See as a Google Calendar (click on Agenda tab in upper right)

Upcoming Stuff To Do


- Already going -

New York plays: God of Carnage, A Steady Rain

Friday night sing-alongs at Jacob Wirth

MFA First Fridays, SoWa First Fridays

Anish Kapoor's solo exhibition at the Royal Academy in London to Dec 11


- Upcoming -

Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concerts (for Mom) Dec 10 - 12, 2009 (or maybe Sunday Music & Spoken Word)



Wherever they are
Pilobolus
Mummenschantz
Prairie Home Companion
Cirque du Soleil

Places I want to go
Galapagos
Great Barrier Reef
Cloud/rain forest
African savannah
Berlin
Rome, Venice
Zermatt

Boston stuff to do
ArtsBoston.org

Museums around Boston
Gardner Museum - Third Thursday "Gardner After Hours"
Museum of Fine Arts - MFA First Fridays
Institute for Contemporary Arts
RISD
DeCordova
USS Constitution
Harvard
MIT
Somerville Museum of Mosaics
Museum of Bad Taste (? in basement of Somerville Theater)

Boston performing and presenting organizations
Boston Symphony Orchestra - $9 rush Fri 10am, Tu+Th 5pm; talks at 6:45 and 12:15; cafe 5:30, "after 7"pm, 11am lunch
Boston Philharmonic
Boston Classical Orchestra
Boston Chamber Music Society
Boston Conservatory
New England Conservatory
Longy
Boston University School of the Arts
Boston Cabaret
Regattabar

Boston opera organizations
Boston Lyric Opera
Opera Boston
Boston Opera Collaborative
Guerilla Opera
OperhaHub
Longwood Opera
Intermezzo
Juventas! New Music Ensemble

Danish organ music at King's Chapel in Boston was enjoyable enough. Nothing really grabbed me, and only one piece turned me off.

Saw comedian Vidur Kapur. A competent stand-up comic. Not particularly memorable, pleasant enough.

King's Chapel Bach on the organ, played by Malcolm Proud.

I was surprised to be so moved by the chorale Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier BWV 731. So sweet and beautifully crafted and played.

The Prelude & Fuge in E minor BWV 548 was engaging and interesting, too. Still a bit much for me to follow the whole thing, but cool to notice things going on at shorter time scales.

I missed some of the Byrd piece at the beginning, but it was interesting to notice how much was going on compositionally with the work, though he died 60 years before Bach was born.

I like these noon concerts.

Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl at Lyric Stage in Boston

Went with Paul to see this (he liked another play he saw by Ruhl, and I thought the review looked good and like the last thing I saw at the Lyric Stage: Grey Gardens).

A fun, clever, sometimes dark play well-performed and -staged. As ridiculous as much of it was, it had the quality for me of keeping me wobbling between awareness of the artifice of the play, emotional engagement with the characters, and curiosity about what's meant to be "real" and "imagined" -- both in the play and in the world. Nice.

BSO Beethoven Symphonies 1, 2, 5 open rehearsal.

After listening to the Teaching Company's Symphonies of Beethoven course lectures on these symphonies in preparation for the BSO's series of all nine of them, it was nice to hear them with "new ears" of a sort.

I was particularly engrossed in No 2, particularly the first movement, as the program notes said it was like the introduction of a number of characters in a comic opera. It got me thinking about wanting to find or commission one or several works that introduce "characters" associated with different instruments, then have the characters interact (counterpoint) and change (variations?, harmony, elaboration) over the course of the piece.

BSO Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky et al

I particularly liked the Tchaikovsky Francesca da Rimini, and am looking forward to hearing more Tchaikovsky soon. The Stravinsky Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra was engaging, though I'd have to listen to it again, I think, to have a clearer idea of the program notes' assertion that the influence of Tchaikovsky is all of it.

The Martinu (Frescoes of Piero della Francesca) and Thomas (Helios Choros II) were missable. In particular, while there were a couple of engaging short moments in the Thomas, it repeatedly reminded me of my dislike and dismissiveness of recent "bleep-bop" art music -- that to me sounds like a series of pairs of pitch-harmony-timbre clusters coming helter skelter one after another. *sigh* Fortunately, the concert ended with the Tchaikovsky.

The last of the MFA classes "The Creative Eye" finished today. While it started out a little awkward with me arriving a couple minutes late and realizing I was both the only male and the only one under 50 (I think -- there may have been a woman or two in her 40s). Each week we spent about a half hour each at three works (still lives, landscapes, portraits, sculpture), spending a long time looking and sketching or writing and then talking about what we saw and a bit about the painting, the style, the artist, etc. A lovely class that has helped me see more. And I was quite impressed with the teacher, who I wasn't surprised to find out had done education work at the Met.