Archives for May 21, 2012

Mrs. T and I are in the process of driving down California’s Highway 1 from San Francisco to San Diego, seeing shows along the way. Yesterday we stopped at Ragged Point Inn, which is south of Big Sur and not far from the Hearst Castle, to give me time to write and file a piece for The Wall Street Journal. I doubt there’s a more beautiful drive in America, or a more beautiful spot than Ragged Point.

Would that I could spend all my time here gazing at the sea, but as James Bond says to Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, “If it wasn’t for the job, we wouldn’t be here,” and I’ve never been one to shirk my journalistic duty, so I’ll be spending a chunk of today writing about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau for Friday’s “Sightings” column.

Tomorrow we resume our travels, about which more in due course. Until then, we’re more or less incommunicado–our cell phones don’t work up here and the wi-fi at the inn is agonizingly slow–so if you want anything, get back to us on Tuesday night.

In the meantime, I hope that wherever you are is at least a quarter as pretty as where we are.

I rejoice to report that Paul Moravec, my old friend and operatic collaborator, received an Arts and Letters Award in Music last week from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award “honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice.” I can’t think of an American composer who deserves it more. Paul is a great artist, and it is my privilege both to know and to work with him.
For more information on the award, go here.

Miles Davis plays with Gil Evans’ orchestra on a 1959 CBS telecast:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 106 (March 23, 1751)