions on The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It and The Sonnets.
92Y Podcast: British Film Director and Writer Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella and Annette Insdorf at the 92nd Street Y
As reported by the BBC and many other media outlets, British film director and writer Anthony Minghella died yesterday at the age of 54 from a fatal hemorrhage days after having surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck. He won an Oscar for best director in 1997 for The English Patient and his widely praised works include The Talented Mr. Ripley which earned him an Oscar nomination for best screenplay.
Minghella appeared at the Y for Dr. Annette Insdorf's Reel Pieces series on December 7, 2006 for a preview screening of his film Breaking and Entering and to talk about his career. In the audio clip below he explains how a very public childhood prepared him for what he found to be his perfect job match as a film director and writer.
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Program Notes: Chamber Music at the Y, March 18-19
The following are Program Notes for the Chamber Music at the Y concerts with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Leila Josefowicz (violin) and Michael Tree (viola) at the 92nd Street Y on March 18 and 19. Artist bios are available here.
STRAVINSKY: Duo concertante for Violin and Piano Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, in 1882 and died in New York in 1971. He wrote the Duo concertante for Violin and Piano in 1931-32.
Stravinsky composed his Violin Concerto in 1931 for the young Samuel Dushkin. Although Stravinsky (as conductor) and Dushkin (as soloist) received invitations to play the concerto all over Europe, the composer realized that their performances were limited to cities with a capable orchestra. It occurred to him that concerts might be more easily arranged if he wrote something for piano and violin, so that he and Dushkin could perform it almost anywhere. The result was the Duo concertante, composed between December 1931 and mid-July 1932.
It was atypical of Stravinsky at this time to admit to so practical a reason for the composition as needing the piece for his concert tours. But he found an aesthetic justification for writing a work for piano and violin, a medium he claimed (in his autobiography) to dislike.
The “elderblogging" trend (bloggers over 50) we mentioned last year shows no signs of slowing down, just like the age group itself. The recent launch of Wowowow.com, Women on the Web, has upped the ante with its impressive list of co-founders—Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Mary Wells and Joni Evans—getting boldface name contributors like Candice Bergen, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Joan Cooney, Judith Martin, Sheila Nevins, Julia Reed and Jane Wagner.
This independent spirit is the backbone of the 92nd Street Y’s Baby Boomer programs. On April 6, we are hosting our annual day-long symposium, Healthy, Wealthy & Wise: Life After 50, with renowned professionals in the medical, lifestyle and financial planning fields. Watch the video above for a teaser (boomer sex, anyone?) and get more information here.
Video: Danny Sanderson with his band Kaveret in a 1975 documentary.
One of the most influential performers and songwriters on the Israeli cultural scene, Danny Sanderson is both a legendary and contemporary pop icon. He is a founding member of the band Kaveret, dubbed “the Beatles of Israel” and a top concert ticket-seller for over 25 years and through five reunions. Danny Sanderson also formed the groups Gazoz and Doda, both of which are considered among the cornerstones of Israeli rock music.
Sanderson was born in Kfar Blum in Israel, grew up in Haifa and Savion, and at the age of 10 moved with his family to the U.S., where he lived until he was 18. Sanderson was drawn to music early in life, and played in several rock bands, influenced mainly by mid-60s American pop and rock. At the age of 18 he was conscripted to the Israeli Defense Forces and played guitar with the Nachal military singing band. Sanderson was mainly noted at the time as a phenomenal guitar player, but soon also gained a reputation as a composer and arranger.
In 1972, along with friends Alon Oleartchik, Efraim Shamir, Gidi Gov, Meir Feningstein and later Yoni Rechter and Yitzchak Klepter, Sanderson founded a band called Kaveret (“Beehive”). The original idea for the band, formulated by Oleartchik and Sanderson, was to create a poprock operatic show, centered on the fictional figure “Poogy”, which Feningstein and Sanderson created. The operatic show failed to catch on, but when separated into individual songs the band became an instant hit in Israel, catapulting Kaveret into the position of the most successful pop-rock band in Israel then and since. Sanderson was the dominant force in Kaveret, writing the music and lyrics, filled with humor, to most of the songs, making him the leading songwriter of his generation. In 1976, after three albums and a short tour of the U.S., many of the band members were eager to embark on their own individual careers so Kaveret disbanded. However, it has had several reunion tours, resulting in two more albums.
Sanderson took a break from music to write a nonsense book (Nekhira Pumbit, “A Public Snore”), and then created two more bands that also demonstrated his wit: Gazoz (a type of aerated drink), which released two albums; and Doda (“Aunt”), which had several hits. He then embarked on a successful solo recording career, resulting in 11 albums, most recently Congo Blue, a more somber album recorded in response to the death of his wife. He has produced several albums for other Israeli performers and has succeeded in other media, writing two more books and appearing on Israeli television as musician, comedian and host. Sanderson’s prolific and successful career has won him a prominent place in Israel’s cultural history.
I subscribe to a newsletter that announces events at the 92nd Street Y. I don’t live in New York and I don’t hop on the Chinatown bus and pop on up to the city to catch an interesting lecture. I just fantasize about doing it or get vicarious pleasure from reading about what others are doing at the Y or, more importantly, I learn neat stuff. That’s how, this morning, I ending up reading the following quote:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Can you guess who said it? - Answer in fine print, upside-down at the bottom of the page. No, actually, it’s right here - Dwight D. Eisenhower said it. Amazing.
She also highlights a quote from Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University who is appearing at the Y with Charlie Rose on Mar 25, that we blogged earlier.
If you want to stay current with what’s going on at the Y (and the world), there is no better way than receiving our eNews. There is no better time, too: you can get a 15% discount on events by signing up.
Free Reading: A Celebration of the Schools Project with Donald Antrim, Jessica Hagedorn, Nicole Krauss, Frank McCourt, Rebecca Pawel and John Edgar Wideman
92Y Podcast: The Rehabilitation of ABC News Journalist Bob Woodruff
Previously, we posted a video excerpt from a talk between ABC News journalist Bob Woodruff and Foreign Affairs editor James F. Hoge that took place at the Y last October. You can listen to more of the conversation in the audio clip below where Woodruff goes into the details of the rehabilitation process after being seriously wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
Program Notes: Zukerman ChamberPlayers with Cellist Carter Brey, March 16
The following are Program Notes for the Zukerman ChamberPlayers: Music from the House of Mendelssohn concert with cellist Carter Brey at the 92nd Street Y on Sunday, March 16.
MENDELSSOHN: String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87 Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg in 1809 and died in Leipzig in 1847. He composed the String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87, in 1845.
Felix Mendelssohn, even by comparison with such famous virtuoso contemporaries as Liszt and Paganini, had probably the most successful musical career of his era. Universally admired as a composer, pianist, conductor, organist and music director, Mendelssohn traveled far and wide to fulfill commissions for composition and performances. Furthermore, he fulfilled the demanding obligations of a loving son, brother and father to his many family members, and of a devoted husband to his wife, Cécile, whom he married in 1837. One of his biographers, George Marek, wrote that “a conscientious chronicle of Mendelssohn’s next few years would merely weary the reader. It would link work with more work, string success after success, place tribute next to tribute, and enumerate an ever larger register of acquaintances and friends.”
In 1845, on hiatus from the demanding music directorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, orchestra Mendelssohn attempted to recharge his energies at his home in the Frankfurt area spa city of Bad Soden. He even turned down a tempting (musically and financially) invitation by Ureli Corelli Hill, president of the newly formed New York Philharmonic Society, to visit New York. Hill proposed to assemble an orchestra of 250 members and chorus of 500 singers for a “Grand Musical Festival,” at which Mendelssohn should serve as “musical missionary” to the cause of the developing music culture of the United States. In declining, the composer wrote tactfully to Hill his regrets that “…a journey like that to your country, which I would have been most happy to undertake some three or four years ago, is at present beyond my reach.” Mendelssohn admitted to his brother, Paul, that such a journey at this time would be “no more possible than a trip to the moon.”
Jewno Video: Shushan Channel Purim Party at 92YTribeca
Video: Watch the “Jewno” video preview, directed by Stephen J Levinson, a parody of the hit movie Juno.
The Shushan Channel’s Purim Party is back for its sixth year and will be the first big event in our new downtown space, 92YTribeca! Created by Daily Show writer Rob Kutner and now in collaboration with writers from The Simpsons, Dennis Miller Live and more, The Shushan Channel is a comedic retelling of the story of Esther, as seen through the lens of current TV hits like Lost, American Idol and Ugly Betty. This year the spoofs include House-man, MD, DeadVood, Grogger of Love, To Catch a Jewhater and Imperial Gladiators, scripted by professional comedy writers and performed by hilarious comedians and actors, including The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi. All this, PLUS an exclusive video monologue rant “The 5 Things I Hate About Purim” by everyone’s favorite “pissed-off optimist"—Lewis Black.
Join us March 22. Free beer & wine bar and hamentaschen, too! Ticket info here. This event is co-presented with Hazon.
Webern : String Quartet, Op. 28
Webern : Rondo for String Quartet Anton Webern was born in Vienna in 1883 and died in Mittersill, in the Austrian Alps, in 1945. He composed the String Quartet, Op. 28 in 1937-38 and the Rondo for String Quartet circa 1906.
By his late twenties, Anton Webern had become one of the 20th century’s seminal composers, leaping ahead of his teacher Arnold Schöenberg in the development of 12-tone composition while cultivating the most compressed, epigrammatic style ever heard in Western music. While composers such as Mahler had responded to an expanded harmonic palette (based on all 12 notes of the chromatic scale) with vastly extended musical forms, Webern’s reaction was just the opposite; he wrote of his Bagatelles for String Quartet, Op. 9, that “while working on them I had the feeling that once the 12 notes had run out, the piece was finished.” Only one of the bagatelles takes more than a minute to play, while the rest clock in at about 30 seconds.
For such a composer, the concept of a Rondo for String Quartet might seem inconceivable. The title itself means that the same music “comes around” again and again, and most listeners think of Webern as the archpriest of “play it once and stop.” But a closer look at the music of the Schöenberg School reveals composers who were highly engaged with the music that had preceded them. However strange their music still sounds to some listeners, they considered themselves the inevitable outcome of a tradition leading from Palestrina through Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. Although famous as a miniaturist, Webern was not deaf to the virtues of repetition, variation and development.
The Timothy Birdnow blog has an exhaustive recount of popular radio talk show host 
John Hudson, Artistic Director of the experimental Shakespeare company, 
The following are 
