As I had just returned from my final (for now) trip down to southern Oregon and felt pretty beat I was not at my usual post at the Regal Cinema at the Lloyd Center for the Met show.  From what I have read it was four and a half hours long and by-and-large was pretty good. though it seems to have been something of a cross between an advertisement for dress designers and an infomercial for Ms F.

 

Some of you will remember that a few months ago I waxed lyrical about The Rest Is Noise, a book by former New York Times music critic Alex Ross.  The work is described  by Ross himself as "a voyage into the labrinth of modern music".  In it he examines the twentieth century  through its music, both tonal and dodecaphonic, symphonic and operatic, New World and Old.  This book is a delight and an extraordinary accomplishment. It has brought Ross praise and awards.  I still keep it by my bed and every couple of weeks I dip in to it and usually spot some gem that I had missed before.  This week brought two bits of news: The Rest Is Noise will be issued in paperback in the US on October 14th.  I urge you to buy and read it.  The other announcement is that Ross has been named one of the 2008 MacArthur Fellows.  This fellowship has come to be known as a Genius Grant.  Each year a total of about two dozen individuals are chosen by the MacArthur Foundation to receive an award of around $500.000.   It is paid over a period of five years and comes with no strings attached.  Recipients are not required to report to the Foundation what they use the  money for.  The stated purpose of the grant is to allow creative individuals the ability to work more and worry about finances less. You can read about the foundation here.  And Ross' own blog can be found here.  Many congratulations, Mr Ross.  I am quite sure that anyone who has read The Rest Is Noise will be applauding the MacArthur Foundation for their excellent choice.

 

In the early 1960's I was a pimply youth growing up in Norwich, a beautiful city in East Anglia.  I loved to sing.  I was not terribly good but I did love it.  I was very fortunate to have the help and encouragement of some local professional and semi-professional singers.  One of them was a gorgeous soprano named Jane Manning.  She was a few years older than I and light-years ahead in terms of vocal talent and ability.  Every now and again I would go to her parents' house where she lived and we would both sing while she played the piano.  She must have realised I wasn't very gifted or anything but she had enormous patience with my efforts and treated me as an adult without condescension.  Naturally, I had a huge crush on her.  I still remember clearly how one day she was soooo excited because she had been accepted into the Ambrosian Singers, an important step for a budding professional soprano.  Years passed.  I became a singing lawyer and Jane went on to become "the irrepressible, incomparable, unstoppable Ms Manning - life and soul of British contemporary music!" (The Independent on Sunday).  I haven't seen Jane in years but we are in contact though the miracle of the internet and I am quite sure that were I to see her again I would find that I still have the crush on her I had almost one half-century ago.  Jane celebrated her 70th birthday last week with her composer husband Anthony Payne.  She tells me that she is still busy performing (Messiaen's enormous and fiendishly difficult song cycle Harawi) and writing a book on Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire.  Happy birthday, Jane.  That's her pictured above.

 

And finally for this week news that Philip Glass has been commissioned by the Met to write and opera based on the life of Walt Disney.  Really.  Walt.  Walt.  Walt.  Walt.  Walt.