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Dimensions in Music by Alan Lockwood
Possessed of a microtonal pitch acuity with which he mirrors sine waves, and in command of an exquisite technique that earned him first soloist chair in Hamburg’s North German Radio Orchestra, cellist Charles Curtis bridges the out and in sides of classical music. Waking States, his contemporary cello series in early December, put those virtuosic extremes—devotion to sound’s naked nuances, and mastery of an immensely sonorous instrument—on telling display.
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Walking When the Woods Were Wild by Scott Marshall
Over four CDs, Jozef van Wissem attempts contemporary amalgams of Renaissance lute pieces. These well-intentioned efforts are often subverted by the quirky slide guitar of Gary Lucas, sounding far more out of place than in his glory days in Captain Beefheart’s last Magic Band. With production values ranging widely, Van Wissem presents a “live” and spontaneous aesthetic, flubbed notes and all. At times, he seems to be lost in the woods without a map.
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Anthrax: Fearsome, Ridiculous, and Charming by Sarahjane Blum
On the corner of Forty-Fourth and Broadway, below two facing marquees uneasily promoting “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Anthrax,” are visitors checking carefully to ensure they know exactly where their line begins and the other ends. Either group could be described as a mass who ventured into this tourist trap to watch middle-aged Jewish men sing, dance, and wax nostalgic about life vastly removed from Times Square. But I, at least, could not be paid enough to see Harvey Feinstein and Rosie O’Donnell revisit life in the shtetl. I came to see Anthrax because I absolutely love them. I walked away from the evening loving them even more.
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Make Me Feel Something by Grant Moser
Seductive and moody and oh-so-beautifully textured, the songs of Calla are reflections and shadowy whispers from your hidden corners. Listening to these songs is like sitting at a dark corner table in a basement bar, or being underground with a fallen angel telling you fables, or walking the city on a quiet night, or waking up from a dream and trying to grasp at the fleeting images that just recently occupied your mind.
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In Conversation: Parthenia with Phong Bui
There is pretty much nothing in common between the porn starlet Stephanie Swift, who earned the Best Actress (Video) distinction at the 1998 Adult Video News Awards, and the Maine Lobster Festival, to which seafood enthusiasts make an annual pilgrimage. For that matter, there is no discernible connection between Joseph Frank’s exhaustive biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and The John Ziegler Show, a conservative talk radio program that airs in Southern California, except that both of them—along with pornographers and lobsters and an impressive array of other phenomena—come under the scrutiny of David Foster Wallace in his thoroughly engaging new non-fiction collection, Consider the Lobster.
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The Rail congratulates the following winners of 2005
Ippie Awards from the Independent Press
Association-N.Y.:
1st Place, Best Overall Design: Amelia Hennighausen
1st Place, Best Story About Immigrant Issues
Gabriel Thompson, "When Even the Minimum Wage is a
Distant Dream"
(December 2004/January 2005)
2nd Place, Best Editorial/Commentary
Theodore Hamm, "Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn Legacy"
(March 2005)
3rd Place, Best Investigative/In-Depth News Story
Brian J. Carreira, "No Room at the Inn: Ratner
Continues to ’Game’ Officials and the Public" (June
2005)
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