The Herbie Hancock and Christina Aguilera performance and recording of Donny Hathaway’s “A Song For You” is an example of the type of concert I would love to produce. Lose the sixty backup singers and dancers, along with the smoke and fireworks. May not be as exciting visually, but could lead to a different type of musical experience for the audience, where the musicianship of the performers is what counts.
I remember living in New York dropping into Wells for midnight breakfast (Fried Chicken and Waffles) and seeing Joe Williams get up from his table and sing two songs with Willie Bobo’s small band. Moments like this are unexpected and thrilling. It is not just the mixing of the styles, like a classical opera singer singing with Jay Z, it is watching two musicians figuring out how to compliment each other regardless of their discipline.
In this video you can see Hancock watching Aguilera and improvising, supporting and appreciating her. This is magic and gets lost (I think) when there are tons of people running around the stage trying to create excitement for 20thousand people.
If I had my way I would love to see an evening with Cassandra Wilson in a small venue being backed up by John Mayer.
120 photographs from the Center for Creative Photography’s “Ansel Adams Archive” will be on display at the PhoenixArt Museum until June 6, 2010.
Included in the exhibition are “dozens of archival documents including video footage, original correspondence, photographic equipment, proof prints, alternate views, negatives, and portraits of the photographer – allows for a richer understanding of Adams’s beloved photographs.”
Ms. Lena Horne one of the finest vocal stylists, performers and actors of the 2oth century passed away Sunday in New York.
So much was always made of her beauty, and she was extraordinarily beautiful, but I always questioned if enough attention had ever been paid to her vocal talents.
Here’s to a great artist, lets lift those champagne glasses high!
A wonderful and beautiful addition to North Phoenix and a cultural accent to (what still may become an urban center) NorthCity, is MIM-The Musical Instrument Museum. In addition to it being a Museum there is also a performance stage which is acoustically pleasing and intimate. There doesn’t seem to be a bad seat anywhere.
Live music is contagious, it breaks down barriers and infuses the audience with joy and gaiety that is seldom accomplished in listening to a recording. The bands’ and our enthusiasm was about musicianship and not staging or gimmicks. In Short, it was great evening that lifted our spirits.
The Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-Stars have another performance today at 2:30PM and would make for a great Mother’s Day treat.
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I, like everyone else, makes mistakes. I spent a summer in France painting and did not go to Giverny.Of course there are always missed opportunities, some are missed because you have a temporary brain malfunction and others happen just because.
When I was about 19, Olympia Harchuck who I worked for at Lord and Taylor in New York, introduced me to a gentlemen who along with his brother owned a woman’s dress manufacturing company on 7th Ave in New York (They and their parents also owned a small hotel in Murray Hill). I don’t remember the name of the company but think their last name was Cohen (Cohen along with Katz, were popular names in New York and the garment industry). Mr. Cohen loved art and had at least 3 of Monet’s Water Lilies hanging in his showroom along with other paintings. I was stunned, I had seen work like this in museums but never as a part of someones personal collection. I don’t think I knew what a collection was in the first place, other then the collection plate. Mr. Cohen talked with me for a while about my interest in being an artist and then asked if I would be interested in working at his company. At this point in my life, no one ever offered me a job-I was in unfamiliar territory (Give up a job that I liked for one I new nothing about). I told him the equivalent of “I need to think about it”, which may have been a mistake. Unfortunately, he passed away shortly after we met.
The Moral of the Story -Follow the Monet
This story, as I remember it, came rushing back to me on seeing that Steve A. Cohen (SAC Capital Partners) was lending his Monet to the Gaussian Gallery in New York for an exhibit “Claude Monet-Late Work“. My story became more intriguing when I learned that the current Mr. Cohen’s father was a garment manufacturer. Could it be?
If you know the family I am talking about, I would love to get my story straight.
The 1871 painting of Anna McNeil Whistler, popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother“, by her son James Abbot McNeil Whistler, will join the work of other Impressionist/Post Impressionist Parisian artists at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco for a huge exhibit that begins on May 22, 2010.
“Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay presents nearly 100 magnificent works by the famous masters who called France their home during the mid- to late-19th century and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognizable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. The exhibition begins with paintings by the great academic artist Bouguereau and the arch-Realist Courbet, and includes American expatriate Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as “Whistler’s Mother.” Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley are showcased with works dating from the 1860s through 1880s, along with a selection of Degas’ paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack, and life in the Belle Époque.”
The Brian Gross Fine Art space is hosting an exhibit of colorful Colorado artist Pard Morrison.
“Morrison creates stunning geometric paintings in patinated aluminum. On view are four new wall reliefs created specifically for the exhibition, which continues through June 25.
Morrison’s works feature repeating blocks of solid colors, applied through an enameling process that results in surfaces durable enough to withstand permanent outdoor installation. The simplicity of form and gridded structure of his work builds on the Minimalist tradition; however, in place of the cold, quiet austerity associated with the movement, Morrison’s work boasts a bold, colorful palette, and the subtle texture of the oven-fired surfaces lends a painterly element to the rigid geometric forms. Juxtapositions of neutral and vivid colors create dynamic, rhythmic color fields that make for a unique optical experience.“
89 year old American artist Wayne Thiebaud will have images of sugary delights and beach scenes included in the Museum of San Jose Museum of Art’s retrospective of his work over 7 decades.
“In addition to Thiebaud’s popular paintings and works on paper, the exhibition features both his most recent and his earliest work and thus reveals the full spectrum of his career.“
It is thought by some that the exaggerated stress caused by war is the catalyst for creation of exceptional art. I absolutely don’t agree with that thought. What is saved never makes up for what was lost.
The passing of a recent law in Arizona that clearly targets a specific group of people based on how they look, talk or dress and the timely exhibit of work by Miné Okubo, at the Oakland Museum of Art, brings attention to how we allow fear to trump reason.
I think it is ironic that Roosevelt’s most famous quote “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” is forgotten by him within ten years, during the stress of war and leads to something less then exceptional, Executive Order 9066.
“The Japanese American Internment”, “Slavery” or “Indian removal (Trail of Tears)” are as American as Apple Pie and to prove it, Governor Jan Brewer summoned up all of her own fear and signed into law SB 1070. One more case of history not repeating itself but rather our choosing to repeat history.
