National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba

National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba
Enrique Pérez Mesa, music director
Guido López-Gavilán, guest conductor
Ignacio “Nachito” Herrera, piano

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
University of Illinois, Urbana
October 18, 2012

Elaine and I had the good fortune to hear the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba last night, in the second performance of their first United States tour. The word that first came to my mind to describe the orchestra’s sound: metropolitan. The strings and winds were refined, urbane; the brass, bright and sharp. I felt that I was listening to a sound from the mid-twentieth century, nothing soupy or splashy about it.¹

The program: George Gershwin’s Cuban Overture and Rhapsody in Blue, Guido Lopéz-Gavilán’s Guagancó, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4. The highlight for me was the Rhapsody: pianist “Nachito” Herrera made this piece as new and exciting as it must have sounded in 1924. (He and the orchestra took a few liberties, which I won’t reveal here.) Added delights: two national anthems (you can guess which ones) and three encore pieces.

Last night’s performance was one of the most memorable orchestral concerts I’ve heard. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen more good will between musicians and an audience. If the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba comes your way: go.

¹ Could it just be that my head is filled with images of mid-twentieth cars still moving through the streets of twenty-first-century Havana? No, I don’t think so.

[“Nachito” Herrera has a website. This page has the tour dates.]

Word of the day: sketchy

President Obama last night:

“Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, ‘Here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it,’ you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”

A clear, concise pair of definitions of sketchy from Urban Dictionary: “iffy,” “questionable.” A more elaborate effort from the same site:

creepy, iffy, fairly unsafe, an air of uncertainty, not kosher, and just generally something or someone that you don’t want to be associated with (or really do want to be associated with, depending on who you are . . .)

I’ve almost never used the word sketchy to mean anything but “giving only a slight or rough outline of the main features, facts, or circumstances without going into details” (Oxford English Dictionary). Indeed, if I use the word when talking with a student about, say, an underdeveloped idea in an essay, I make it a point to distinguish my use from current slang. So I am amused to realize that last night I immediately understood sketchy to mean “iffy” and “questionable,” even though the word could have been taken to mean only that the deal was lacking in detail. It is lacking in detail, but it’s also sketchy.

Young Narcissus

[Henry, October 17, 2012.]

One can never have too many gum machines on the streets of one’s comic strip.

Live-blogging the debate

Barack Obama just characterized Mitt Romney’s mysterious tax-proposal as “a sketchy deal.” Too true. I am delighted to hear sketchy in its slang sense in a presidential debate.

[The post-title is mock-serious. I’m offering one observation, not a running commentary.]

Mitt Trail arrives for the debate

[Mark Trail, October 16, 2012. Click for a larger view.]

As dedicated Mark Trail readers know, facial hair is the mark of a villain. Long sideburns and a mustache are dead giveaways. (Guns are another clue.) The man in red must be a rogue town-haller who insists on doing things his way. Things do not look good for Mitt Trail in tonight’s debate.

As dedicated Orange Crate Art readers know, I have long suspected that D-list comic-strip hero Mark Trail and Mitt Romney are the same (two-dimensional) person. If you need more proof: more Mitt Trail posts.

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, October 16, 2012. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Hi and Lois offers yet one more additional variation on a theme by Slylock Fox. Can you count the differences between the panels?

More disturbing than the panel-shifts though is the black slab on or outside the window. Monolith?

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Found

I discovered this 2" x 1" inspection slip Saturday night in the inner right-hand pocket of a tweed jacket. It’s the kind of jacket my son Ben once called a “professor jacket.” (That term is now part of our fambly’s vocabulary.) This professor jacket is by Lands’ End, and is old enough to have been made in the United States. I’ve had it for well over a decade, perhaps closer to fifteen years.

Betty Tingle, if you’re out there: I finally got your message. The jacket was perfect at the start and has held up well. The inspection slip bearing your name has gone back to the inner right-hand pocket.

A related post
Found (a 1968 receipt)
The Old Trading Post, Lisbon, New Hampshire (a postcard in a book)
Thanksgiving night (a letter in a book)
Whose list? (in a 1967 paperback)

Mitt Incandenza

The New York Times has a good editorial commentary today on the “moderate Mitt myth.” Quoth the Times:

The way a presidential candidate campaigns for office matters to the country. A campaign should demonstrate seriousness of purpose and a set of core beliefs, and it should signal to voters whether a candidate shows trustworthiness and judgment. Those things don’t seem to matter to Mitt Romney.

From the beginning of his run for the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney has offered to transfigure himself into any shape desired by an audience in order to achieve power.

Yep, Proteus. But Proteus didn’t aim to please an audience. I’m reminded less of the ancient shapeshifter and more of Orin Incandenza, the tireless seducer of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. In a letter that forms the content of a long endnote, a former friend describes one of Orin’s pick-up strategies: Orin would approach a woman in a bar or at a dance and say, “Tell me what sort of man you prefer, and then I’ll affect the demeanor of that man.” The difference between Governor Romney and Orin Incandenza: Orin acknowledges that it’s an act.

The strangest part: the name of Orin’s former friend is Marlon Bain.

“The necessary limitations of our nature”

W. H. Auden:

Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

From the essay “Reading,” in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (1962).

The ages might vary, but it’s sound advice. It reminds me — don’t laugh — of what management consultant Peter Drucker says in Managing Oneself (2008): that we must figure out our strengths and values and ways of working, and be who we are.


[“Peabody here.” Mister Peabody, at peace with the necessary limitations of his nature.]

When I was a much, much younger fellow, perhaps just a tad bookish, my so-called peers bestowed upon me the nickname Mister Peabody. Ugh. But now I celebrate the Peabodily elements of my style.

Other Auden posts
On handwriting and typing
Six lines from Auden

Britishisms

I was delighted beyond reason this past summer when a Scot called me mate. But I think I’ve typed my last cheers. The New York Times reports on America’s slippery slope into Britishisms.