Yes, it can only mean that it’s Purim time again and The Shushan Channel is coming back to 92YTribeca on Feb 27. This year’s skewering of Purim and pop-culture is headlined by Lizz Winstead (co-creator of The Daily Show and creator of Shoot the Messenger) and features a cast from Broadway, VH-1 and Comedy Central, plus all-new hilarity from the writers behind The Daily Show, The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien and 30 Rock. Featuring a special appearance by 30 Rock’s Scott Adsit, a video presentation by Joel McHale and a surprise message from a star of The Tonight Show.
Henry Paulson and Jeffrey Immelt Discuss Being On The Brink
A packed house and plenty of press were on hand last night for a conversation on the 2008 financial crisis with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt at the 92nd Street Y. Here are some excerpts:
New York mag’s Daily Intel: “On not seeing the crisis before it happened: “Everyone says, ‘You idiots! How did you miss it!’ But I remember I said to President Bush in 2006, you know, I think we have a situation in the mortgage market. And he said, tell me where. And I said, well, there’s a lot of dry tinder. You don’t know what’s going to catch fire.”
L.A. Times: Paulson worked for a Republican president, but he said that during the negotiations to save the economy in the fall of 2008, as the Troubled Asset Relief Program was on the line, “the house Republicans were the biggest problem.”
Huffington Post: When the discussion touched on the Bear Stearns bailout—which Paulson argued made investors more risk averse—and the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, Paulson got defensive. Lehman, he said, was unfortunate, but the government did not have the power to prevent it: “There was one firm that died, and I certainly didn’t want it to die,” he said. “I don’t think anyone could have worked any harder to try to prevent that outcome.”
Upcoming Talks
Roosevelt’s Lessons for Our Time with Curtis Roosevelt: Feb 21
Robert E. Rubin with Sebastian Mallaby on The Global Economy: Mar 2
Jon Meacham and Fareed Zakaria on America and World Affairs: Mar 17
In the previous How To with dance teacher Juli Greenberg, she taught you how to Shuffle Off To Buffalo. In the latest video above, she instructs you on a simple tap step that everyone can do. Try it out and let us know how you did in the comments. And if you have any ideas for future How To videos you would like to see, please let us know and we’ll try to make one!
For any inspiring Fred Astaire of Ginger Rogers in your household, Greenberg teaches Tab B and Tap C classes for teens at the 92nd Street Y. Check out all the Tap Classes available for children and teens here.
Matisyahu performing at the 2010 Winter Olympics /Photo Credit
Matisyahu, a Hasidic reggae musician from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, currently has three of the top ten albums on the iTunes reggae charts, and played at the Winter Olympics on Monday. NBC has also chosen to feature his song One Lovein commercials for the 2010 games in Vancouver. He told the Daily News on Tuesday: “I celebrate shabbos, keep kosher and pray every day, but I have another musical life. Bob Marley was it for me.”
On Mar 16, Matisyahu will make his first visit to the 92nd Street Y to discuss his development as an artist, the fusion of his various musical styles and his latest record, Light. That album topped reggae charts for over 10 weeks, “an unheard-of Caucasian crossover,” the Daily News wrote. Check out the Hype Machine to hear his music.
The great pianist András Schiff returns to 92Y at the end of February for a three-concert celebration of Franz Joseph Haydn’s music for the piano, which has been woefully neglected, and a special Words and Music performance with a rare U.S. appearance by one of Europe’s leading writers, Peter Esterházy. Below is a Q&A we conducted with Schiff in preparation of this highly anticipated series.
Feb 27: Joined by cellist Miklós Perényi and violinist Yuuko Shiokawa for a program of Haydn’s piano trios.
Feb 28: Explores Haydn’s compositions for keyboard in this exclusive lecture-recital. Wildly popular in Europe, this is Schiff’s first lecture-recital in the U.S.
Mar 1: Esterházy’s reading from Celestial Harmonies will include musical interludes by Schiff, his dear friend.
You often immerse yourself in a single composer over a period of time, your Beethoven project being a recent example. Why do you like to take this approach?
The reason for trying to explore a single composer is my own curiosity. It only works with the very best of composers; there are only about half a dozen that can carry a whole program. Apart from that, a project based on a single composer is also a learning experience, immensely satisfying for the audience and for the performer alike. To me, even a mixed program must contain works that are closely connected to each other.
What attracts you to Haydn’s piano music?
Of all the great composers, Haydn is still the most misunderstood and underrated— with Mendelssohn and Schumann in second and third places. It is a worthy challenge to try to change the status quo.
Why do you think his works are so neglected?
Haydn’s piano music is neglected because most of the great pianists of the past have neglected it. Liszt never played Haydn, nor did von Bülow, Rachmaninoff, Godowsky, Hofmann—not even Schnabel. The biggest challenge of playing Haydn (compared to his contemporaries) is that Haydn was not a virtuoso pianist, like Mozart and Beethoven were. He writes absolute music for the keyboard, that doesn’t necessarily come from the character of the instrument.
Panel Nerds On Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik’s Fireside Chat
Leave it to Malcolm Gladwell to come up with a reason why journalism – particularly magazine writing – will survive. Gladwell believes that even if a tiny percentage of people in the world value and subscribe to publications like the New Yorker then that actually translates into a large enough number to sustain the industry.
—Panel Nerds on Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell at the 92nd Street Y this past Tuesday. Read the full recap on Mediaite.
“92YTribeca has released its March schedule—including a chance to ask Andy Garcia in person what he’s been up to lately, a bid to take Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me seriously, and an Oscars viewing party.”
Poet Lucille Clifton passed away recently at the age of 73. The New York Times recalled that Clifton: “...received a National Book Award in 2000 for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000,” published by BOA Editions. In 2007, she became the first African-American woman to win the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a $100,000 award that is one of American poetry’s signal honors.
Her book “Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980” (BOA, 1987) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1988.”
Her relationship with the 92Y Poetry Center dates back to 1969, when she won our Discovery poetry contest. In tribute to her we are sharing the clip above, from her reading of Voices, on Nov 3, 2008. Clifton reads five poems: Out of Body, Mataoka, Albino, Cream of Wheat and Aunt Jemima.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
And check this out...Parlato is the special musical guest at 92YTribeca tomorrow on Feb 18 for Comedy Below Canal™: Some Folks Hosted by Wyatt Cenac. Cenac you might remember had a very special Comedy Below Canal™ last month (see a picture slideshow on Flickr).
So for $12, you get to see acclaimed jazz musician Gretchen Parlato, Comedy Below Canal™ with Wyatt Cenac, AND...other special guests. BOOM goes the dynamite.
Film: Short Slam #5: Hosted by Thom Woodley, creator of web series The Burg and The All-For-Nots.
Thu, Feb 18
Talks: Bloggers on the Bus: Award-winning journalist Eric Boehler provides an unprecedented portrait of the power brokers pioneering the major shift in today’s media.
Comedy: The News Distillery Hosted by Faith Salie with Jacob Weisberg, Gideon Evans and Alison Rosen
Film: Made in India Work-In-Progress Screening with directors Rebecca Haimowitz & Vaishali Sinha in person for discussion with Judith Helfand.
To The Editor: ‘Waste Land’ on the East Side? Eliot Did Read It There
The New York Times letters editor Thomas Feyer and op-ed editor David Shipley were at the 92nd Street Y last Thursday to share secrets about writing opinion pieces that get published and discuss the effectiveness of opinion pieces in shaping policy and public opinion. And we were taking notes! After the Times published a piece on Wednesday that referred to the Upper East Side as “a bit of a wasteland when it comes to the performing arts,” Bernard Schwartz, the Director of Unterberg Poetry Center, drafted a polite letter offering “a small objection” and sent it off to the Times letters section. It was published it on Sunday! Here it is in full:
We at the 92nd Street Y share Charles Isherwood’s excitement that the Royal Shakespeare Company will be coming to the Park Avenue Armory in 2011. As for his comment that the Upper East Side is “a bit of a wasteland when it comes to the performing arts,” a small objection.
Though he rightly singles out 92Y’s concerts and lectures, it’s worth mentioning that the Unterberg Poetry Center — which once presented a reading of “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot himself — has long celebrated classic and contemporary drama.
While it’s true that we do not stage full productions, we have played host to just about every major playwright of the second half of the 20th century — as well as, through our Poets’ Theater, numerous adaptations of the work of Shakespeare, Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, Dante, Virginia Woolf, Dylan Thomas and Samuel Beckett.
As August Wilson once said, appearing at the 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center was “my life’s ambition when I was 24. ... It meant you’d made it.”
Not too shabby, eh? We’ve got your back Upper East Side!
92Y Podcast: From the Poetry Center Archive: James Earl Jones reads Walt Whitman
On Thursday, distinguished literary scholar Helen Vendler returns to the Poetry Center to lecture on Walt Whitman. In celebration of Professor Vendler’s visit, today’s featured recording, from 1973, is of actor James Earl Jones reading passages from “Song of Myself.”
I too am not a bit tamed. . . . I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Professor Vendler will be examining three groups of Whitman’s lyrics and sequences: poems of the self and others; poems of erotic intent; and poems of the Civil War. In years past, she has utilized these annual talks—on Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, George Herbert and W.B. Yeats, among others—to articulate thoughts which eventually find their way into book-form.
Listening to Helen Vendler is “like entering the mind of the poet,” wrote the Los Angeles Times.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. To purchase a ticket to Professor Vendler’s lecture, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
You can also download the MP3. [18 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
Subscribe with iTunes or add our podcast feed to your RSS news reader and have future 92nd Street Y podcasts delivered automatically.
The New York Times on pianists Richard Goode & Jonathan Biss at the 92nd Street Y last week:
There was no clash of egos on Wednesday evening at the 92nd Street Y, when Richard Goode and Jonathan Biss treated die-hard piano fans (who braved treacherous streets and a blizzard warning) to a superlative partnership. As soloists, the two superb pianists offer insightful and profoundly expressive music making; here they proved ideally matched collaborators.
The program included Beethoven’s transcription of his “Grosse Fuge,” written in 1825 as the final movement to the Op. 130 String Quartet. Beethoven was persuaded by his publisher to replace the gritty, dissonant fugue, which understandably baffled listeners, with a more digestible finale.
The publisher commissioned a four-hand piano version of the fugue. In a genteel 19th-century parlor, hearing the piano arrangement (played here on two pianos) must have been like listening to a heavy-metal band at afternoon tea. Even upon repeated hearings the fugue never fails to shock, although the piano version is less startling than the original.
Mr. Biss and Mr. Goode didn’t prettify any of the rough edges, offering a vigorous performance that confirmed Stravinsky’s remark that the fugue is an “absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever.”
Shababa Bakery – Purim Special: Squish, roll and shape your very own Challah and take it home to bake and as a special treat, make your own Hamentashen for Purim and take it home to bake too!
Sat, Feb 20
Jewish Giants of the American Songbook: Harold Arlen. Join Joelle Wallach as she covers the life and work of this modest genius, a passionate family man and stalwart friend of many more famous colleagues.
Vintage Ragtime Ball: Join the Vintage Dance Society for a grand late-winter celebration of the Ragtime era, including early 20th century with waltzes, tangos, one-steps, foxtrots and the blues.
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A packed house and plenty of press were on hand last night for a conversation on the 2008 financial crisis with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt at the 92nd Street Y. Here are some excerpts:
, on Nov 3, 2008. Clifton reads five poems: Out of Body, Mataoka, Albino, Cream of Wheat and Aunt Jemima.
For example, a selection of the lists jazz musician 
The New York Times letters editor Thomas Feyer and op-ed editor David Shipley 
following this event.
following this event.
