Archives for October 26, 2003

New to “Sites to See” as of today is Cup of Chicha, of which (whom?) Our Girl and I are both fans. Click here or in the right-hand column, as you like it.

We urge you to troll through the roll, by the way. Not all the sites will be equally to your liking, but all are at least worth an irregular peek, and I check out most of them at least once every other day. Right now I am especially fond of Household Opera and Pullquote, and of course life without my daily doses of Maud, Old Hag, and You-Know-Who
would scarcely be worth living.

OGIC has her own favorites, which overlap substantially but not completely with mine. I’ll let her fill you in.

Did I mention that we are members in good standing of the Cool Lit Club? And that you’re not?

I don’t know about OGIC, but I’ve answered just about all of my mail. (I understand she’s tailgating today. Harrumph! No doubt she’ll tell you all about it….)

I’m heading into a four-deadline, two-play week, by the way, so you won’t be hearing as much from me as usual, but I promise not to disappear even close to completely, and Our Girl has plenty of stuff on her mind. We’ll keep you fed and happy.

In the meantime, here’s a playlist. I recovered nearly all my data after that horrendous hard-drive explosion, but one thing I did lose was my mp3 files, every last one of them, arrgh. The good part is that I’ve been ripping lots and lots of CDs in the course of the past couple of weeks in order to reconstitute my Lost iTunes Jukebox, and my listening has been nicely eclectic as a result. Here’s what I played (and ripped) as I answered your mail this evening:

1. Elgar Introduction and Allegro, performed by Benjamin Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra (one of the most underrated of all string-orchestra masterpieces, conducted by a great composer to boot).

2. Coldplay, “Yellow”

3. Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, “Swing 42” (I can’t hear this record often enough, for some reason)

4. Paul Whiteman, “Dardanella” (arrangement by Bill Challis, solo by Bix Beiderbecke)

5. Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims, “Davenport Blues” (in honor of Bix, obviously)

6. Luciana Souza, “Doce de Coco” (from Brazilian Duos, a CD you must own)

7. Faur

By way of The Corner, this letter to the editor of the Rocky Mountain News:

I just got back from Wesla Whitfield‘s last set at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel (right in time to reset my clocks), and I simply had to sit
down and tell you how wonderful it was. The room was full of singers, among them Julie Wilson and Mary Foster Conklin, and Whitfield was well aware of it, for her singing was everything that cabaret ought to be and sometimes is: sly and playful, daring and free, musically impeccable, devastatingly emotional. (I could–and should–say all the same things about her accompanists, Mike Greensill on piano and Sean Smith on bass, for they, too, were flying.)