José Cónde lives his lyrics. He gets grooves from the names of trees. He leaves melody lines on his own answering machine. He can turn a playful refrain to his dog into a dance anthem. His songs are odes to hot dresses, Brazilian muses, discombobulated elephants, and life-giving springs.
Cónde brings a new focus and maturity to this whimsical world on Jose Conde. He turns highly personal songs into new global grooves and reflective, dynamic ballads.
“When I was in my 20s, I didn’t dance at all. I had to come out of my shell,” Cónde exclaims with a laugh. “I’m a late bloomer, though I’ve always been explorer. Now I’ll go anywhere and do anything, I’ll try anything, experimenting with flavors and playing around with different elements and sounds.”
As a songwriter and bandleader, Cónde developed a striking instinct for merging his Miami upbringing, Cuban roots, and the sizzle of New York’s Latin underground. But the new self-titled album is distinguished by a universality; catchy melodies and danceable rhythms likely to draw listeners of all stripes. Cónde has traded in his Cuban tres for a vintage Gresch guitar (and Hammond B3 and a dozen other instruments). Pan-American and trans-Atlantic influences flow effortlessly on Jose Conde. “The whole idea of fusing elements of American funk, Cuban son, and Brazilian music has been kicking around in my head for years. But it was still in the context of a ‘Latin’ band. Now I’m free to move in any and all directions.”
Cónde rocks a smoking tango (“El Vestido”) or sways through a sensuous, gentle samba (“Mabel”). Lyrically, he points to the absurdness of the habitat displacement that led to an elephant wandering into a Zambian hotel lobby (taken straight from the pages of National Geographic; on “Elephante en Hotel”). Or to the crazy, rockabilly-tinged capers of his dog (“Gordito Cabezon”).
Rumba meets infectious Brooklyn break beats on “Amor y Felicidad.” The hard-grooving “Matapalo Matamusa” sparkles with electro blips while raising the roof off the sucker, thanks to funky guitar riffs and an irresistible bass line. Cónde’s musical exuberance bursts out at the least provocation. Witness the cool cha-cha-cha-suggesting phrase in the South African language of Tsonga (“Munghana Wamina”).Yet the irrepressible spontaneity is balanced by an emotional and introspective side that turns grooves into poetry.
Cónde’s strong sense of himself as an artist, evolved over a long incubation period, demanding just the right sound. After years of working with different collaborators, for the latest record, Cónde played, recorded, and mixed the majority of the album himself, which culminated in sequestering himself for days in his bedroom with a NEVE analog mixer and a menagerie of instruments.
When no bassist could give him just the right swing on tracks like "Matapalo," he bought and polished his long dormant bass chops until his hands were shot. “I had trouble communicating the exact vibe to bass players,” says Cónde. “There’s an unusual relationship between vocal and bass phrasing that the song demanded, an interplay that lets the vocals breathe and lets the bass line get funky. It had to sound exactly as I heard it in my head.”
Yet Cónde also knew when to dip into the bubbling Brooklyn melting pot to find the right groove players. Drummer Gintas Janusonis (Anjelique Kidjo), Brazilian percussionist Ze Mauricio (Chorro Ensemble), Cuban conga player Roman Diaz, and Chilean Yayo Cerca on cajon. Cónde also recruited diverse and funky keyboard players, guitarists, and bassists from the scene, such as Jorge Bringas (La Excelencia), funky Caracas-born guitarist Rafael Gomez (Lila Downs), and Chilean keyboardist Pablo Vergara (Groove Collective).
“This isn’t just another project or a concept,” he said. “This record is about me as a songwriter. It’s about one guy in Brooklyn, his songs, and his voice. Everything else is secondary.”
about José Cónde
Brooklyn singer songwriter José Cónde reimagined the Latin conjunto. He blazed through salsa and son. He unleashed long trippy jams and massive brass sections. He dug deep into his Cuban heritage and Miami upbringing. He’s done the world music and Latin alternative thing, won the awards, and played to jubilant, rain-soaked crowds.
A fixture on the alt Latin scene, Cónde has indeed experimented with a multitude of formats, approaches, and projects, as a markedly independent musician. His music has been featured on the BBC and Californication. He won Best Latin Album at the Independent Music Awards (2008) and has gotten crowds hopping from the Montreal Jazz Festival to DC’s Kennedy Center, including a recent Central Park SummerStage show that got thousands of damp but dancing listeners in a downpour.
Cónde seriously spiced up kid’s music as the musical director and singer for Baby Loves Salsa (Rope a Dope Records/Sony; 2008). Cónde’s video, “Respondele a Obama,” which has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, became an anthem of the U.S. 2008 presidential campaign.
As a songwriter and bandleader for his big band Ola Fresca, Cónde developed a striking instinct for merging his Miami upbringing, Cuban roots, and New York’s Latin underground. In two critically acclaimed albums, Ay! Que Rico (PiPiKi/Universal; 2004) and the award winning (R)Evolución (Mr. Bongo Records UK; 2007), Cónde drew on Puerto Rican bomba and Haitian compas, Cuban son and New Orleans swamp-funk. Five songs from these albums have been featured on Putumayo and Rough Guide Records compilations.
But forget all that: “Now I just don’t give a damn where I fit in. I’m just José Cónde.”
Today I want to write about something that has bothered me for the better part of a decade. I’ve carved out no fewer than a dozen drafts of this post, all strangely unalike, all ultimately failing to accomplish the job I’ve set out to do. Truth is, I’ve been trying to write it off and on for more than a year now, and the right words have been seemingly impossible to come by.
In the end, and in order to post it, I guess I had to care more about the message than I do about potential backlash. I’m not being facetious when I say that I hope I can get this message across without offending… well… everybody.
What I really hope is that this post will spark and encourage poignant and worthwhile discussion that will lead to some poignant and worthwhile changes in the lives of at least a few people who are hurting.
That being said, I believe some strong words need to be said today.
“God hates fags.” We’ve all seen the signs being waved high in the air by members of the Westboro Baptist church. On TV. In real life. It’s hard not to take notice.
Over the years, I’ve watched seemingly never-ending disgustingness and hatred spill across the media airwaves from those who belong to the organization. For those who don’t know much about that “church,” they have made a seedy name for themselves by doing drastic things like picketing beneath atrocious signs and hosting flagrant anti-gay protests at military funerals.
Almost every person of nearly every religion has no problem loathing and condemning the Westboro Baptist Church and its members, and perhaps with reason. They take freedom of speech far beyond what our founding fathers intended when they fought to give us that right, and they laugh at the rest of the world while they do.
But today I don’t want to talk about those idiots. I want to talk about you. And me.
All roads lead to the Balkans, and Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based singer Vlada Tomova hears it.
The region welcomed mysterious wanderers from Inner Asia; Greeks and Romans trading in the East; bands of weary migrants on a road that stretched from Rajastan to Andalusia. The lines of ancient movement across the peninsula are audible and tightly bound to one another, like the lives in a village.
Embracing sounds far outside the confines of tradition, Tomova has distilled years of learning songs from traditional singers and modern songwriters to tell Balkan Tales. Her arrangements fearlessly embrace flamenco flourishes and Indian resonances, Brazilian flair and Romany rhythms. Yet her mutable, flexible voice evokes the stark, rich spirit of Balkan mountainsides and byways, the old paths and deep roots of thousands of years of cultural conversation.
Joined by globetrotting kaval (traditional Bulgarian flute) master Theodosii Spassov and an avant-worldly band including alter-sitarist Chris Rael, Tomova brings this elegant balance to New York, Boston, and Chicago in late October 2011.
“The Balkans have something very unique that mixes well with other musics because of its complex and long history,” explains Tomova. “And it’s very emotional for me; it’s about connecting to the places, the ancient villages I’ve loved since childhood. It’s about home.”
***
Tomova recalls sitting at a modest kitchen table on a recent song-finding trip to Bulgaria. She had brought the members of her choir, Yasna Voices, to a remote pomak village, people whose ancestors had converted to Islam. There, Tomova and the American vocalists had met up with a pair of singers who were the real deal.
Across from her sat two older women who had been life-long singing partners. Traditionally, two girls start finding the close, vibrating intervals of old songs together and will continue blending their voices until death do them part. They could feel each other’s timing without a glance, sense what to say as the other improvised lyrics.
This commitment and intimacy moved Tomova deeply. “Those two women were so close, and they relied so much on each other, in an unspoken, down-to-earth, unquestioning way, which you could hear in their singing, the two voices flowing together as one,” Tomova reflects. “I wish we could find much more of that kind of interdependence, trust, and connectedness in the different layers of our everyday life today, especially in large cities, and in the Western world.”
The layers of Tomova’s own life reveal a similar spirit of interconnection. Though raised around traditional music in her native Bulgaria, she and her generation rebelled against the state-sponsored folk heard on the airwaves. It wasn’t until Tomova came to Berklee to study jazz that she discovered a completely different approach to Bulgarian and Balkan traditions, an approach that began with a spontaneous song at a Boston party and ended with concerts at Carnegie Hall and musical trips to the Bulgarian countryside.
Not content to simply sing the roots—though she is now an accomplished and respected performer and singer of Bulgarian traditional music—Tomova often collaborates with other globally-minded musicians (like Balkan Beat Box) and lends her mutable, expressive voice to installations, from a recent King Tut exhibit to the Turin Winter Olympics.
The delicious tension between tradition and bold experimentation echoes in Tomova’s songs like the close intervals loved by Bulgarian singers. It vibrates in the flamenco guitar and hand percussion that reframes the traditional Bulgarian tune, “Momche,” and in the Greek-gone-Brazilian ballad to a beloved daughter, “Augoustos.”
A set for Tomova’s Balkan Tales is just as likely to include a Russian gypsy ballad as an edgy sitar line, or to follow a full-throated village song with a complex, globally savvy extrapolation of a folk-inspired jazz number. Take “Women’s Dance,” a tune composed by Milcho Leviev, an eccentric and brilliant musician defector from socialist Bulgaria whom Tomova tracked down in Los Angeles.
Tomova’s unexpected arrangements evolved in close collaboration with her fellow musicians at Berklee and in New York’s vibrant scene, as well as from Tomova’s own feel for vocal color, ornamentation, and distinctive harmonies. This fall, the band will include Spassov, a wildly talented traditional flute player who can easily leap borders and genres; he’s worked with everyone from Indian tabla innovator Trilok Gurtu and flamenco piano star David Peña Dorantes to film music icon Ennio Morricone.
On one of his many world tours, Spassov showed up at one of Tomova’s shows and jumped in to jam with her band, and a musical friendship began. “I’ve wanted to play with Teodosii again for years,” Tomova smiles.
The diverse sounds and multifaceted musicians Tomova has brought together reflect not only the complex interchange between peoples across the Balkans; they also resonate with Tomova’s new roots in a global metropolis.
“I have dug deep into Balkan music, but I also have all these other parts in me now,” Tomova notes. “And wherever I go, even if I’m back singing in that small village somewhere in Bulgaria, I bring those other worlds with me. My band and our performances reflect that.”
In every dazzling palace and every shadowy alley hums a barely palpable but evocative drone. It’s the ache of glory days now gone, a stirring melancholy that ennobles and embroils the City, once at the heart of so much.
This is the sound and pulse of Constantinople/Istanbul, and Boston-based musicians’ collective DÜNYA, with Schola Cantorum and Ensemble Trinitas, brings it to the forefront on A Story of the City...Constantinople, Istanbul, their journey through a thousand years of the music that echoed along the Bosphorus. The double CD is currently submitted for a Grammy™ award.
There, Greek Orthodox melodies collided with rousing Crusader ballads and the unexpectedly complex folk tunes from Central Asia. A Polish Protestant convert transcribed elegant 17th-century Ottoman melodies. Armenian composers wrote music for Turkish-speaking Jewish and Greek lyricists (“Bu gece çamlarda kalsak ne olur/Apopse”), while Sufi chants uniquely transformed Jewish religious songs (“Yeheme levavi”). Migrants, traders, and conquerors invented new genres, from the court music of the sultans to art music and protest pop in the 20th century.
“I think that the rich diversity reflected in this album will be appreciated by Americans,” reflects Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, musical director and co-founder of DÜNYA. “Through that appreciation, I am sure the American view of the Near and Middle East will change. The Grammies are a great platform for our work to find a greater voice, and to highlight DÜNYA’s unique structure and many talents.”
***
DÜNYA sprang from frustrating success. Sanlikol, who came to the U.S. to study both at Berklee and the New England Conservatory, had won a name for himself on the jazz circuit, playing festivals across Eurasia and collaborating with legends like trombone icon Bob Brookmeyer. And yet he longed for something very different.
Then one night a decade ago, he played a game of Risk. A friend wanted to provide a fitting soundtrack for world domination and included a few tracks that struck Sanlikol like a bolt from the blue. It was music many believed to have been played by the Janissaries. Sanlikol couldn’t get it out of his head.
“It wasn’t about ideology or nationalist feelings of any kind. It wasn’t because I missed Turkey, though the distance helped make the discovery genuine,” Sanlikol recalls. “It was totally an accident and completely about the music. I listened like never before, and it rocked like Zeppelin. And though I had all this theoretical training and sophistication, I just couldn’t find the tonic.”
Seriously intrigued, Sanlikol began to study Turkish music with the same dedication he had pursued his Western classical and jazz training (he is now a leading scholar on Mehter or the so-called Janissary music, as well as a professor at Brown and the New England Conservatory) He found himself taken by the entire region and took lessons in, among other traditions, Greek Orthodox chanting (from Nektarios Antoniou, leader of Schola Cantorum and DÜNYA member). He soon discovered dozens of other kindred spirits around Boston, high-powered musicians who loved Middle Eastern, Sephardic, Greek, or other Eastern Mediterranean sounds.
Sanlikol, working together with close friends Robert Labaree and Antoniou, suddenly understood: An ensemble flexible enough to cross cultures and play across musical genres, yet broad enough to embrace all the local talent, would have to take a somewhat unconventional form.
DÜNYA was born, a true collective made up of interlocking ensembles—playing everything from New Music to Anatolian folk—and concentric rings of participants circling a highly committed core. It felt like the ideal response to the unsatisfying life of a touring musician, always performing the same repertoire night after night. “With this structure, we can find a fresh kind of continuity,” reflects Sanlikol. “We can come together as friends and keep playing together over and over at radically different concerts.”
Several years ago, contemplating DÜNYA’s next concert, Sanlikol toyed with the idea of a program of songs about Istanbul, of putting together a nice, light evening of pop music. Then he got in way too deep, finding music that extended back in time, and into a plethora of cultures and faiths. “I realized, ‘Wow, I’m getting sucked into this thing. What do I do?’” Sanlikol remembers with a smile. “That’s when [Nobel laureate] Orhan Pamuk’s novel about Istanbul came out. He has this melancholic idea about the city, and it inspired me. I listened to all these musics, even military or upbeat ones, and I couldn’t help but hear that melancholic tone. It’s all over, whether it’s Greek Constantinople or Turkish Istanbul. The great heydays are long gone.”
Yet the unexpected figures who helped fashion the city’s music live on. There’s the love-struck medieval French nobleman and crusader, Gui de Coucy (“A vous amant, plus qu’a nul autre gent”). Or the intriguing Ali Ufki (Wojciech Bobowski), who converted to Islam from Protestantism and became a musician in the Ottoman court (he wrote down instrumental pieces like “Buselik Asiran pesrev”). Or Sephardic Jewish singer Haim Efendi (“La rosa enfloresse”), whose upbeat love song is pure Istanbul folk.
And the music is still glorious, though often elusive. As Sanlikol and DÜNYA began to map out their journey, starting from Greek antiquity and ending in modern Turkey, they faced a multitude of interpretational challenges. Sanlikol had little interest in historical recreation or ethnographic preservation, and opted instead for innovative twists that evoke the spirit of a time and place.
Sanlikol’s opening original composition, “Byzantium,” places the ghostly fragments of ancient Greece’s music in a bold, 20th-century atonal frame. DÜNYA fearlessly turned traditionally vocal pieces into instrumental tunes, mixed companion instruments from different traditions, and turned to thoughtfully arranged folk melodies to complement the sometimes scanty historical record. The music leaps with surprising grace from spare Sufi chants (“Salat-i ümmiye”) to full-on, wah-wah guitar-powered pop anthems (“Felekten beter vurdu”). Artfully recorded by Grammy™-nominated engineer, John Weston (Futura Productions), the result is an epic work of co-creation, mirroring the rise, fall, and continued vibrancy of one of the world’s crucial cultural capitals.
Though willing to play with tradition, Sanlikol and DÜNYA ‘s players have developed keen sensitivities to the complex emotions that surround place, time, and identity in Sanlikol’s native region. Sanlikol experienced how complex, ambiguous, and visceral the past’s impact could be: His exiled Turkish Cypriot parents recalled singing “God Save the Queen” in Turkish and knew what conflict meant. “This isn’t feel-good musical diplomacy. There’s an edge to it; there’s tension,” Sanlikol states. “When you speak of identity as a concept in mid east, in all the nation states that came out of Ottoman Empire, it’s problematic.”
“But music is first and foremost,” adds Sanlikol. “This is not the story of this or that people, but the story of the city. That’s what makes it work.”
JUILLIARD DRAMA DIVISION TO DEVELOP 4TH YEAR “PROFESSIONAL STUDIO”
FOR BACHELOR AND MASTER DEGREE ACTORS AT
FRANK GEHRY-DESIGNED SIGNATURE CENTER IN FALL OF 2012
Signature Theatre Will Host the Residency of the
Juilliard Drama Division’s “Professional Studio” at its State-of-the-Art Rehearsal Studio and 99-Seat Performance Venue, “The Studio”
New York, NY—November 17, 2011 – The Juilliard School President Joseph W. Polisi, and Signature Theatre Founding Artistic Director James Houghton announced today an annual residency for the Juilliard Drama Division's “Professional Studio” for the next five years. Beginning in the fall of 2012, fourth and final-year students in both Juilliard’s Bachelor degree, and new Master of Fine Arts degree programs in Drama will be hosted by Signature Theatre at the Company’s new Frank Gehry-designed home, Signature Center. Professional workshops, rehearsals, and performances by students from the prestigious, world-renown Juilliard program will take place at “The Studio,” a new, 99-seat, state-of-the-art rehearsal and performance space in Signature’s new home. In addition, the students will have the opportunity to observe and participate in activities in the Center and intersect with artists in residence at Signature Theatre.
President Polisi said, "This new initiative within the extraordinary confines of Signature Center provides a whole new array of educational and artistic activities for our actors. We look forward to having our actors interact with the many seasoned artists who will be working at the Center on a daily basis."
Juilliard is accepting applications until December 1 for its newly-announced Master of Fine Arts in Drama, with auditions to take place in January and February 2012. A highly selective program that will accept 8 to 10 graduate actors annually, the program will allow the most talented young actors to explore and master the multiple skills necessary for success in the theater of the 21st century. They join an equal number of entering bachelor-level actors in fall 2012. All students entering Juilliard are chosen through a rigorous audition process. Information about the M.F.A. and all Juilliard Drama programs may be found at www.juilliard.edu/drama.
The largest new theatre arts center built in New York City in the last 40 years, Signature Center spans an entire city block at 42nd Street between Dyer and 10th Avenue. Featuring three intimate theatres, a studio theatre, rehearsal studio, and a public café and bookstore, the Center will be both a theatre community hub and a neighborhood destination, and has been designed to foster interaction among playwrights, artistic collaborators, and the public.
Houghton, who is also the Director of the Drama Division at The Juilliard School, added, "This is just the right opportunity for the B.F.A and M.F.A. students to bridge their studies with the profession. All of us at Signature are absolutely thrilled to have the full spectrum of artists participating in Signature Center -- from our most seasoned to these dynamic young artists from Juilliard. Each are bound to equally inspire the other."
About The Juilliard School’s Drama Division
The Drama Division at The Juilliard School is one of the most respected and renowned conservatory programs for theater artists in the world. The Division’s outstanding creative reputation, distinguished faculty, and extraordinary level of rigorous professional training have enabled 40 years of alumni to excel as artists, leaders and global citizens. Founded in 1968 by the renowned American director, producer and theater administrator John Houseman and the French director, teacher and actor Michel Saint-Denis, the program is a four-year curriculum that emphasizes intuition and spontaneity as well as discipline, technique and intellectual development. The Drama Division has continually expanded and revised its programs, responding to and anticipating the need of the contemporary theater artist. Some of the significant additions, among others, have included expanded faculty and curriculum, additional performance opportunities, and the addition of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program as well as Master of Fine Arts Program in Acting. Their acting and playwriting alumni have distinguished themselves in all areas of the arts including theater, film, and television. For more information on Juilliard visit www.juilliard.edu.
About Signature Center Opening in February 2012, Signature Center is the new, permanent home of Signature Theatre Company. Designed by Frank Gehry, working hand-in-hand with Signature leadership, Signature Center spans an entire city block at 42nd Street between Dyer and 10th Avenue, and features three intimate theatres, a studio theatre, rehearsal studio, and a public café and bookstore. Founded in 1991 by Artistic Director James Houghton, Signature Theatre was the first theatre company to devote an entire season to the work of a single playwright, including re-examinations of past works as well as New York and world premieres. At Signature Center, the Company’s expanded programming will include: Residency One, the continuation of Signature’s core program which provides audiences with an immersive exploration of the work of a singular playwright; Residency Five, which provides five-year residencies for multiple playwrights to support the creation and staging of new work; and the Legacy Program, which honors the lifetime achievement of artists who have previously been in residence at Signature. Signature Center will serve as the artistic home for as many as 11 playwrights at any one time, fostering a dynamic creative community where playwrights will engage directly with audiences and one another. The inaugural season at Signature Center will feature three plays by South African playwright and recent Tony Award-winner for lifetime achievement Athol Fugard, as well as a new production of Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque, world premieres by Katori Hall and Kenneth Lonergan, and a United States premiere by Will Eno. In addition, Annie Baker and Regina Taylor will also be in residence at Signature Center as Residency Five playwrights. More information on Signature Center and Signature Theatre Company’s expanded programming can be found at www.signaturecenter.org.
The heyday for Aboriginal artists is now. With centuries-old fiddle tunes unreeling beside bumping club beats, with killer flow rocking the mic beside gritty guitar blues, there’s never been more creative space for young people of First Nation/Native American, Inuit, and Métis (mixed European and First Nation) heritage. They can sing their roots, weave newfound urban communities, and dance beyond stereotypes.
Aboriginal Music Week (November 1-6, 2011) in Winnipeg, Manitoba showcases this vibrant new energy, bringing together a broad sweep of North American artists and a growing, youthful urban audience. Concerts get Elders square dancing, kids chanting along with MCs, and dance floors packed with soaring pow wow drum breaks.
“We have found that Aboriginal people want to see Aboriginal artists perform all kinds of music,” explains Alan Greyeyes, festival curator. “We produce the festival for Aboriginal people but we really want to use the festival and the music to build bridges with other communities. And it’s working.”
This year’s headliners show the diversity and range of Aboriginal music: A Tribe Called Red’s hard-hitting, pow wow-powered electro (Electric Pow Wow on November 4); Leela Gilday’s reflective folk; Derek Miller’s rootsy rock (The Saturday Night 49er on November 5); John Arcand’s generations-old, masterful Métis fiddle (Take the Fort! on November 1); Winnipeg’s Most and their fresh, wildly popular hip hop (Hip Hop Night on November 2).
“It’s an exciting time to be Aboriginal in Canada right now,” enthuses Bear Witness of the DJ collective A Tribe Called Red. “The community across Canada is coming together more and more, especially around the arts and music. There’s so much going on, so many interesting things, so many strong artists.”
***
The burst of new creative energy comes after several generations of cultural loss and stigma. “Until quite recently, there were no positive references in media or on stage to Native people, especially in urban centers like Winnipeg,” reflects Greyeyes. “The only time we were in the spotlight was for crimes. But now, kids are seeing Native people are great artists who perform and get played on the radio. They get to see themselves reflected on stage.”
This reflection has many facets. There are raw MCs from rough neighborhoods. There are young musicians picking up the jigs and reels their ancestors used to lure fur traders centuries ago. There is mestizo dub step and good ol’ country and western.
Even within genres, Aboriginal artists tend to bend the rules. Hip hop shows become family events, with preschoolers bopping on stage with their rapping fathers. An edgy club scene inspires artists to return to their roots. Community and tradition breed innovation.
“Our use of pow wow music was about getting this amazing support from the community in Ottawa. The first party we threw was packed with young Aboriginal people we didn’t know. It was a comfortable place for these urban young people to go,” Bear recalls. “We didn’t intend that, but we wanted to give back to them and create music that expressed that connection to the community. Something they could claim as their own.” The result: glittering, striking tracks that seamlessly integrate traditional songs and drums and reclaim pop culture portrayals of “Indians” via wry samples.
“I have found Aboriginal artists to be some of the most boundary-breaking, original, and refreshing artists I have ever met,” notes Gilday, whose carefully crafted songs of Aboriginal life have won her widespread respect in the folk scene. “It is an honour to be a part of a community responsible for this level of creativity, musicianship, and dedication.”
This creativity makes it easy to build bridges to mainstream acclaim. Derek Miller recently recorded a duet with Willie Nelson. A Tribe Called Red caught the ear of golden-boy producer Diplo. Winnipeg’s Most are on heavy rotation at local radio stations and kids of all backgrounds chant their lyrics in the city’s schoolyards. Aboriginal artists tour extensively and win national awards.
Connecting Aboriginal artists—from different scenes, at different points in their career—is part of the broader mission of festival producer Aboriginal Music Manitoba (www.ammb.ca). “We want to create a stronger professional infrastructure for Aboriginal performers,” says Greyeyes. The festival, along with night after night of high-calibre concerts, provides opportunities for artists to network with local community music bookers, and to create moments of contact with new, mostly young audiences.
“For such a long time, our people have been silenced, and we have had to fight to keep our traditions,” says Estella Sanchez, the spitfire mestiza MC of World Hood (November 4). “The fact that Aboriginal Music Week can bring people with similar histories from around the globe together is amazing. We have so much to share as a people, and so much to learn from each other about keeping our cultural traditions intact.”
It’s a dark and stormy night. The cabaret swirls smoke, euphoria, danger. A burlesque beauty sings a swooping, eerie song and suddenly sprouts a full beard. An itinerant tenor and a melancholic balloonist croon to apocalyptic waltzers. The drums ba-da-boom, the cellos duel, the gitarrón’s been drinking.
It’s Vagabond Opera—you’d better Sing for Your Lives!
Like surrealist Marcel Duchamp packing an entire life’s work into a suitcase, the Portland, Oregon troupe tucks the high drama of opera into the tight squeeze of the sexy cabaret. By turns sinister and seedy, sweet and nostalgic, the brainy, sultry band mashes up Eastern European folk theater and classical grandeur, hot club act and avant-garde klezmer jams, perky musicals and edgy absurdism.
“We love storytelling, creating a world on stage or on a recording,” says saxophonist and songwriter Robin Jackson. “We bring people into a dark cabaret where they forget themselves.” “We draw on Old World elements and genres,” adds Eric Stern, Vagabond Opera founder, composer, and singer, “but we utterly transform them.”
The band take the polychrome pleasures of their musical, theatrical storytelling on the road in September and October, including performances in Berkeley, Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis, and Vancouver.
***
What’s a tenor to do?
Stern adored opera—he used to blast his tape of “The Marriage of Figaro” for his fellow teens in pre-rock show parking lots. He loved opera so much, he had to break it out of its elitist ghetto. Opera was once an art form ordinary people enjoyed, he reasoned, and it was time to take it back to those roots.
“I remember looking around the audience at a Ziggy Marley concert and thinking, ‘Why does opera have to be in an opera house, someplace that seems inaccessible to so many?’” Stern remembers. “Why can’t these people listen to opera in this venue? I wanted to snatch this art and distribute it everywhere.”
Searching for a new approach, Stern found himself omnivorously devouring everything from Hendrix guitar licks and Janice Joplin’s gritty wails, to Romanian horas and Yiddish theater music. “While I love the Western European music traditions, I saw no reason why you can’t incorporate other traditions into opera as well,” Stern reflects. “I’m Jewish and wanted more Eastern European sounds in play, things I wasn’t hearing enough of in classical music.”
So Stern set aside the high-stakes auditions and the high-powered classical circles. He hitchhiked to the Rainbow Gathering to hang in a totally different world. He wandered up and down the West Coast, playing his beloved pawn shop accordion on street corners and belting arias. He fell in with kindred spirits like Jackson in Portland’s erudite, freak-friendly art scene.
Along with Jackson—a trained ethnomusicologist, brooding free spirit, and lifelong addict of musicals—the troupe embraced a former Cirque de Soleil vocalist and carny-loving cellist native to Poland (Ashia Grzesik); a classically trained cello virtuoso with a penchant for avant improv (Skip vonKuske); an Afro-Brazilian percussion ace and jazz drummer (Mark Burdon); a Balkanologist bassist who digs black metal and traditional Mexican gitarrón (Jason Flores); and the mysterious Dr. Xander Gerrymander, a mayhem-inducing jack-of-all-trades whose wild dancing at an outdoor show so impressed the group, he was dubbed “King of the Gypsies.”
“When we first started,” Jackson recalls with a smile, “the band was a strange sort of folk ensemble, with Tom Waits and belly dance thrown in. We did a lot more klezmer at the time”—roots they still honor with songs like “Tough Mazel.” “That naturally led to gypsy brass and Turkish music. It all works together, even though it comes from different roots.”
From these similar yet diverse sources spring striking originals: a fado-laced ballad of a cursed night in a shadowy foreign town (“Coimbra”); the bittersweet tale of a heartbroken balloon expedition (“Red Balloon”), told in a tango; and hip-swinging Eastern European exotica (“Hanumonsoon”).
Art imitates surreal life: the group steps effortlessly from odd meters and vamps worthy of a Transylvanian wedding, to odd-ball skits in wild costumes harkening back to Weimar and the Roaring Twenties. They can channel Kurt Weil and Django Reinhardt, as sensual fire-dancers gyrate or hairstyling waiters hilariously turn Grzesik into a bearded lady (“Beard and Moustache”). They make the pomp of opera shimmy, by turns grave and goofy.
Vagabond Opera bust open the walls of tradition by carrying it to street corners, cabarets, and clubs. “We’ve always asked, ‘Why not work in this beautiful medium, opera, but surround it with all these unexpected instruments and sights and stories?’” Stern says. “We take this big, ambitious art form and distill it. We make it portable.”
The US Soccer Federation announced on Friday that the National Team will play France at the Stade de France at 3pm ET on November 11th. The game will be shown on ESPN2 and Univision.
"France is traditionally one of the best teams in the world," coach Jurgen Klinsmann said in a press statement. "When you look at their history, the players that have come through their team and what they have accomplished, you have to be impressed. This is an awesome opportunity for our players to play in a stadium that has hosted a World Cup Final, and a great experience for their careers."
The Soccer Daily, a daily soccer column from US Soccer Players' J Hutcherson.
By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Oct 18, 2011) US Soccer Players -- World Soccer's governing body owes us an announcement later this month. FIFA will explain how they plan on reforming their organization after almost a year of discontent. Though there's a good case for dating it even earlier, the obvious trouble started with the World Cup hosting announcement and carried through a presidential election cycle.
At any point during those months, someone in power could've said 'hey, wait a minute…." Instead, FIFA waited until they'd named two World Cup hosts and allowed a presidential election to go ahead after their own ethics committee provisionally suspended the only other candidate. Add in the allegations of corruption directed at members of the executive committee and the calls for reform from those with FIFA titles along with major countries and clubs, and FIFA's problems only escalated.
Though it sounds like a cliché, the first step is always admitting you have a problem. For FIFA, that's resisting the urge to try the onward and upward scenario. What happens there is pushing whatever happened in the past - including what literally just happened - and marching forward bravely into a brighter future. FIFA tried that, almost immediately after reelecting its president. That the press conference ended up with that FIFA president lecturing the gathered media on civility and respect was enough of an indication even for FIFA that this problem would require a different solution.
Enter FIFA president Sepp Blatter's panel of learned men. Considering who made the short list as the primary influencers for change at FIFA, what that really accomplished was easy headlines and editorials for outlets that cover soccer. Again, it was almost immediately apparent that it simply wasn't enough.
From there we got a deadline for a major announcement. This Thursday, October 20th, when FIFA is expected to emerge from a lengthy period of self-examination with a clear and workable vision for the future. Unlike our old friend the NY/NJ Metrostars, FIFA is in no position to play the 60-to-90 day game. That was the Metrostars patented 'we'll have something for you' response that was always resetting the 60-to-90 day clock. For all we know, at some point a remnant of that team will actually make an announcement, like a time capsule set to be open years after the club rebranded and moved on. That won't work for FIFA. They've set their own deadline and timeframe and would cause even more problems by not meeting it.
As so many have already stressed, that's going to be an interesting public statement for an organization with several executive committee members having faced or still facing corruption charges and a public perception that the system itself has failed. There's no room to hedge here, and FIFA has to know that.
Keep in mind that this is FIFA we're talking about, an organization that spent the last World Cup cycle reassuring the world that things would run smoothly and is now doing the same thing on behalf of the next World Cup hosts. It's one where World Cup bids and presidential elections seem unable to happen without suspicions and allegations that votes are for sale. And it's also one that's been able to shake off major scandals and emerge still capable of generating massive amounts of money.
Last summer's events changed that. There was no next for FIFA, nothing on the calendar to wipe the slate and let them focus on anything else. With all respect to the Women's World Cup, that was no match for dropping a life ban on the other candidate, wiping out the leadership of CONCACAF, and dealing with multiple allegations of votes for bribes, outright bribery, and dredging up recent moments in FIFA history that the organization probably assumed were all but forgotten.
So what should we expect on Thursday?
What there's probably little hope of is the kind of reforms that would cause the worldwide media to pause, seriously consider what has been presented, and then judge whether or not it stands a chance of working. We can already safely assume that FIFA can't reasonably go far enough for some without revamping the executive committee, putting multiple FIFA bureaucrats out to pasture, and resetting the World Cup hosting decisions. We might as well add 'call for a new presidential election' to that fantasy list.
On the other end of the spectrum, another lecture on how FIFA is the organization holding the line between the beneficial state of the sport enjoyed fiscally by so many members and the 'black hole' Blatter mentioned while campaigning for reelection would be a tremendous mistake. FIFA ceded that role when they started having to investigate multiple members. If Blatter turns a needed reform movement into a mechanism for further limiting the power of the executive committee, FIFA would be missing the point. They'd also be doing exactly what that now banned rival accused the current administration of during his campaign.
Closer to reality, what FIFA has to be very careful with is playing with expectations. They have very little maneuvering room if the plan is to tweak the current model while once again promising better days ahead. Nothing we've seen so far should suggest a radical reinventing of FIFA as an organization, and this could quickly turn into another stumble as FIFA tries to get itself back on course.
Again, we're talking about FIFA here so that course is probably not going to be what most of the reformists really want. The calls for following the International Olympic Committee's lead would result in a leaner organization with fewer key committee positions, but what would that mean in practice for FIFA? Who takes those roles, and ultimately who sets the new standard for FIFA elected and appointed officials to adhere too?
The United States will play Slovenia in Ljubljana on November 16th, the second game on their European trip. The National Team opens against France on November 11th.
"Slovenia is a small nation that has achieved big results," USA coach Jurgen Klinsmann said in a press statement. "For them to have qualified for two World Cups in such a short time is an incredible achievement. I have seen them play in qualifying and the last World Cup, and I was very impressed. This game is another good opportunity for our players to build on what we have been working on for the last few months."
Francesco Del Maro was ticked off: Friends in the U.S. seemed to think Italian music was all “Volare” and Verdi, mandolin melancholy and maudlin mafia soundtracks. Yet the 15 year music industry vertran did more than just get mad; he threw a party and got dozens of hip Italian musicians to L.A. for a multi-night, multi-venue blow out.
That was two years ago. Now, Hit Week (October 10-16, 2011; full ticket details at www.hitweek.it) has blossomed into a three-city festival thanks in part to support from Italian institutions, highlighting the catchiest and edgiest music Italy has to offer. On major stages and in intimate clubs in New York City, L.A., and (for the first time this year) Miami, wild-eyed Zappa devotees and electro-powered rock, sleek globally inspired jazz and dubbed-out trip hop collide for a whirlwind romp through the Italian music scene.
For Hit Week, it’s about power and savvy, not origins. “Hit Week doesn’t focus on the music that’s recognizably from Italy,” explains Del Maro. “The language isn’t important. We’re looking for music of global caliber; that’s so good, it doesn’t matter where it’s from.” This formula has worked: In its short history, Hit Week’s audiences have doubled and the festival has established a foothold in some of the toughest U.S. markets.
“There’s nothing better than seeing young Americans in their 20s shouting into their cell phones at a show about a group they’ve just seen,” remarks Del Maro, festival curator and instigator. “When you hear them rave about a band, that they can’t believe this is Italian music, it’s just amazing.”Though broadly appealing, Hit Week’s artists have a distinctly Italian spirit. Several hail from the country’s unsung musical hotspots—like the increasingly popular travel destination of Puglia—scenes few Americans are aware of.
Subsonica: Electro-laced rock with catchy hooks, big sounds, and intense appeal
Caparezza: A wacky Adriatic alt-rocker makes devilishly clever pop
Nicola Conte: Super-cool grooves and worldly sounds put polished spin on jazz
Casino Royale: The slick secret agents of Italian trip hop
Après La Classe: Wry humor and uptempo world beats from Puglia, back by popular demand
Hit Week artists vary wildly, but they share a certain spirit. They flirt with local sounds, satirize local conditions, climb local charts, and pack local stadiums with hundreds of thousands of dedicated fans. Subsonica have scored numerous number one hits in Italy, making them the current darling of the rock scene. Caparezza sells out major arenas on a regular basis, thanks to his high-energy, always changing, innately quirky shows.
Italian artists are also quietly attracting the attention of international heavyweights, be they edgy producers or major labels. Nicola Conte just signed a deal with international jazz mainstays, Impulse. Casino Royale have teamed up with Scottish DJ Howie B (who’s worked with everyone from Tricky to U2) to trade dub breaks and licks. Rising star Erica Mou is working with Bjork’s producer, Valgeir Sigurðsson, whose shimmering electronic touches unveil new facets of Mou’s raw, personal songs.
Along side these major acts and hot newcomers, Hit Week will showcase the best of Italy’s burgeoning crop of emerging music, selected via Facebook contest, thanks to the involvement of the Italian Minister of Young Generation. Young bands get to travel to the U.S. and play for new listeners and industry heavyweights alike. “It’s been great for artists just starting out,” explains Del Maro. “Some participants from previous years went on to play various major U.S. festivals.”
Hit Week aims not only to bring creative young Italians to the U.S.; it’s reaching out to young Americans, getting them exposed to the coolest moments of the Italian scene. As part of its ongoing partnership with local universities, the festival is arranging several meet-and-greet opportunities at local colleges (UCLA, Columbia, University of Miami) that will bring together artists and audiences in a casual, intimate setting.
“Hit Week shows that Italian artists are second to none,” Del Maro says. “We are not coming from the third world of music, but have something new to tell the world.”
Hit Week is produced by Francesco Del Maro for Music Experience Roma Italy and Mela Inc. Los Angeles, with the support of The Minister of Young Generation, The Italian Federation of Music Industry, The Puglia Region, The Italian Trade Commission of Los Angeles, The Italian Ministry of Economic Development, The National Italian American Foundation, The Rhythm Foundation Miami, Gibson, Dw, Aqua Panna, Rockol, Made in Roma, Dw Drums, Paiste and more to come.
as i predicted i made an egregious error in my review of The Big Year, pointed out by 'elizabird', in that author Mark Obmascik apparently did not consult for the movie, but instead it was birder Greg Miller. this of course makes the entire point of that paragraph/section moot . . . i have a reason, but it's irrelevant, it's wrong . . . so in addition to apologizing to Mark for that (mea culpa) i will be adding an addendum to the review to make sure i have it right in the long run.
On October 15, the Museum of Monterey will be the first museum to exhibit “theBlu” (www.theblu.com), a new entertainment experience celebrating art, innovation, and the ocean.
Created by Wemo Media and a team of Academy Award-winning graphic designers, theBlu is an interactive online world meant to increase awareness of the Earth’s oceans while simultaneously providing a global canvas for the world’s digital artists. Every species and habitat is a unique work of art created by one of hundreds of developers and graphic designers around the world.
TheBlu is currently in invite-only private beta and won’t be accessible publicly until next year. The exhibit at the Museum of Monterey serves as a sneak peek of the evolving art project and represents the museum’s dedication to innovation in artistic expression. The Opening Reception is Saturday, October 15 from 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. and is Free to the public. Wharf parking is free for 2 hours with your ID.
More About theBlu
Picture hundreds of thousands of aquatic species and tens of thousands of underwater habitats, beautiful works of art created by artists and developers all over the world, spread across the canvas of the World Wide Web as a globally shared art gallery. And imagine hundreds of millions of people connected on the web - via phones, tablets, computers, at home, at school, in museums - with ocean life flowing from device to device across cities all over the globe - Honolulu, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Moscow, Dubai, Johannesburg, Madrid, Stockholm, Paris, London, New York, Sao Paolo, Los Angeles... Everyone that much more aware of the Oceans, and everyone that much more aware of each other.
Wemo Media’s team is comprised of a passionate group of Academy award winning artists, technology innovators and execs from film, games and the web, including: Andy Jones (Academy award winner, Avatar), Kevin Mack (Academy award winner, What Dreams May Come), Louie Psihoyos (Academy award winner, The Cove), Joichi Ito (Director, MIT Media lab), and more.
Museum of Monterey
MoM is open Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sunday 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. The Museum is closed Monday. The cost to visit is $5.00. For more information please call (831) 372-2608 or go to http://www.museumofmonterey.org
United States National Team Team Players Association, October 11, 2011
The United States fell to a second-half goal from Ecuador at Red Bull Arena on Tuesday night. With Ecuador coming off a World Cup qualifying win over Venezuela, they brought a mostly first choice team that had a tough time cracking the United States defense in the first-half. With US coach Jurgen Klinsmann making four substitutions at halftime and eventually using all six, Ecuador faced a different version of the US when they capitalized in the 79th minute. Jaime Ayovi scored the game's only goal, with Maximo Banguera picking up the shutout.
“It’s crazy to see, and you may disagree, but since the Mexico game we haven’t given up a ton of chances," US goalkeeper Tim Howard said. "It’s hard because one goal kills the game so it looks terrible, but we’ve given up four goals in five games and that’s not the end of the world. We’re not giving teams chances, and that’s a positive thing for me as a goalkeeper. We’re creating chances too, they’re just not falling."
-- GAME REPORT --
Match: U.S. Men’s National Team vs. Ecuador Date: Oct. 11, 2011 Competition: International Friendly Venue: Red Bull Arena; Harrison, N.J. Kickoff: 7:15 p.m. ET Attendance: 20,707 Weather: 65 degrees, clear
The grief of eternal exile and the ancient ache of love echoed in the pitch-black studio. From gut strings and china saucers, from frame drums and clacking trains, singer Sevara Nazarkhan urged centuries of urgent whispers, secret sighs, and passionate prayers into a new and intimate life.
Supported by a carefully selected handful of musical elders, Nazarkhan has returned on Tortadur to utter simplicity and the audacious acoustic roots of Uzbek tradition—the once lively world of house parties and poet-kings, of black-browed beloveds and word-drunk Sufi saints.
Though a seasoned pop performer—her voice has wowed everyone from Peter Gabriel to Russian pop diva Alla Pugacheva—Nazarkhan turned away from electronic sounds and complex production to the pure, quiet presence of traditional instruments and haunting lyrics, some hailing from as early as the 15th century. Throughout, her voice feels so immediate that you can almost feel the breath on your cheek, the hand on your arm.
“I wanted to express the salt of our earth, so to speak,” Nazarkhan reflects. “People have forgotten, or simply don’t know, about this wonderful, rich side of our music, music that is very subtle and expresses our past.”
To explore this richness, Nazarkhan softly yet intensely tells tales penned by the original Moghul, Bobur, and by Sufi master Mashrab, among other poets. They praise the beauty that can cause riots, the endless, exquisite pains of passion, but without the frenetic dance beats popular in Uzbekistan or the busyness of electronic production and virtuosic vocal feats. She channeled the spirit of traditional parties, when women would gather for music, tea, and talk.
“It’s a cry of my soul,” explains Nazarkhan, “but in a whisper. I sing very quietly.”
She found new uses for subtle, time-honored techniques, such as the tradition of singing into a tea saucer to add resonance to the voice (“Yovvoi Tanovar”). She rediscovered the heartbreaking words of an early 20th-century anti-Russian freedom fighter sent into exile, whose poem written in a cattle car had mysteriously morphed into an Uzbek party anthem (the train-backed sorrow of “Qargalar”). She gives space to quiet instruments like the gut-stringed doutar and the subtle percussion of the doira (traditional frame drum).
In her quest for a different approach to tradition, Nazarkhan worked very closely with professor and veteran maqam (Central Asian classical music) performer, Temur Makhmudov. Makhmudov not only helped Nazarkhan explore long neglected repertoire, he headed up the all-star ensemble she gathered. Nazarkhan brought together artists in their seventies who had been playing traditional music from childhood as part of musical families. They remembered the old sound, the gentle approach, the quiet expressiveness of their roots.
Assembling this Uzbek answer to the Buena Vista Social Club had its challenges. The feisty nai (traditional flute) player Abdulakhad Abdurashidov at first refused to join them. He was old and tired, he told Nazarkhan on the phone from a remote mountain retreat.
Yet Nazarkhan was taking a different approach to working with these musical elders. Instead of calling the shots or demanding uptempo folk-pop, she turned them loose, urging them to play what they felt. She dimmed the studio lights and let the music unfold. Before she knew it, word got out and there was a knock on the studio door. It was Abdurashidov, asking if anyone needed a nai player.
“He didn’t want to be bossed around or be part of some fusion experiment,” Nazarkhan recalls with a smile. “He’s the best player, and he got to play what he felt. All the musicians had no bounds. It was like they returned to the freedom of their youth and could do whatever they wanted.”
This freedom led to unexpected innovation. As the group worked on “Galdir Talqinchasi” and Nazarkhan sang lines referring to Jacob’s grief for the loss of his son Joseph, the musicians began to hum. It was so striking that Nazarkhan called for vocal mics for each of the players, resulting in something new: a male chorus backing a female singer. On tracks like “Tortadur,” Nazarkhan’s gritty, gentle voice entwines with Makhmudov’s baritone to moving effect.
“What I wanted to show with this album was very clear: the beauty of the melodies, the language, and the instruments,” say Nazarkhan. “I wanted to show that our traditions have meaning, not only as part of the Turkic world, but to everyone.”
A Review of The Big Year by Tony Gallucci, Milk River Media
Fair Warning: This is going to become two reviews in one – of a book and of an unseen movie. As a tie-in to the upcoming movie The Big Year, starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin, Kristin Matzen of Free Press Publicity (Simon & Schuster) sent me a copy of the book on which the film was based for review. Written by Mark Obmascik, The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession tells the intertwining stories of three birders, Sandy Komito, Al Levantin and Greg Miller, chasing what may seem to non-birders a ridiculous goal – finding the most species of birds in a year in North America.
The reissue is likely meant to piggyback on what is hoped to be the success of the movie, which is being heavily marketed, especially to birders, and perhaps also to drum up business by stirring up critical buzz for the film before it hits this coming weekend.
The former must await the release, but on the second count there is both good and bad news. The one line review would go something like this (and then I will expound): it is a delightful tale of oddball personalities in quest of their life dreams, but the birding in it suffers badly from poor research and/or understanding.
Perhaps it’s all that could be expected from an outside writer without prior knowledge of birding, but since Obmascik insinuates in the introduction that he is now birding convert and evangelist, one could have expected much more. Since the original publication was in 2004, one might also expect that a reissue would include some updated knowledge and some corrections. No such luck.
Birders have been awaiting the film since the first wave of PR came out a few months ago, and has reached an anxious crescendo on the birding listservs and forums. Much of the talk has swirled around three basic topics, each relevant to an examination of the book and this review. The topics are: a) did they make any effort at accuracy with the birds? (including using actual footage of the birds they are talking about; are the bird calls and songs correct; are the locations and habitats correct; is the discussion about them correct); b) are birders going to be made to look like fools? (especially considering Black, Martin and Wilson have each made a career out of playing fools); and c) will it bring more people into birding as a pastime (and maybe subliminally ‘I hope it doesn’t bring a ton of people into birding!’; but also a hint of ‘I hope it also makes people more aware of 1) the environment, 2) conservation, 3) endangered species, and 4) giving a little space to the crazy birders in their lives’).
As I progress here, understand that I’m reviewing the book – I haven’t seen the movie yet, only the several trailers (see links below) – and so my critiques are mostly about the text. The problem, if there is one, is that it’s the starting place for the film, and my gut feeling is that one could hardly expect the film to have taken a giant leap in credibility – the normal progression is for a film to play fast and loose with the facts presented in a book. We’ll have to wait and see.
Okay, let’s get into the nitty-gritty here: Birders, hardcore, listing, chasing, Big-Year-type birders are obsessed. Obmascik himself makes that point repeatedly in the book and I’m here to say it is absolute. One of Obmascik’s diversions is musing briefly about honesty – did these guys really see what they said they saw. Well, this is about personal obsession, there is glory attached, but obsessives want things just so, which is why one makes multiple trips to see a missed bird.
So why is this relevant?
A little personal history to illustrate: I too was a chaser (my obsessions have evolved since then), I did several Big Years myself, though not on a continent-wide or global scale, and once had the third best Texas Big Year (very briefly I might add, and I was long ago left in the dust). The point is, I know this chase business.
I am also a writer, and a minor-league filmmaker, and the confluence of those three things gave me a particular interest in The Big Year, both as a book and as a film.
I obsess over details, like all good, hardcore birders I know, most of them chasers at one time or another. I keep lifelists by county, I intently survey properties I work on for every living thing, I make lists other people wouldn’t think of (we all do, it’s part of the game): for 40+ years I’ve kept a detailed summary of everything I’ve found dead on the road. That’s the way we all operate – lists, numbers, games – ask Komito, Levantin and Miller.
So, pleased (excited actually) to be getting to review the book, I eagerly awaited it’s arrival, and when it did, and I ripped open the envelope and held the book in my hands, my heart immediately sank.
It’s a detail thing. There on the cover of the new edition, the ‘tie-in edition’ is a composite picture from the film of Black, Wilson and Martin holding up binoculars looking off the sides in profile. Of course, the book isn’t about Black, Wilson and Martin, but in our current cultural milieu, oversaturated by marketing, this is precisely what one would expect (though pictures of Komito, Levantin and Miller would have been nice out of respect for the fact the that the book is still their story – the film is fictionalized to some or another extent).
Nevertheless, that’s not what got my feathers fluffed. It’s that there is a bird perched on the end of Martin’s binoculars, tilted over as though peering into the binoculars at Martin. It’s a cute conceit, photoshopped in, and the humor was not lost on me. The problem is, the bird is an American Robin, altogether not an unusual bird for them to see, and it is tiny.
That’s the detail – that it is ridiculously small. So small that it is impossible for it to really be a robin perched there on his binoculars, at least to my eye, which I adjudge to be somewhat good at doing these kinds of things. But being the obsessive I am I am going to do some research to see if my eye is lying to me.
I don’t know if Steve Martin has big hands or small hands, but it’s easy to compare the size of the bird to the size of his hand. And being the obsessive I am I measured the hands of several folks in my office agreeable to having their hands measured. A simple comparison of the widths of their hands versus Steve’s and the bird’s length and I come up with figures that are approximately 4½ to 5½ inches for the total length of the bird in the picture.
Now, American Robins (I apologize for bringing science into all this) can vary in size a little – the birds breeding farther north will average a little larger than the ones that nest here in my podunk town, but the references I quick-checked indicate that average American Robin total lengths run from about 9½ to 10 inches. A bird the size of the one on the cover would be more like say, a Nashville Warbler. A birder instantly recognizes the size issues in that comparison – twice the length, in volume/weight much larger.
Okay, it’s just a stinking cover. Someone may have had a cute idea and passed it on to a graphic designer who not only knew nothing about birds, but may not have cared, and what you end up with is inaccuracy.
But where was Obmascik? Obmascik, the guy who has proclaimed in interviews that he got to check the accuracy of the script and sit in on filming as though his presence meant he would be consulted about getting things right**; doesn’t he get a say on the cover to the new edition of his book? Was he not a newly ordained birder who has the eye to immediately see the glaring error? And one would hope that now, seven years after first publication, his skills and knowledge have grown. Perhaps out of his hands . . . grumble, grumble . . . perhaps.
I still was anxious to get to the text, so I turned the cover over, out of sight, and began to read . . . and to find three, exactly three, times in the book where, in trying to give readers a sense of a bird’s size he compares them to a robin! “Robin-sized” it says, not altogether accurately. In online parlance my response is “smh” – shaking my head.
A digression: Accuracy . . . as a writer I don’t always get things right. There will likely be things that I don’t get right in this review. But I strive for perfection. When I do writing seminars I harp on getting things right. I teach, for instance, that I really don’t know anything about cooking, but I also want to, let’s say, write about cooking. So I’ll make sure I get the details right. I do everything I can to learn about the inherent culture of cooking, and then I may even run stuff by someone who is a pro to make sure I didn’t blow it somewhere.
See, I always wanted to write so that those very pros would believe I knew what I was talking about. I wanted them to enjoy my writing more than anyone else. If I’ve done that, then all the readers who aren’t pros gain real information and insight, and learn along with me.
If I fail in that objective however, then I destroy my own credibility. If I can’t get it right about my subject matter, then how could anyone expect that anything else I write is true, honest, accurate, or faithful.
Obmascik makes something of a big deal in an interview coda to the book about having trusted these guys, but still doing things to ensure accuracy like check weather service records to be sure their journals were not fibbed. It’s a shame no one was checking Obmascik’s accuracy as well.
There are points in his telling where in the interest of waxing poetic, and he gets pretty waxy at times, that he clearly wanted to set a scene and use birds to illustrate his picture, but it seems that he may have played pin the tail on the donkey in the bird book to choose his birds. In those cases he failed a few times. This is especially egregious because using the correct birds would have painted a better picture.
Obmascik may very well have not had any control over Big Issue No. 2 – the use of capitalized names of birds. It may have been an editorial decision he could not change. I have fought this battle myself many times, mostly with newspapers who use their stylebook and no one else’s, and you can be sure I beam when I actually see things done right in a newspaper. On the other hand a book is a product of self, and should represent self, and I will be most disappointed if he wrote it that way himself. If not, if this was editorial, then I am directing this at his editors – you helped wreck his credibility with his subject matter with your decision.
The American Ornithologists’ Union, along with other world professional organizations, makes it a rule to use capital initial letters in the names of all bird species (with specific means of determining which words in a hyphenated concoction are capitalized and which are not). It’s not a hard and fast rule yet among other vertebrate groups but should be, and many of us use the same rules when we write about them. As far as we’re concerned it is not open for editorial discretion any more than if an editor chooses whether people’s names should be capitalized or not.
By setting them off as proper names it serves a functional purpose, very well illustrated in this book – a black storm-petrel is not the same as a Black Storm-Petrel, a White-tailed Eagle is not the same as a white-tailed eagle, which well describes our national bird, but is not the white-tailed eagle talked about in the text. And because we obsessive types are accustomed to reading these in caps; it simply grates every time I come across one of these in the book, which is, of course, on nearly every page. Especially cumbersome and ridiculous are those schizophrenic names rendered as bizarre visual constructions like American avocet, Siberian tit and Baikal teal.
Had Obmascik not known this for the first edition, surely by the second he did, and the entire text could have been easily fixed.
More than anything else it is a blinding reminder in nearly every paragraph that I am reading something as though it was written by a dilettante. And please, I am not trying to be harsh here, or critical of Obmascik (who I do not know) as a person (but strongly suspect is a wonderful human being to be around and bird with). It’s just that I expected more when someone proffers his own interest and credentials before the story even begins.
A few more examples of missed details . . .
I recognize that the book itself is a document reflecting the times, and that our knowledge of bird species has changed some since the book came out. What were all Tufted Titmice then, are now Tufted Titmice and Black-crested Titmice. The book has to reflect the former knowledge because that was what was current at the time. But there’s no reason why the introduction to the book needs to be similarly dated – especially in an edition meant to draw attention now to the sport/act/obsession-with-detail of birding. More importantly, I find no excuse for not correcting blatant errors in the main text. If you are going to draw people anew to the book because of buzz over the movie, why not give them an accurate document?
For instance: It’s one thing to indicate someone was pursuing a certain bird that we now know is a different entity (i.e., titmice), it’s another thing to continue to use the older name of a certain duck, which was changed in part to match old-world usage as Long-tailed Duck, but also because it was considered offensive usage by some, and then to top things off to misspell it anyway as “old squaw”.
Ultimately, there is much bad science here, some of it technical, but some, it appears to me, to be based on the need to conjure up a particular image and just winging it without ‘knowing’ it. There is bad botany, bad geography, and most unfortunately, bad ornithology.
On one hand I try to forgive this as I don’t expect the author to have been scientifically trained, nor to have been obsessed with the details of birds and birding beforehand – and after all this is, I think, meant to be a book about people, about personalities. On the other hand, it’s that credibility issue for those of us who know. It’s about us being a target audience of sorts, and if you want to appeal to an audience of people obsessed with something, the details better be right.
I have written previously about how hard it is for birders to enjoy movies anyway (for example here; here; here; and here). We hear everything in the background and when the bird calls and songs are wrong for the setting, we (or myself anyway) get distracted from the story (another of my writing rules is ‘never do something that takes someone away from the story for even a second’). California Quail calling in the background kind of wrecked M.A.S.H. for me. That one at least was somewhat innocent – it was filmed in California made to resemble Korea and they just picked up ambient noise. Worse is a director wanting 'jungle noise' and loading a film up with Boreal Owl and Common Loon calls.
You can see that although we all have high expectations for The Big Year the movie, we’ll be listening.
One hopes he aspired to produce a book about The Obsession seriously enough to take cues about getting things exactly right. He might have aspired to Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway, or Mark Adams’ Chasing Birds Across Texas: A Birding Big Year – tomes about the ‘chase’ that were written by the ones who experienced them, who knew the details. Or even Don Stap’s A Parrot Without a Name: The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth, about a more scientific pursuit, but a pursuit of birds nonetheless. Peerless documents these, and thus favorites. Even the dissed James Vardaman’s book Call Collect, Ask for Birdman got a lot of details right.
You see though, there is too much just not right here. The examples are dizzyingly numerous. My head only settled when the narrative proceeded down a non-avian tangent and focused on the people – which is where Obmascik excels, in catching the quirks of the folks he is detailing – while shushing my inner tendency to question everything.
I had trouble for example with the statement that there are 'seven kinds of tits (Siberian, bridled, bush, juniper, oak, tufted, and wren)'. This declaration is fraught with all kinds of scientific shenaniganery. For instance, the Bushtit and Wrentit aren’t really tits in the familial definition of things, they were called tits because of their resemblance to, and old-school placement with, tits. We know better now, and did at the time of the big year the book is based on.
That aside, Siberian is a chickadee in North American parlance, but because chickadees are called tits in the old world, and since the Siberian is the only one of our ‘chickadees’ that occurs in the old world as well, we acquiesced for a while to the old world name, leaving us with a bit of a naming jumble. It’s likely that most of the newer field guides in use during the big year attempt in 1998 had the bird listed as Siberian Tit, but in actuality, the AOU had changed the name back to Gray-headed Chickadee in a January 1998 supplement to the Checklist, and surely the three birders were aware of that name change. So the introduction was off on that one.
Even so, if the Siberian is a tit anyway, then aren’t the Carolina, Black-capped, Chestnut-backed, Mountain, etc.? Okay so maybe the Obmascik declaration is an mnemonic trick to help him remember a few names. If so, it’s personal and both distracting to experienced birders and disingenuous for the new birders among readers.
Take the other four, which present another interesting nomenclatural jumble – we don’t call them tits here, we call them titmice, and it’s accurate that he includes both Juniper and Oak Titmice, both halves of what was previously known as the Plain Titmouse. That split occurred in mid-1997, in plenty of time for the chasers to be aware of the chance to add another bird to their lists. Though neither is mentioned in the text, we have Obmascik’s introductory, and correct use of the names. But then what of the Tufted Titmouse? Black-crested Titmouse was split from the Tufted Titmouse in 2002, a few years after the big year, but a full two years before the publication of The Big Year. What’s the harm in getting that right? Otherwise you have people wondering what happened to ‘their’ titmouse, which happens to be mine as well.
And again: This statement is just plain hyperbole and nothing more – no such birds exist: “There are one-of-a-kind birds living on the streets of St. Louis, below a dam in Texas, and amid the suburban sprawl of Southern California.” He’s talking about European Tree Sparrows, Muscovy, and lord knows what. None of them species actually restricted to those locations – ha, the sparrow (actually a weaver finch) isn’t even native, and none so rare that only a single individual exists. Yeah, I get what he was trying to say, only that’s not what he said. Semantics is all it is, except that it’s inaccurate, confusing, and reflects on the rest of the manuscript.
These examples came just from the introduction to the book, Obmascik’s own reflections. What about the meat of the story? Is it any more accurate?
Well, declaring that an Amistad Reservoir Rufous-capped Warbler is displaced from Costa Rica is wrong; it doesn’t take into account that the bird nests commonly less than sixty miles away in Mexico, nor does it account for the common thought among Texas birders of experience that it is likely a not a terribly rare breeder (borne out by decades of discovery) along the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas, perhaps even inland a ways, it’s just largely inaccessible.
Here’s one of those little asides he makes that I immediately knew was wrong because I’ve held all three of these birds in my hand. To, in the course of one sentence, declare that an Elf Owl is both one quarter the size of a Great Horned Owl, and smaller than a House Sparrow, is not only impossible for it to be one if it is the other, but it is actually wrong on both counts.
There is a constant conflation of length and size, a la American Robin. An Elf Owl is approximately one-quarter the length of a Great Horned Owl all right, but in volume/weight is more like 1/40th to 1/50th; that’s hardly comparable to a quarter the ‘size’. Meanwhile, it is about the same length as a House Sparrow, but the sparrow is long of tail, the owl short, and the difference made by subtracting the almost weightless length of tail makes the owl 30-50% heavier than the sparrow, and thus not smaller as he would have it. I don’t know anyone who is familiar with those two birds who would offhandedly say an Elf Owl is smaller than a House Sparrow.
Again, it makes me suspicious of other details in the book. Indeed, the one other field in which I have some considerable experience, hunting, is alluded to in the book several times, mostly in service to discussions about collecting on Attu. Most of it is vague, but one detail, waxed poetically I believe, is either totally wrong, or else the person involved in the act described is a total moron (of which there is no other indication): Obmascik describes the collection of a Pechora Pipit by a collector using buckshot. Buckshot is a specific size of pellet used in shotgun shells. It is designed, as its name would imply, for bringing down deer (‘buck’shot – get it?). There are few in a cartridge, and they are large. And blasted from a shotgun, if one were so unbelievably lucky as to actually hit a Pechora Pipit, one would only be collecting what I would call smithereens – some slivers of meat and bone and a few feathers. That collector would not be in business very long. In actuality, using a shotgun to collect pipits would be a better use for #8 or #9 pellets, a group of sizes in part known collectively as ‘birdshot’. I suspect this was just an unresearched use of a term in another field and another ding in credibility.
It even extends to the index. In trying to refind a reference to Baird’s Sparrow, I came across an entry for “snatch sparrow”. You can look it up yourself. Perhaps that was some intern’s idea of a joke (especially in light of page 99, where one is directed, being partly about one birder’s return to his wife after time on the road). Or perhaps the index was just computer generated and no one proofed it.
Back to that earlier credibility point: I now don’t know whether things are ‘correct’ for instance in his descriptions of Amish and Mennonite life, things he did not know before writing The Big Year, and doesn’t appear he’s become obsessed enough about to join the communities; or about his examination of Greg Miller’s job to fix thousands of lines of nuclear code ahead of Y2K; or details of the symphonic music wafting through Aspen. Those are things I'd like to walk away having gained as real knowledge, things to enrich my life, but again, if he didn’t get the bird things right, did he get this other stuff right?
It would take me a lot of space here to list all the bird errors. I hope you get the picture without my having to do so.
I was a closet birder until I hit my senior year in high school. I owe that to Jane Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies. She was the only other person on the planet I knew who was interested in birds like I was. She was fictional, a caricature, but I sure didn’t want people thinking of me like they must have thought of her. So I went about my business quietly.
The first time I ever birded with someone else, EVER, was on the Freeport Christmas Count of 1971. My family had just moved to Houston, and I was watching the news when a story came on about the count with clips of other people looking at birds, and they weren’t Jane Hathaway. A number flashed on the screen, I called and talked to Victor Emanuel, and the rest, for me, was history.
I had quite an education that day, but I also knew my birds, and from that moment came a lifetime of good friends and birding partners, indeed my best friends in this life are all attached to that time. We’re older now, and we all took our obsessions different directions, but we seem to still show up at the ‘first’ Texas Gyrfalcon or the ‘first’ North American Crane Hawk, or sometimes band together and go out and find our own ‘first’ North American Roadside Hawk*. We have a certain camaraderie in that history, those histories.
Obmascik’s book deals directly with these two things – the quirkiness of birding (thank goodness folks under a certain age don’t know who Jane Hathaway is), and that birding is just another of those things humans do in groups that bind us together. Ultimately the book comes to grips with the humanity of these three obsessed guys. That’s a good thing.
I wanted to say that I was a bit disappointed that the book, the drive of the narrative, sort of fizzled at the end. But in retrospect I think it was appropriate. The big quest itself kind of fizzled out for all three of the chasers at the end of the year. For Levantin and Miller both there was a realization that some other things were more important, and the book made it seem like they finally resorted to having a little pre-mortem fun with their last few birds (even in postholing in the Colorado snow and buzzing around Nevada in the hands of a crazy chopper pilot) once it was clear they were bested.
Komito though never seemed to slow down, even if he tired, but it must be that his drive to put distance between himself and the other two made it a runaway fourth quarter and that cost him some of the joy. Runaway scores take the fun out of sport, if that’s what birding is. It’s not just about the final tally, though that big win is important; it’s about having a reason to press on, someone breathing down your neck to beat, that makes it ultimately worthwhile, that creates the biggest satsifaction.
I have to hope that the truths of the story are just that. That the personal moments, the chatter, the tricks, the worry, the tender family vignettes, portray something close to actuality. I have my questions, but not necessarily suspicions. If they are honest portrayals then Obmascik has succeeded in telling a story that has much humanity in it. It is also well-written as far as providing a tale worth reading, compelling enough to turn every page despite my cringing at the science.
And he does catch some of the flavor of competitive birding too. The seasickness on pelagics is a topic with which I have much experience. Scopelines, jostling for a view past big shoulders, battling unfamiliar environments, wolfed down 4 a.m. breakfasts, not planning for unforeseen vehicle issues, finding a way to make the few enough dollars last an extra day or two, arriving a minute too late, despair in telling someone they arrived a minute too late; all are drawn in much the way those things affect birders’ every travel scheme.
In short, we are a goofy lot.
I’m hoping the movie makes the same leap, because as fodder for pure humor we are rich. I don’t know any of the three main characters of the book, although I know quite a few of the sideline folks, but I definitely know a lot of bird people and a lot of their stories – many drop-dead funny, some heartwarming, a few tragic. In the end we are people, and if the books misses the biology often, and drives me nuts on the details, at least I can turn it into a fairy tale, and enjoy the telling of the story.
Here’s hoping the best for the movie.
A word about the movie in anticipation? Here’s some of what I glean from the clips and trailers: there’s an awful lot of CGI birds involved, and lots of them are awfully small, prepare to not be fooled by the currently bad state-of-the-art in computer generated flight; there is at least one indoor Blue Jay; it’s a cutthroat business (something I really never experienced, in fact when I was doing my runs, or was aware of others, it was all about everyone pitching in to get everyone onto the birds, so this seems a bit uncharacteristic of us, although the book tells a slightly different story); it might be a bit heavy on the exposition (anathema to a filmmaker); the book does an interesting job of telling the story of the origins of Big Years (I’m not certain it is too accurate, but it’s plausible enough), but in the film clip this is reduced to an unseemly collage of events, be prepared; and ultimately this is about comedy, thus that cohort of actors, and that director, and us as an obsessive group to be laughed at.
So I guess, when my ticket shows up, I am going to try, for once, to expect the biology to be wrong, and try to enjoy it for the fairy tale and the comedy without hyperventilating about the details. Do I hope it draws more birders to the fold? Maybe, but I’m withholding judgment until I know what kind of inspiration The Big Year is going to deliver.
Finally, I want to say that the book is an enjoyable read, and I suspect a lot of folks will love it – a lot of critics have. And despite my critique, I liked it enough that I’ve already ordered Obmascik’s other book Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled – and Knuckleheaded – Quest for the Rocky Mountain High. Not to worry, it’s about things I don’t know about, so I won’t be reviewing it. But Mark, if the opportunity ever comes for another reprint of your bird tome, I know a lot of details-oriented, obsessed folks who would like a crack at redlining a manuscript for you.
The Movie is in theatres everywhere (except here in Podunk, TX) beginning Friday, October 14th.
* A side note about that Roadside Hawk that readers of the book will appreciate: Jim Vardaman once chewed me out a bit for not calling him about that bird – it would have made his 700th bird in his record-setting big year. I wasn’t on his golden list of reporters, and I had only had mild interest in his quest at the time as I was doing my own Texas run that year. He found out about the bird on New Year’s Day, a few hours too late to chase it.
** As pointed out in the comments below by elizabird, and as I predicted, I made an egregious error in my review of The Big Year, in that author Mark Obmascik apparently did not consult for the movie, but instead it was birder Greg Miller. this of course makes the entire point of that paragraph section moot . . .I have a reason, but it's irrelevant, it's wrong . . . so my apologies to Mark for that (mea culpa), and to Greg for that.
From the movie The Big Year, (l-r) Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, Jack Black.
By Clemente Lisi – Harrison, NJ (Oct 10, 2011) US Soccer Players Association
Ecuador comes to the New York area to play the United States on Tuesday night at Red Bull Arena four days after embarking on their two-year quest to reach the 2014 World Cup finals. Ecuador defeated Venezuela 2-0 on Friday in their opening game in CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying.
Playing at home, the Ecuador victory was highlighted by the altitude of Quito (almost 10,000 feet above sea level) that favors the home team each time they host a match. The Ecuadorians will have no such luck playing 20 minutes outside of Manhattan. Although there should be plenty of Ecuadorian fans in what is expected to be a sellout (Red Bull Arena only seats 25,000), the USA will certainly give them a tough time.
Ecuador’s roster features mostly domestic-based players. The only name that really stands out is Manchester United midfielder Antonio Valencia. Eleven players called up by Colombian-born coach Reinaldo Rueda (formerly coach of Honduras and no stranger to the USA) play for Ecuadorian league teams, while five others are based in Mexico.
Both of Ecuador's goals against Venezuela came from Mexican Primera Division players. Namely, 23-year-old striker Jaime Ayovi, who plays for Mexico’s Pachuca, and Christian Benitez, who plays for Club America. Ayovi has four goals in 14 appearances for Ecuador, while Benitez, 25, is a veteran forward after being capped 44 times for Ecuador and scoring 19 goals.
After the win over, Rueda said altitude was not a factor, claiming instead that it was his side’s “conviction” and “harmony” that led to the victory. “In the days leading up to the game, there was a serene environment,” he told reporters during a news conference. “We knew the game would go well for us and that is what happened.”
Against Venezuela, La Tri played a 4-4-2 formation with Valencia essentially in the role of playmaker with Ayovi and Benitez in attack. On defense, Rueda started some relative youngsters, including Juan Carlos Paredes and Jairo Campos. The other player to worry about is striker Jefferson Montero, who plays with Spain’s Real Betis. Although he did not play against Venezuela, Rueda may want to use him – particularly on the left side – as an offensive alternative to his usual starters. Capped only 12 times since 2007, Montero, who is 22, has two goals for his country.
The team traveled to New York on Saturday with only 19 players after Rueda let back-up goalkeeper Alexander Dominguez and defenders Geovanny Caicedo and Diego Calderon return to their club Liga de Quito because of this week’s Copa Sudamericana match against Argentina’s Independiente.
Besides the conviction and harmony Rueda claimed made the difference for his team in Friday's qualifier, there is no denying that the quick and powerful Valencia played a big part of it. He served balls to his teammates and kept the attack going. Although he tends to drift to the right, Valencia battled for every ball in Venezuela’s half.
“For me it’s very important to motivate the team on the field,” said Valencia. “I try to do that every time I play, whether if it’s for Manchester United or the National Team, because that’s what I’m there for.”
A utility, player, Valencia said he has played many positions in his career – including as a right back and as a winger – but said he prefers to be an attacking midfielder. “I will play anywhere. Ultimately, my goal is always to make the fans happy,” he said.
Soccer is an important part of life across South America and Ecuador is no different. Most of the players on the team are Afro-Ecuadorian and come from an impoverished area known as the El Chota Valley. Although the region has largely been invisible to most of Ecuador, reaching the 2002 and 2006 World Cup finals helped shine a spotlight on the area. The plight of the people in that region – and many of its players – has been marvelously chronicled in the documentary “Dreamtown” by New York-based filmmaker Betty Bastidas.
On Tuesday night, Valencia and his teammates will have to contend with an energized US squad that is coming off Saturday’s 1-0 win over Honduras in Miami. The win, the first under coach Jurgen Klinsmann, came thanks a Clint Dempsey goal in the first half.
Rueda, who is no stranger to facing the USA during his time as coach of Honduras, said the Americans are “a tough team. For us, this game (against the USA) is preparation for World Cup Qualifying,” he said. “The USA will be prove to be a good rival.”
starring Marc Bullard, Sloan Frierson, Irec Hargrove and Lillian Beaudoin
COLLABORATIVE PRODUCTIONS: HitRECord.org Collaborative Project with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl HitRECord @ SxSW 2010
FINAL PRODUCTIONS: Sherman Alexie Speaks published in digital textbooks of American Literature by Cornelsen-Verlag
Forgiven Jacob Favela Music Video produced in conjunction with The Children’s Music Project at Hill Country Youth Ranch
Wisdom, Texas premiered at Campference, January 2005
Ode to a River premiered at Dragonfly Days, May 2005; and was shown in the Kerrville and Center Point Schools, 2006; and at Nature Quest, April 2008 and April 2009
THEATRICAL PRODUCTIONS: The Road Goes on Forever, Tivy High School PALs, Kerrville Municipal Auditorium
Mine is a Family of Names, Fronterafest, Hyde Park Theatre
Twenty Minutes in a Nudist Colony, Fronterafest, Hyde Park Theatre
I Used to Dream, Children's Music Project, Turner Blackbox Theatre
SCRIPTS: Rolling up the Sidewalk at the Blue Marlin Bar, Dragons, Arrogance, Esokapi, Junior High, Neanderville Balks at the Millennium, Sunrise Sunset
OUTSIDE PROJECT CINEMATOGRAPHY: Animal Planet/Discovery Channel Special Spring Watch
with Ryan Bailey on Piano, and featuring Garrett Whitten on Electric Guitar, Zack Morris on Acoustic Guitar, and Steven Toler on Acoustic Guitar
CD Producer:
Christmas on My Mind for Charles Bryant
CD Designer:
Still Life for Kristin Cox
Lost Songwriter for Michael Hawkins
Pathways for Terry & Sarah Penney
Christmas for Tim Holcombe
Heart Like a Flower for the Children’s Music Project
Prisoner of the Clay for the Children’s Music Project
Production Group
COHORTS & COLLEAGUES: For technical help i rely on a network of superbly talented individuals, including:
music producer/engineer Tony Young, Rolling Tones/Winston Studios
recent stage roles in: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Two Left Feet, The Diviners, Cabaret, The Boys Next Door (twice), The Drawer Boy, Our Town, A Streetcar Named Desire, Circling the Drain, Death of a Salesman, High School Musical, The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 & The Lion in Winter
director: Lend Me A Tenor, The Octette Bridge Club, The Drawer Boy, obsessed compelled disordered, I Used to Dream, Pink Noise, Diogenes & Dionysus; assistant director: Deadwood Dick & Death of a Salesman
Coach/Assistant Coach, Kerrville Tivy High School Soccer, 1986-1997, District and Area Champions, 1997, NSCAA Academic All-America Team 1997
Coach/Assistant Coach, Schreiner University Soccer, 1986-1999
Kicking Coach/Consultant, Texas A&M University, 1974-1977, A&M Consolidated High School, 1975-77, Groveton High School, 1982-1984, Kerrville Tivy High School, 1986-2000, private kicking coach, 1986-2010
Critic’s Choice
Best Actor in a Drama for Lend Me A Tenor
Pointy Award
Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Cabaret
STAGE Gold Medal
Best Actor for The Drawer Boy
Earnest T. Player Award
Actor for The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940
San Antonio Express News Best of 2005
for The Drawer Boy
Emmy Nomination
for Jacob: Music Healed Teenager from Life of Crime produced by Greg Groogan, FoxNews-Houston
Founding Member
The Guadalupe Stage Quartet
Honorary Member
Ingram Tom Moore High School Thespians
Slam Champion, Austin Poetry Slam
Independent Runnerup, National Poetry Slam
milkriverblog named
Blogosphere Best of Blogs 2006 ~ Life as an Actor
milkriverblog scored 9.3/excellent
by blogged.com two years in a row
ranking #7 of 12,000+ personal blogs for 2008
ranking #8 of 12,000+ personal blogs for 2009
Captain, National Champions
Texas A&M University Wildlife Bowl Team, 1976
Texas A&M University Wildlife Bowl Team, 1977
Coach/Assistant Coach
Kerrville Tivy High School Soccer, 1986-1997
District and Area Champions, 1997
NSCAA Academic All-America Team 1997
Rio Vista Flaming Arrows
Outstanding Service Award 1998
Outstanding Service Ward 2003
Kerrville Independent School District
Student's Choice Teacher of the Year 1996
. . . favorites . . .
Favorite All-Time Movies
Amarillo by Morning, The Incredibles, Planes Trains and Automobiles, The Company, The United States of Leland, Donnie Darko, Million Dollar Baby, Sweet Sixteen, In Bloom, Life As A House, The Bourne Supremacy, O, The Player, Smoke Signals, Thirteen, Liberty Heights, The Party, All The Pretty Horses, Finding Nemo, The Wonder Boys, Memento, Tigerland, Black Hawk Down, 8 Mile, Dazed and Confused, Bastard Out Of Carolina, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Big Wednesday, Shakespeare in Love, Groundhog Day, The Last Samurai, Elephant, Sweet Jane, Billy Elliott, The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys, Friday Night Lights, A Midwinter's Tale, Rob Roy, The Opposite of Sex, The Business of Fancydancing, Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange, Like Water for Chocolate, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Toy Story I & II, Dogtown & Z-Boys, Miracle, Dancer TX pop. 81, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap, The Commitments, Lords of Dogtown, Walk the Line, Gunner Palace, Hotel Rwanda, The Door in the Floor, Life As A House, Grizzly Man, Rabbit-proof Fence, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Chumscrubber, October Sky, Platoon, Crash, Hustle & Flow, Chocolat, Riding Giants, City of God, Dead Poets Society, Mysterious Skin, Proof, Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Mad Hot Ballroom, Rock School, Manic, Apocalypto, Blood Diamond, The Good Shepherd, Breakfast on Pluto, Equus, Atanarjuat, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, Little Miss Sunshine, Cars, Zodiac, The Departed, Notes on a Scandal, Lyle Lovett Live, The Sting, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Animal House, M*A*S*H, Apocalypse Now, Bonnie & Clyde, The Last Picture Show, Shortbus, Brokeback Mountain, Woodstock, Live from Austin TX: Dwight Yoakum, Live from Austin TX: Eric Johnson, No Direction Home, G3 Live In Concert, The Squid and the Whale, Mystic River, Manic, Breakfast on Pluto, Blood Diamond, Comes Winter, Apocalypto, The Pursuit of Happyness, 300, Hairspray (2007), The Bourne Ultimatum, The Thin Red Line, The History Boys, It’s Not Big It’s Large, No Country for Old Men, Juno, Before the Music Dies, Atonement, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, darkbluealmostblack, Superbad, Into the Wild, Rocket Science, The Dark Knight, Running with Scissors, District 9, Avatar, Milk, Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart, Brideshead Revisited, Mister Foe, Little Boy Blue, This Is It, Zombieland, Shutter Island, Crazy Heart, How To Train A Dragon, The Education of Charlie Banks, The Reader, W, Frost/Nixon, Bad Education, Wrecked, Spread, Sherlock Holmes, Doubt, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Kick-Ass, Doubt, Lars and the Real Girl, Precious, Toy Story 3, Inception, Despicable Me, The Other Guys
Looking Forward To
A Confederacy of Dunces, A Prairie Home Companion, Coldwater, Reel Paradise, Pulse, Happy Endings, Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus, Winter Soldier, Take the Lead, Ballet Russes, Sin City 2, Empire Falls, Fast Food Nation, The Go Getter, City Slickers, A Dangerous Woman, Transformers, Blackrock, Be Here To Love Me, Breaking and Entering, In the Shadow of the Moon, Lust Caution, Once, 1408, For the Sake of the Song, Hitman, American Gangster, Oh My God, Invictus, The Fall, For the Sake of the Song
Best Film I Saw in 2004
Elephant, The Bourne Supremacy, The Incredibles, The United States of Leland, Amarillo by Morning, Sweet Sixteen, Miracle, In Bloom, Igby Goes Down, Dogtown & Z-Boys, The Company, Finding Nemo, The Last Samurai, Sweet Jane, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Friday Night Lights, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Business of Fancydancing, Fahrenheit 9/11, Donnie Darko, Les Miserables (in concert), Bully, In the Bedroom, Dreamers, Shattered Glass, Bowling for Columbine, Reason Thirteen, The Emperor's Club, The Bourne Identity
Best Film I Saw in 2005
The Aviator, Spin, Clinton's Last Days, Spiderman, Napoleon Dynamite, Million Dollar Baby, Shaolin Soccer, One Day in September, The Weekend, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Guess Who, Sin City, The Outsiders, The Incredibles, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, March of the Penguins, What About Bob?, Jarhead, Lords of Dogtown, Zathura, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Walk the Line, Se7en, Center Stage, The Bourne Supremacy, Sideways, Hotel Rwanda, Igby Goes Down, Best in Show, Adaptation, Gunner Palace, Thirteen Days, The Door in the Floor, The (Original) Bad News Bears, Ray, The Commitments, Undertow, Talk to Her, Rob Roy, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Life as a House, King Kong, The Family Stone, Toy Story II
Best Film I Saw in 2006
10 Things I Hate About You, The Aviator, Before Sunset, Beverly Hills Cop, The Big Red One, Boondock Saints, A Bright Shining Lie, Catch Me If You Can, Crash, Elephant, The Falcon & The Snowman, Glory, Glory Road, Good Will Hunting, The Great Race (doc), Grizzly Man, Hustle & Flow, In The Bedroom, Jurassic Park, Khachaturian, Liberty Heights, Lords of Dogtown, Lyle Lovett/SoundStage, Man in the Iron Mask, Million Dollar Baby, The Pink Panther (Sellers), Playing for Time, Point Break, Pride & Prejudice, The Quick & The Dead, Rabbit-proof Fence, Riding Giants, Max Keeble, Shattered Glass, Silence of the Lambs, Sin City, Sleepers, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Tristan & Isolde, Troy, The United States of Leland, The Untouchables, The Virgin Suicides, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, Robin Williams Live on Broadway, October Sky, Dancer Texas Pop 81, Witness, Snatch, Message in a Bottle, 3000 Miles to Graceland, Platoon, The Chumscrubber, City of God, Chocolat, Dead Poets Society, Munich, Philadelphia, Tarnation, TransAmerica, The Best of John Belushi SNL, Mysterious Skin, Firebird & Les Noces: The Royal Ballet, Live from Austin TX: Dwight Yoakum, Tigerland, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Undertow, Thumbsucker, Rize, Life As A House, Capote, Gunner Palace, Live from Austin TX: Eric Johnson, G3 Live in Concert, Good Night & Good Luck, The Squid & The Whale, The Dreamers, No Direction Home, A Mighty Wind, The Commitments, Mystic River, Unforgiven, Syriana, Mad Hot Ballroom, Broken Flowers, Brokeback Mountain, Rock School, Elizabethtown, Proof, Jimi Plays Berkeley, Jimi Hendrix Live At Woodstock, Donnie Darko (DC), Jarhead, History of Violence, Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Lucky Number Slevin, Casanova, Equus, Sweet Sixteen, A Very Long Engagement, The Doors (SE), The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The Wonder Boys, Borat, Atanarjuat, Breakfast on Pluto, Manic, Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, The Good Shepherd, The Pursuit of Happyness, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
Best Film I Saw in 2007
Requiem for a Dream, Chumscrubber, Come Winter, Breakfast on Pluto, Jarhead, The Squid & The Whale, Dogtown & Z-Boys, Syriana, Thumbsucker, The Best of John Belushi, Children of Men, Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen Days, The Commitments, Rock School, Life as a House, The Queen, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine, Cars, The Departed, Babel, Fishbelly White, Dare, O Beautiful, Zodiac, Brothers of the Head, Tristram Shandy, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Breach, 300, The Shooter, A Few Good Men, The Life of Brian, Disturbia, Notes on a Scandal, Little Children, Lyle Lovett Live, Pan’s Labyrinth, Lie With Me, The Last King of Scotland, The New World, Breach, Brothers of the Head, Memento, My Own Private Idaho, Alpha Dog, The Basketball Diaries, Mr. Brooks, Tuesday, Moviebonics, Off to Iraq, Go-Go Guy, The 1,000 Sides of the Moon, Denial, E.A.P., Caught in Paint, Whale Sharks of Holbox, Blood Diamond, Shortbus, Brokeback Mountain, The Good Shepherd, Latter Days, The History Boys, The Devil Wears Prada, Bobby, Four-eyed Monsters, American Gun, The Rainmaker, A Night in Heaven, My Cousin Vinny, Vera Drake, Freedom Writers, Munich, Apocalypto, O, Accidental Hero, Beverly Hills Cop, Long Island Expressway, Sweet Jane, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Lifted, Ratatouille, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Napoleon Dynamite, Hairspray (2007), Finding Nemo, Atanarjuat, Personal Velocity, The Bourne Ultimatum, Mean Creek, Ken Park, The Thin Red Line, Team America: World Police, Bully, All the Pretty Horses, A Midwinter’s Tale, Superbad, The Drawer Boy, Reason Thirteen, 3:10 to Yuma, Becoming Jane, Lucky Number Slevin, The Lookout, Flags of Our Fathers, Friday the 13th, Rosemary’s Baby, Edward Scissorhands, Tan Lines, In the Valley of Elah, Michael Clayton, Gone Baby Gone, The Hours, A River Runs Through It, It’s Not Big It’s Large, No Country for Old Men, The Golden Compass, I Am Legend, Velvet Goldmine, Pritchard vs. Dainton, Charlie Wilson’s War, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, A Chorus Line, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Lucky Number Slevin
Best Film I Saw in 2008
Aging Out, Atonement, Before the Music Dies, Bottle Rocket, Cloverfield, Juno, A Knight’s Tale, Match Point, Session 1242, Sweeny Todd, There Will Be Blood, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Velvet Goldmine, Babbette’s Fest, Be Kind Rewind, Vantage Point, Jumper, Shooter, Raging Bull, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Hoosiers, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, The Other Boleyn Girl, Dear Wendy, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, The U.S. v. John Lennon, darkbluealmostblack, Traffic, Superbad, Eastern Promises, Shortbus, Brokeback Mountain, The Bourne Ultimatum, Whale Rider, The Bank Job, Death of a Salesman, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Martian Child, Iron Man, Rocket Science, Into the Wild, Johnnie English, Steal Me, The Simpsons Movie, Band of Outsiders, I’m Not There, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Jesus Camp, Wall-E, Wanted, Hancock, The Dark Knight, All About Eve, Charlie Bartlett, The Savages, The Kingdom, Tropic Thunder, The Brave One, Mozart and the Whale, Levelland, Straight to One, The Kingdom, The Company, Running with Scissors, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, High School Musical 3, Almost Famous, American Beauty, Superman, Journey to Jonestown, Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, Torch Song Trilogy, Outlawed, Rendition, Almost Famous, The Colbert Christmas Special, Brokeback Mountain, Latter Days, The Lion in Winter
Best Film I Saw in 2009
Sweet Sixteen, Sweet Jane, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Lion in Winter, Amores Perros, The Flying Scotsman, The Business of Fancydancing, Manic, The Basketball Diaries, Lucky # Slevin, Almost Famous, Superbad, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Walk Hard, The Squid & the Whale, Zodiac, Rendition, Slumdog Millionaire, Rize, Brothers of the Head, The Bourne Ultimatum, Candy, I Love You Man, Star Trek, 17 Again, State of Play, Latter Days, Donnie Darko, Tanlies, Tarnation, Rage Against the Machine, Angels & Demons, The Wonder Boys, Oh Beautiful, LTR, Music, Nunzio’s Second Cousin. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Funny People, Milk, District 9, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Shattered Glass, Running With Scissors, This Film is Not Yet Rated, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Star Trek, Liberty Heights, Shakespeare Behind Bras, Notes on a Scandal, 500 Days of Summer, Brideshead Revisited, Let the Right One In, Wah-Wah, Son of Rambow, The Man without a Face, Green Street Hooligans, Margot at the Wedding, This Is It, Where the Wild Things Are, Zombieland, Occupation: Dreamland, The Wonder Boys, Charlie Bartlett, Milk, Young Gods, The Commitments, 12 and Holding
Best Film I Saw in 2010
Avatar in 3D, Shutter Island, Sherlock Holmes, Up In The Air, Crazy Heart, Alice in Wonderland in 3D, How To Train A Dragon in 3D, Mysterious Skin, Adaptation, I’m Not There, Life as a House, Milk, Superbad, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Less Than Zero, Alpha Dog, Little Miss Sunshine, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Just Married, Mister Foe, District 9, Zack & Miri Make a Porno, Hurt Locker, Mulholland Drive, Religulous, Paranoid Park, Youth Without Youth, Little Boy Blue, The Education of Charlie Banks, The Reader, W, Frost/Nixon, Bad Education, Wrecked, This Is It, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, The Wrestler, Zombieland, 17 Again, Spread, Before Sunrise, Wilby Wonderful, The Libertine, The King of California, The Savages, Lars and the Real Girl, The Kite Runner, Our Town (2005), Doubt, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Hairspray, Kick-Ass, Breakfast on Pluto, The Laramie Project, Rocket Science, Fierce People, Get Over It, The Informant (?), The Emperor’s Club, Joy Ride, The Party, Stage Beauty, Riding Giants, The Edge of Seventeen, Mean Streets, There Will Be Blood, TransAmerica, Whale Rider, City of God, Brideshead Revisited, Precious, From Hell, Get Him to the Greek, Undertow, Jumper, Casino, Leatherheads, Requiem for a Dream, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, Toy Story 3, The Karate Kid (2010), My One and Only, Men Who Stare at Goats, Bang Bang You’re Dead, Tenderness, Despicable Me, Shattered Glass, Shut Up and Sing, Inception, A Serious Man, Party Monster, Bully, 8 Mile, The Other Guys
Best TV I Saw in 2006
24, Judging Amy, 2006 Winter Olympics, 2006 World Cup, Dateline Investigative, The Daily Show
Best TV I Saw in 2007
24, The Daily Show, parts of Britain’s Got Talent and The X-Factor
Best TV I Saw in 2008
Waterloo Road, 2008 Beijing Olympics
Best TV I Saw in 2009
The Daily Show
Best TV I Saw in 2010
2010 Winter Olympics, Life, 2010 World Cup, Friday Night Lights, Skins, The Blue Planet
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2004
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Jeff Scott), Les Miserables (Roy Burney), Body Talk Dance Company (in Austin), Myles Smith & Scott Rotge (acoustic sets in Kerrville), Slam at Ego's (in Austin), Black Eagle at the Austin Powwow
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2005
Common Thread/Body Talk Dance Company/Make a Difference (performances in Austin), I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change (Point Theatre), Sylvia (Playhouse 2000), The Crucible (Ingram Tom Moore High School), Austin Under-21 Slam Championship (Ruta Maya), The Beggar's Opera (Wimberley High School), By the Bog of Cats (Llano High School), Much Ado About Nothing (Bandera High School), Cody Schrank (at Paddy's Pub), Macbeth (Needville High School), Medea (Zapata High School), Footloose (SummerStock Austin), Grey+ Whyte (Redrum, Austin), Vehicular (Redrum, Austin), Little Shop of Horrors (The Point), The Compleat Works of Wm Shakespeare (Abridged) (Texas Tech and Fredericksburg Theatre Company), Vanities (Ingram Tom Moore Thespians), Taming of the Shrew (Point Theatre), Student Performances at the Texas Thespian Conference, Never the Sinner (Ryan High School), The Speed of Darkness (Stephen F. Austin High School), WASP (Austin McCallum High School), The Diary of Anne Frank (Memorial High School), Monroe Moore (Choreography), A Christmas Carol (Point Theatre)
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2006
Our Town (Ingram Tom Moore High School Thespians), Same Time Next Year (The Point Theatre), Playing for Time (Ingram Tom Moore High School Thespians), You Can't Take It With You (Our Lady of the Hills High School), Man of La Mancha (Wimberley High School), Dancing at Lughnasa (Llano High School), Opus Cactus (Momix Dance Theatre), Cinderella (The Point Theatre), One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Playhouse2000), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (The Point Theatre), A Streetcar Named Desire (The Point Theatre), Dana Cooper and Annika Fehling (Hill Country Youth Ranch Concert), Chicago (Broadway Tour, Majestoic Theatre), Lend Me A Tenor (The Point Theatre/Guadalupe Stage Quartet), You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown (Ingram Tom Moore High School Thespians), ITM Spring and Fall Talent Shows, Of Winners, Losers and Games (Lytle HS), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Bandera HS), The Bad Seed (Hondo HS), The History of Tom Jones (LaVernia HS), The Importance of Being Earnest (Devine HS), Lilies of the Field (Playhouse2000), Picnic (Liberty Hill HS), Lone Star (The Point Theatre), Laundry and Bourbon (The Point Theatre), Clifton Fifer (Rio Vista), Lend Me A Tenor (Sheldon Vexler Theatre), Chicago (Broadway Tour @ Majestic Theatre), Will Owen-Gage and Jay Boy Adams in concert, Will T. Massey, Jacob Favela at Quiet Valley Ranch, Tom Prasada-Rao at Quiet Valley Ranch, 3FF, A1, Someone Like You, Casey Hubble, Flaco Jimenez
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2007
Taming of the Shrew (ITM Theatre Department), Nobody's Perfect (The Point), Michael Hawkins with Tommy Spurlock and Jamie Oldaker, The Boy Scout Cookies (final Show Ever at Jack's Patio Grill), Nothing More (at Jack's Patio), Cifton Fifer (at THMF/SU Coffeehouse), Wild Honey (Westlake High School), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Wimberley High School), Sol Patch (THMF/SU Coffeehouse), The Carolyn Wonderland Group (THMF/SU Coffeehouse), Dana Cooper and Annika Fehling (Cailloux Charter School), Empty Quarter (Laughing Music, SU), Derek Horton and Graham Low (Laughing Music, SU), Thom Woodruff and Andrew Stone (THMF/SU Coffeehouse), The Merchant of Venice (Bandera One-Act Play), Paganini (LaVernia One-Act Play), The Octette Bridge Club (Guadalupe Stage Quartet), The Bear (ITM Thespians), The Diviners (ITM Thespians), Of Mice and Men (ITM Thespians), Merely Music (Graham Douglass, Kristen Miller and Stuart Baumann at The Point), A Groovy Ever After (Ingram Elementary Theatre Arts Camp), Guys & Dolls (Playhouse2000/ Cailloux), The Drawer Boy (Guadalupe Stage Quartet), Oklahoma (The Point Theatre), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Playhouse 2000/Cailloux Theatre), Cheaper by the Dozen (Playhouse2000/Cailloux Theatre), Circling the Drain (The Point Theater), A Land Twice Promised (Cailloux Theatre), Brennen Leigh (Schreiner Uiversity Coffeehouse), Josh Grider (CD Release, Turner Blackbox Theatre, Hill Country Youth Ranch), Full Circle (Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University), Danza Azteca (THMF Living History Day), Breenen Leigh (THMF Living History Day), Scott Rotge (THMF Living History Day), Rodney Hayden (THMF Living History Day), Clifton Fifer (THMF Living History Day), Barbara K (THMF Living History Day). Lyle Lovett and his Large Band (The Majestic), Peter Rowan & Rex Foster (Turner Studios), 12 Angry Men (The Majestic), Tony Kushner (University of Texas), Britt Lloyd (Cearley Wedding), Austin PowWow, Calvin Little Eagle (Austin PowWow), Joe Ely Band (Texas Book Festival), Johnny Bush & The Bandoleros (Texas Book Festival), Culmination (University of Texas), Auburn Sky (Austin PowWow), Mark Standing Eagle Baez (Austin PowWow), Sizzortail (Austin PowWow), Buffalo Horse (Austin PowWow), Deadwood Dick (ITM Thespians), Ring Round the Moon (Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University), Wiley and the Hairy Man (Lon Morris College), High School Musical (Bandera Middle School), Rhinoceros (Transit Theatre Troupe), Dark of the Moon (Wimberley High School), A Christmas Carol (Dan Groat at Schreiner University), It’s Bigfoot (Hunt School)
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2008
Rex Foster, Butch Morgan, The Real Inspector Hound (Transit Theatre Compnay), Will T. Massey, Jimmy LaFave, Lourdes Perez, Barb Donovan, Susan Copeland (Glynda Cox Memorial, Austin), Twelfth Night (Ingram Tom Moore High School), King Lear (Bandera High School), Charley’s Aunt (Medina High School), The History of Tom Jones (Wimberley High School), David Mamet (University of Texas), Phantom of the Opera (Majestic Theatre), Mariner (LaVernia High School), The History of Tom Jones (Zapata High School), Method Gun (Rude Mechanicals, Long Performing Arts Center), On The Town (St. Edward’s University), White Room of My Remembering (Medina Valley High School), David Gallagher, Jon Wayne Martin, Kate Eminger, Charles Bryant, Lauren Hayes, Bridget Lynch, Sherry Mauch, Libby Dees, Julia Duffy, and Chris Smith in Angst! The Musical Revue (Omni Singers, St. Edward’s University), Barbara K & Richard Bowden (Schreiner University), Terri Hendrix & Lloyd Maines (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), Elijah Stone (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), Julias Thompson (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), Death of a Salesman (Guadalupe Stage Quartet), Hamlet (Taylor Danielson, ITM Senior Thespian
Monologues), Henry V (Kaleb Dworsky, ITM Senior Thespian Monologues), Macbeth (Shana Baldwin, ITM Senior Thespian Monologues), A Winter’s Tale (Kylie Nidever, ITM Senior Thespian Monologues), Quilters (The Point Theatre), Singin’ in the Rain (Cailloux Theatre), The Adventures of Robin Hood (The Point Theatre), Mr. Clark Band, Guadalupe River Rats, Jake Asbury (Roddy Tree Ranch), Casey Hubble, The Wolf Sisters (Texas Star Festival), One Way Out, Cracker Mojo, The Flashbacks, Ethel and the Pumps, Jordan Mallory, Amylou Weatherford, Kristi Foster-Grider, Barnett Chapel Gospel Choir, David Joseph (K’Star Music Fest), High School Musical (The Point Theatre), Dragons (Guadalupe Stage Quartet/Cailloux Theatre), The Book of Ruth (Playhouse2000), I Used to Dream (Children’s Music Project), Steel Magnolias (The Point Theatre), Willie Wonka (Playhouse2000/Cailloux Theatre), The Hudsons (Roddy Tree Ranch), Maris McHaney (Olympia Reunion), Terri Sharp (Schreiner Uinversity), Rosie Flores (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), The Hudsons (Kerrville Wine & Music Festival), Sarah Jarosz (Kerrville Wine & Music Festival),
Shelley King (Kerrville Wine & Music Festival), Green Mountain Grass (Kerrville Wine & Music Festival), The Fantasticks (The Point Theatre), A Walk in the Woods (Guadalupe Stage Quartet), The Rain Sessions (Schreiner University), Owen Temple (Antler Cup/Museum of Western Art), Company (Texas State University Department of Theatre and Dance/Glade Theatre), Austin Powwow (Austin ISD), The Nasty Clan (The Saxon Pub), Bugs Henderson & The Shuffle Kings (The Saxon Pub), Little Eagle (Austin Powwow), Mark Standing Eagle (Austin Powwow), Kevin Tokeya Inajin Locke (Austin Powwow), Dr. Mario Garza (Austin Powwow), Plainz Drifterz (Austin Powwow), Southern Thunder (Austin Powwow), Walt Wilkins & the Mystiqueros (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), Bill Small (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), Forever Plaid (Flower Mound High School, Texas State Thespian Conference), Sweeney Todd (Denton Guyer High School, Texas State Thespian Conference), Three Sisters (St. Edward’s University), The Grapes of Wrath (Wimberley High School)
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2009
The Lion in Winter (Guadalupe Stage Quartet, Warrior Theatre), Chamber Music (Ingram Tom Moore High School Theatre Department), The Boys Next Door (Schreiner Uinversity Theatre Department), A Bench in the Sun (The Point Theatre), Art Smoking a Cigar (Schreinere University Theatre Department), Look Homeward Angel (Wimberley High School), Journey of the Inevitable (Prari Blair’s Senior Recital), Schreiner University Choirs Spring Concert (First Presbyterian Church), Alhambra (Amber Thomason and John Dean Domingue) Hip Hop Variations (Amberley & Jake Asbury), Tango Expressions (Jake Asbury, John Dean Domingue & Kerrville School of Dance), The Wolf Sisters (Tivy Project Graduation), Corey Weaver (Starbucks Open Mike), Ethan Terry (Starbucks Open Mike), Charango Cakewalk, Dana Cooper (HCYR), 1776 (Playhouse2000), Treasure Island (Point Theatre), Beauty and the Beast (Point Theatre), Dana Cooper (House Concert), Joel Guzman & Sarah Fox (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), The Guadalupe River Rats with Jake Asbury (Roddy Tree), , Patricia Vonne (Schreiner University/THMF Coffeehouse), Walt Wilkins (Schreiner University/THMF Coffeehouse), Lyle Lovett (The Majestic), A Christmas Carol (Guadalupe Stage Quartet)
Best Theatre, Dance & Music I Saw in 2010
Vanities (ITM Thespians), Shelley King (Schreiner University Coffeehouse), The Ghost of the Saber Tooth Tiger (HitRECord.org, Spring Spectacular), New Time (HitRECord.org Spring Spectacular), The History of Tom Jones (Ingram Tom Moore High School One-Act Play), Hamlet (Wimberley High School One-Act Play), Cover of Life (Fredericksburg High School One-Act Play), (Bandera High School One-Act Play), The Miracle Worker (Playhouse 2000), Almost, Maine (The Point Theatre), The Compleat Works of Wllm Shakespeare Abridged (Schreiner University Theatre Department), Tick Tock (Schreiner University Theatre Department), Leading Ladies (The Point Theatre), Rent (Strand Theatre), Dana Cooper (Roddy Tree), The Jakes (Roddy Tree), Lee Haile (Natuer Quest), The Sound of Music (Cailloux Theatre), Kyle Park (Crider’s), Guadalupe River Rats (Roddy Tree), Los Brochachos (Roddy Tree), Two Left Feet (Ahita Ardalan, Playhouse2000), Cats (The Point), Tommy Shannon (Austin), Eric Tessmer Band (BD Riley’s, Austin), A Giant Dog (Emo’s, Austin), Ty Seagall (Emo’s, Austin), House Band (Chuggin’s Monkey), Trent Turner (Friends, Austin), Ugly Elephant (Ruta Maya, Austin), Guilty Pleasures (Thirsty Nickel)
Favorite Directors
Catherine Hardwicke, most Robert Altman, all Michael Moore sometimes, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cuaron, David Fincher, early James Cameron, early Martin Scorsese, early Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Wes Anderson, Sherman Alexie, some Stephen Soderbergh, Young-Hae Chang, Catherine Babbitt, Cackie Hayes, John Ford, some Oliver Stone, Spike Jonze, Christopher Guest, occasional Ridley Scott, most Tim Burton, Barry Levinson, occasional Rob Reiner, most John Hughes, some Chris Eyre, Ken Loach, some Joel Schumacher, John Lasseter, some Lasse Hallstrom, Gregg Araki, Curtis Hanson, Oli Bettesworth, Jim Jarmusch, Tod Williams, Paul Haggis, Roy Burney, Holly Riedel, Marie Cearley, John Ruth, Sarah Tacey, Darren Aronofsky, Syncsta, Gary & Lydia Wyatt
Favorite Actors
Robert DeNiro, Marlon Brando, Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Mary Tyler Moore, Julia Roberts, Al Pacino, Leonardo diCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bill Murray, Daniel Day-Lewis, Dame Judi Dench, Whoopi Goldberg, Jodie Foster, Tantoo Cardinal, Joseph Fiennes, Benicio del Toro, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tim Robbins, Peter Saarsgard, Hillary Swank, James Earl Jones, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Jack Nicholson, Irene Bedard, Burgess Meredith, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, Robert Duvall, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meryl Streep, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ben Foster, John Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Eileen Brennan, James McAvoy, Katharine Hepburn, Ryan Kelley, Jessica Lange, Glenn Close, Terence Howard, Terri Garr, John Lithgow, Cher, Sally Field, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, William Katt, River Phoenix, Ricky Cowgill, James Spader, Andrew McCarthy, Cicely Tyson, Evan Adams, Kyra Sedgwick, Heath Ledger, Jon Foster, Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Hayden Christensen, Jena Malone, Barry Pepper, Jamie Bell, Lou Taylor Pucci, Orlando Bloom, Nicholas Hoult, Eddie Redmayne, Logan Lerman, Laura Linney, Chris Cooper, Andrew Simpson, Nick Stahl, Chris Marquette, Josh Hartnett, Harry Treadaway, Luke Treadaway, Charles Bryant, Andrew Garfield, Alex Freeborn, Irec Hargrove
Favorite Up and Coming Actors
Charles Bryant, Annie Bond, Whitney Wilson, Lillian Beaudoin, Graham Douglass, Jonah Priour, Travis Newman, Meggie Nidever, Summer White, Taylor Danielson, Chris McCrae, Peter Navarra, Madelyn Beaudoin, Shana Baldwin, Irec Hargrove, Anthony Goodman, Todd Mein, Mathis Lidiak, Ethan Muehlstein, Lindsey Pate, Galen Graham, Marc West, Courtney Taylor, Helyn Messenger, Kaleb Hargrove, Lindsey Morris, Kaleb Dworsky, Logan Stehling, Jeff Scott, Lindsey Priour, Andy Patoski, Calen Cabler, Zeb Duke, Bonnie Sturdivant, Harry Tork, Jake Asbury, Allen Garcia Southern, John Dean Domingue, Tyler Bentley Wallach, Jenny Anne Canfield, Bobby Sands, TJ Ashabranner, TK Watson, Ash Stymest, Phillip Huddleston
Favorite Screenwriters & Playwrights
Charlie Kaufman, Edward Albee, Sharon Bridgforth, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Sherman Alexie, Tony Kushner, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, Michael Healey, Diablo Cody, Bertolt Brecht, Sharon Bridgforth, Christopher Durang, David Gunderson, Paul Haggis, John Ruth & Kay White Bocock
Favorite Television
I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, MASH, Late Night with David Letterman, The Daily Show, early Saturday Night Live, early MTV, Waterloo Road, Judging Amy, Winter Olympics, World Cup, Friday Night Lights, Skins
Favorite Music
Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Eric Taylor, Denice Franke, Nanci Griffith, Los Lonely Boys, Justin Bieber, Patty Griffin, Jonny Lang, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, Blackfire, Black Eagle, Blacklodge Singers, Joseph Firecrow, Guy Forsyth, Rage Against the Machine, Michael Hawkins, Myles Smith, Cody Schrank, John Baumann, Sean Kendrick, Monte Montgomery, Eric Johnson, Mary Cutrufello, Charles Lawrence, The Boy Scout Cookies, Wally's Toys, Scott Rotge, The Spins, Machine, Oliver Rajamani, Susan Lindfors, Terri Hendrix & Lloyd Maines, Solas, The Doors, The Chieftains, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Free, Humble Pie, Mark Standing Eagle Baez, Vehicular, Lucinda Williams, Mountain, Bad Company, Free, Blind Faith, Wishbone Ash, Uriah Heep, Blue Oyster Cult, Guess Who, Tool, Vince Bell, King Crimson, Spirit, Someone Like You, Satan & Adam, Erik Mongrain, Andy McKee, Carolyn Wonderland Group, Craig Anstey, 3FF, Josh Grider, Manuel Labbe & Jonathan Rioux, C.J. Tywoniak, Sizzortail, Small Faces, Sweet, Johnny Rabbit Bundrick, Valerie Carter, Greg Holden, Matt Rach, The Dixie Chicks, Audioslave, Tool, The Mars Volta, Chris Wick, Casey Hubble & Common Complaint, Barbara Kooyman & Richard Bowden, Julias Thompson, The Derailers, The Subdudes, James Bullard, The Hudsons, The Nasty Clan, Bugs Henderson, Jake Armerding, The Jakes, Ghost of the Saber Toothed Tiger, Greyson Michael Chance, Plowboy
Favorite/Best Vocalists
Lyle Lovett, Dana Cooper, Tommy Elskes, Valeries Harper, Mary Cutrufello, Denice Franke, Adam Lambert, Eric Taylor, Walt Wilkins, Bill Small, Alex Lambert, Malford Milligan, Patty Griffin, Paul Rodgers
Favorite Voices of the Future
Justin Bieber, Greyson Michael Chance
Favorite/Best Rock Vocalists
Paul Rodgers, Steve Marriott, Leslie West, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Chrissie Hynde, Melissa Etheredge, K.D. Lang, David Cook; Honorable Mention – Peter Frampton, Rod Stewart
Favorite Blues Harpists
Sonny Terry, John Popper, Adam Gussow, Sonny Boy Williamson, Gary Primich, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Walter, Carey Bell, Paul Orta, James Cotton, Walter Horton, Junior Wells, Mickey Raphael, Jason Ricci
Favorite Siyotankists
Joseph Firecrow, Doc Nevacquya, Robert Mirabal
Favorite Dancers, Skaters & Choreographers
Kim Willett, Monroe Moore, Savion Glover, Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief, Mark Standing-Eagle, Calvin Little Eagle, Suzanne Farrell, Sascha Radetsky, Jimmy Slyde, Alvin Ailey, Twyla Tharp, Ethan Stiefel, Damian Woetzel, Angel Corella, Wendy Whelan, Maya Plisetskaya, John Dean Domingue, Jake Asbury, Alessandra Ferri, Christopher Wheeldon, Michelle Kwan, Emily Hughes, Brian Joubert, Kimmie Meissner, Johnny Weir, Jeremy Abbott , Ahita Ardalan
Favorite Dance Companies
Body Talk Dance Company, Cirque du Soleil, Sahawe Indian Dancers, American Indian Dance Theatre, American Ballet Theater, Houston Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Mark Morris Dance Group, Momix Dance Theatre San Diego Ballet
Favorite Dance
Giselle, La Bayadere, La Sylphide, Les Noces, Cry, Revelations, Firebird, Opus Cactus, Spirit, Cirque du Soleil
Favorite Boarders & X-ers
Chris Fleener, Tony Hawk, Stacy Peralta, Tony Alva, Jay Adams, Kelly Slater, Laird Hamilton
Favorite Matadors
Manolete, El Cordobes, Alfredo Leal, Luis Procuna, Juan Benitez, El Juli, Jose Tomas
Favorite Players
Pele, Johann Cruyff, Michel Platini, Gary Lineker, Mia Hamm, Bruce Murray, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Josh Wolff, Michael Bradley, Stuart Holden, Jonathan Spector, Michael Cameron, Sarah Cameron, Gabriella Langford, Ronaldinho, Cristiano Ronaldo, Bojan Krkic, Giovani Dos Santos, Fernando Torres, Chad Deering, Kevin Cameron
Favorite Comedians
Biff Henderson, Richard Pryor, John Belushi, Larraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Dave Letterman, Peter Sellers, Craig Ferguson, Steve Martin, Samantha Bee, Jon Stewart, Robin Williams, Betty Butterfield, old Stephen Colbert, Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, Sarah Silverman
Favorite Canadians
Hockey, Samantha Bee, Peter Jennings, Cirque du Soleil, Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Manuel Labbe & Jonathan Rioux, Justin Bieber
Favorite Books
The House of Breath (Goyen), Lovesong of the Giant Contessa (Culbert), Yellow Glove (Nye), The Grass Dancer (Power), She Had Some Horses (Harjo), The Sun Came Down (Bullchild), Fools Crow (Welch), Had I A Hundred Mouths (Goyen), A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole), The Snow Garden (Rice), A Destiny of Souls (Rice), Catcher in the Rye (Salinger), Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (Hofstadter), Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (Hofstadter)
Favorite Authors and Poets
William Goyen, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joy Harjo, Percy Bullchild, Samuel Skeist, James Welch, Stephen Tye Culbert, Susan Power, David Quammen, Stephen Jay Gould, David Neiwert, John Dean Domingue, Jared Diamond, Douglas Hofstadter, Christopher Rice, John Kennedy Toole, Ernest Hemingway, Nathaniel West, J.D. Salinger, Leslie Marmon Silko, Sherman Alexie, Sharon Bridgforth, William Stafford, William Matthews, Carolyn Forche, Oliver Koppenberg, Arthur Koppenberg, Melina Solaces
Favorite Performance Poets
Samuel Huang Skeist, Thom the World Poet, Trinidad Sanchez, Jr., Tammy Gomez, Gary Mex Glazener, Joy Harjo, Taylor Mali, Genevieve Van Cleve, Oliver Koppenberg, Arthur Koppenberg
Favorite Photographers
John Dean Domingue, Greg Lasley, Thomas Boydston, Glen Johnson
Favorite Artists
John Dean Domingue, Ruth Huang, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, Michelangelo, Arthur Koppenberg, Oliver Koppenberg
Favorite Columnists
Susan Sander, John Ruth, Cary Clack, William Raspberry, Leonard Pitts, Brad Buchholz, Michael Ventura, Joe Herring, Jr.,
Recently Read
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Peter Biskind), Maria Tallchief (Maria Tallchief & Larry Kaplan), Jerome Robbins (Deborah Jowitt), Dreams from My Father (Barack Obama), The Beggar's Opera (John Gay), The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture (John C. Ewers), The Bull-Jean Stories (Sharon Bridgforth), Down and Dirty Pictures (Peter Biskind), A Short History of Almost Everything (Bill Bryson), Footnotes (Tommy Tune), The Snow Garden (Rice), White Lies (John Davies), The Road (Cormac McCarthy), Filmcraft (Michael Ventura), Praying Up the Sun (David Taylor), I Am A Strange Loop (Hofstadter), Blind Fall (Rice)
Regular Reads
Facebook, deviantArt, American Cinematographer, Digital Music, Cineaste, Fade In, Film Comment, Zoetrope, The Austin Chronicle, The New York Times, Antenna, Vanity Fair, Nylon Guys, Photoshop User, Juxtapoz, Dance
Favorite Cartoonists
Gary Larsen, Mike Luckovich, Ben Sargent, Bill Watterson, Berke Breathed
Favorite Blogs
Orcinus, Pharyngula, Bootstrap Analysis, skippy the bush kangaroo, Burnt Orange Report, Grits for Breakfast, Texas Civil Rights Review, Peacefile, The Panda's Thumb, Language Log, Clicked, Altercation, Creek Running North, Crows Really Are Wise, Michael Yon, Mike Luckovich, The Middlewesterner
Favorite Other Things
People, Angels, Beauty, Grace, Summer Camp, Cirque du Soleil, Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream, Guacamole/Avocados, Cheesecake, Cherry Limeade, Chai, Vanilla Bean Frappuccino, Fresh Cherries, Jones' Cream Soda, Black Cherry Vanilla Coke, Elements SubZero Siberian Cherry, Long Drives, Rosaries, Photoshop, The Texas Hill Country, The Davis, Guadalupe, Chinati, Chiricahua & Huachuca Mountains, The Grand Tetons, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, The West, Sierra Madre Oriental, Sea of Cortez, Chiapas, Puebla, San Luis Potosi, the Yucatan Peninsula, Weather, Thunderstorms, Soccer, Lacrosse, Hockey, Winter Olympics, Surfing, Skateboarding, Dance, Bullfights, PowWows, Dragonflies, Wasps, Birds, Snails, Snakes, Turtles, Horses, Whales and Primates
UPCOMING DATES
July-August 2010
Two Left Feet Cailloux Theatre
Kerrville, Texas
21 August 2010
Expedition for pelagic birds and whales
South Padre Island, Texas
24 September 2010
Texas Heritage Music Day Schreiner University
Kerrville, Texas
15-30 October 2010
Cat on a Hot Tin ROof Warrior Theatre
Ingram, Texas
January 2011
Earnest T. Player Awards Cailloux Theatre
Kerrville, Texas
TBA 2011
The Women of Lockerbie Guadalupe Stage Quartet
TBA
Kerrville/Ingram, Texas
production on hold
producing/directing Dragons Guadalupe Stage Quartet
Cailloux City Center for the Performing Arts
Kerrville, Texas
The Technical Stuff
Visitors to milkriverblog through 9 August 2010
from 50 US states plus DC
from 14 Canadian provinces
from 23 Mexican states plus DF
from 174 countries of the world
top visitation day = 1077 visitors
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