– I was interviewed by the BBC last week for Pods and Blogs, a radio series on which I discussed my recent Wall Street Journal column about YouTube and the fine arts. The interview aired on Tuesday. To listen via streaming audio, go here. (If you’re in a hurry, my segment starts roughly forty-four minutes into the hour.)
– Doug Ramsey, a/k/a Mr. Rifftides, reported the other day on a fascinating concert by the Bill Mays Trio (a group I admire without reserve) that blended jazz and classical music to what sounds like brilliant effect. To read what he wrote, go here. I mention it because Doug is now reporting that part of the concert will be broadcast in streaming audio via the Web this coming Sunday at four o’clock Eastern. For further details, go here.
Should the broadcast not fit into your schedule, you can get a taste of the Bill Mays Trio on its own by purchasing this CD. I commend it to your attention.
– A reader reports that Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times recently delivered himself of this one-sentence summary
of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs:
Wotan, the king of the gods, driven by lust and power, makes bad bargains and then is forced by his wife to contend with their consequences, losing control of the world in the process.
That is, if I do say so myself, pretty damn neat. I seem to remember a Comden and Green lyric that dealt no less efficiently with the plots of a number of classic novels, but I’m away from my library this week and so can’t check it out for myself. Can anyone out there oblige me?
– Another reader passes on this quote from the great jazz drummer Art Blakey:
Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.
No source, alas–I’ve done a bit of surfing to try and track it down, but everyone cites it without identifying the occasion on which Blakey said it. Having spent more than a little bit of my spare time running down alleged remarks by H.L. Mencken that turned out to be apocryphal, I’m reluctant to accept it as authentic without a source. Once again, I’d appreciate a steer in the right direction.