SOUNDTRACK: LARA ST. JOHN-Tiny Desk Concert #530 (May 9, 2016).
When Lara St. John released her first CD it made ripples because of the way she appeared on it (presumably topless). But if that was a stunt to get people to listen, it was a good one because the music on it was phenomenal (and the disc sold very well). St. John is masterful on the violin and has released a dozen or so CDs of herself playing.
I have never seen her play before and it is a marvel watching her fingers fly (and slide) all over the neck of the violin (including some absurdly high and fast notes).
The first piece is “Czardashian Rhapsody.” It is an amazing mashup of two songs by Martin Kennedy: Czardas, the most familiar Hungarian melody for violin and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, the most familiar Hungarian melody for piano. He merged them into a real barnstormer. It’s 6 minutes of switching back and forth between the familiar melodies and very gypsy-esque sections (and some very long held notes).
The song is 6 minutes of musical acrobatics.
Although this is billed as St. John’s show, much recognition must go to her pianist Matt Herskowitz who is also magnificent.
St. John clearly has a sense of humor since she named her new album Shiksa. She says the album actually has ten different titles because every culture has a word for “big Canadian chicks” like herself.
The second piece is “Sari Siroun Yar” by Serouj Kradjian. She says it was the first song she heard when she went to Armenia in the lat 1980s. It is a bittersweet Armenian troubadour song. While this song is much more mellow than the first, it still showcases some amazing playing on both musicians’ parts. The opening notes she plays high on the fret board which gives the violin a very different sound–almost breathy. And the main melody is quite lovely.
The final song is once again a wild one. “Oltenian Hora” is one that St. John arranged herself. It plays off a catalog of violin tricks, St. John explains, practiced by traditional Romanian gypsy fiddlers: rapid-fire whistles, bird calls and slithery harmonics, all in a variety of off-kilter rhythms. I’ve never seen some of the things she does on the violin (those bird calls are amazing). And by the end she is bowing so hard the bow seems about to break. It is way intense and really awesome.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a violinist get out of breath from playing so hard before, but she deserves all of the applause.
[READ: March 15, 2016] Feynman
This is a graphic novel biography of Richard Feynman. Ottaviani worked as a nuclear engineer, programmer and reference librarian, so you can trust him.
I have respected Richard Feynman for years. I have a few of his books, although I can’t say I have read them intensely. I knew that he was considered an amazing professor–making really intense subjects easier for the layman to understand. And many of his lectures are available as audiobooks.
But there was so much about him that I didn’t know. And this biography (which runs nearly 300 pages and is jam packed with information) covers nearly all of it. Including excerpts from his own publications and attaching a massive bibliography for more works by and about Feynman.
Richard was a very smart kid–much smarter than anyone around him. But he hated languages and all of the liberal arts. He was a man of science from the get go.
We follow him through high school to college (with occasion flash forwards to the successes that relate back to his childhood).
He studies everywhere. He met Einstein. He worked with Oppenheimer. He was instrumental in creating the atomic bomb (his reasoning was that he wanted the US to discover it before Hitler’s scientists did). Despite how much he worked with the military, he hated the secrecy of it all.
He suffered personal tragedies. His wife died very young. Then had to deal with the moral impact of the atomic bomb.
And then he won the Nobel Prize (with a few other people).
He also helped NASA and other to understand why the Challenger exploded.
The end of the book shows his attempts to explain to laymen exactly what he won the Nobel Prize for. He felt that if he couldn’t get the average person to understand it, then it wasn’t worth the Prize.
Feynman is such a delightful character–always funny and interesting. he did a lot of his work in a strip club, because he found it relaxing being away from the University or the military. He enjoyed trying to break into people’s lockers. He had a thing for the ladies. And yet his mind was always five steps ahead of nearly anyone else.
Thanks, First Second. #10yearsof01
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