Alex Ross's Blog, page 24

Happy Hallowe'en

A Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 moment

Sasha Frere-Jones's Earlier

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Because I've long been friends with the New Yorker's former pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones, and because I appear briefly as a character in his new book, this encomium is likely suspect. Nonetheless, I'm compelled to declare my mesmerized admiration for Earlier, Sasha's singular fusion of memoir, essay, aphorism, and prose poetry. "Intentionality," a somewhat representative excerpt, can be read at the New York Review of Books. Sasha is now writing about the gentleman below.

Dylanism

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Today is publication day for Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, a massive anthology inspired by the archival holdings of the Bob Dylan Center, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel are the editors; contributors include Greil Marcus, Michael Ondaatje, Gregory Pardlo, Lee Ranaldo, Richard Hell, Ed Ruscha, Lucy Sante, Greg Tate, my New Yorker colleague Amanda Petrusich, and myself, writing on "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar." I'm not sure I've ever had so much fun working on an assignment; the day when I received images of the various drafts of the song was a giddy one. Anyone who loves Dylan is going to experience similar feelings of discovery all through the book; dozens of pages of drafts are reproduced, with more of Dylan's serpentine creative process revealed in the essays. A tiny example: in some early lyrics for "Tombstone Blues," Dylan wrote "complex vibrato" and then replaced it with "useless knowledge."

Previously: The Wanderer, Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan as Richard Wagner, Ain't Talkin'.

Madama Butterfly in Detroit

Reorienting Butterfly. The New Yorker, Oct. 30, 2023.

MTT's farewells

Joshua Kosman, in the San Francisco Chronicle, gives a gently wrenching report of Michael Tilson Thomas's program with the San Francisco Symphony this weekend — "what seems all too likely to be his final appearance with the orchestra." The music was, naturally, Beethoven's Ninth, with joy prevailing.

Waltraud Meier's farewell

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Photo: Ronan Farrow.

Waltraud Meier, perhaps the supreme Kunstdiva of our day, gave her final stage performance tonight at the Staatsoper Berlin, reprising one of the landmark creations of her career — Klytemnestra in the Patrice Chéreau production of Elektra. There was apparently quite a scene in the house. Beforehand, Ben Miller interviewed Meier for the New York Times.

Harbison, Adams, Feldman

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From the marvelous photographic archives of Betty Freeman.

Mannshelf

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For this German-language compendium of essays about the Thomas Mann house in Los Angeles and its creative and social worlds, I've written an essay — yet another essay — about Doktor Faustus. Building on my "Adrian Leverkühn Companion," I've tracked the sources of Adrian Leverkühn's fictional works and related them to the soundscape that surrounded Mann in Southern California. A perfect holiday gift for a peculiar and slightly questionable relative.

Pueblo Ribera at 100

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R. M. Schindler's remarkable Pueblo Ribera complex, in La Jolla CA, has turned one hundred. Much thanks to the La Jolla Historical Society for inviting me to take part in the celebration, and deep gratitude to Reena and Jeffrey Racki for offering me a most extraordinary form of hospitality.