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"Good eve-a-ning", indeed. But at least for now: stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
ART NOTES - several prints by Paul Klee are at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California through January 16th.
A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow - which Markos front-paged last week - is so good, it bears repeating: predicting future conservative outrages is a full-time job.
IF YOU HAVE NOT read this profile by David Corn of the recently-defeated South Carolina GOP congressman Bob Inglis - do so. How can someone with a 93% conservative rating suddenly receive the NCE label - 'Not Conservative Enough?'
TUESDAY's CHILD is Smithy the Cat - a Welsh pootie who is part of a shelter's offer of adoptions for free to 'clear their decks' of an oversupply of kittehs.
CONGRATULATIONS to the 34 year-old Englishman Ed Stafford - it took him 2-1/2 years, and involved numerous insect bites, threats on his life - but he has become the the first documented person to walk the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River (from source to sea) in South America.
GET WELL to former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien - seemingly in good spirits after brain surgery.
ART NOTES - a collection of paintings/drawings by Rolling Stones member Ron Wood - including 'Beggar's Banquet' shown below - will go on display at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio on September 21st (and lasting for eight weeks).
POLITICAL NOTES - not that this should come as any surprise: but it seems Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is determined to transform 'Ottawa into a Republican la-la land' - with prison proliferation, weaken the census, upper-bracket tax cuts, etc.
WEDNESDAY's CHILDREN were left on the side of a road in British Columbia with this note: 'We are really sorry, we cannot afford the SPCA surrender fee'.
HERE WE GO AGAIN - a Senate candidate from the Family First party in conservative Queensland, Australia named Wendy Francis was forced to delete a Twitter post that stated 'Legitimizing gay marriage is like legalizing child abuse'.
DÉJA VU - Argentina's president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner blasted the opposition party for being a "corporation-subordinated sector" and called for them to "unfold their own proposals." Now, you don't suppose they're copying the GOP?
FILM NOTES - a list of twenty famous films that readers have told Entertainment Weekly were over-rated.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - film star Elias Koteas ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles") and TV star Christopher Meloni ("Law & Order - SVU").
POLITICAL NOTES - the mayors of some of Italy's most elegant resorts have expressed outrage at a new regulation introduced by the government of Silvio Berlusconi that allows beachfront premises to stage drink-and-dance parties seven days a week.
ART NOTES - a photography exhibit by Richard Misrach entitled After Katrina is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas through October 31st.
MUSIC NOTES - more than 100 guitars autographed by the late Les Paul - which he would give out to celebrities as gifts - are going up for auction.
POLITICAL NOTES - give new British prime minister David Cameron some credit for astuteness: recalling what happened to Margaret Thatcher nearly forty years ago when (as an education minister in Edward Heath's government) she had to carry-out a policy to end free milk in schools for kids aged 7-11 - Cameron squashed a plan by one of his ministers to abolish free milk for younger children, to avoid a modern-day equivalent of the notorious "Thatcher the milk-snatcher" label.
THURSDAY's CHILDREN are just two of the bookstore cats of Northern California - profiled in detail by the San Francisco Chronicle.
WOTTA SURPRISE - a federal stimulus program set aside for rural areas in Canada wound up bestowing a disproportionate amount of funds in Québec to ..... Conservative Party districts.
AS WE APPROACH the 40th anniversary of the death of Jimi Hendrix - an essayist speaks to his friends - and notes an exhibit of his London home that will open later this month.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - film stars Claire Forlani ("Meet Joe Black") and Vera Farmiga ("Up in the Air").
EDUCATION NOTES - a new program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston aims to make the school more accessible to blind and visually impaired students.
VOTING NOTES - Justice Minister Tuija Brax recently proposed lowering the minimum voting age in Finland to 16 for future municipal elections.
"Now, if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao ........"
BOOK NOTES - a new biography of the poet Emily Dickinson - as we approach the 200th anniversary of her birth - is aptly titled "Sweeping up the Heart".
THEATRE NOTES - a musical about Spider-Man - with music and lyrics by U2's Bono and Dave (The Edge) Evans - is expected to open on in December as the most expensive ($50m) Broadway production ever, due to its sprawling skyscraper sets.
FRIDAY's CHILDREN are a group of kittehs in Dubuque, Iowa up for adoption as part of a Pick Your Price adopt-a-thon.
......and finally, for a song of the week .............. in his obituary, The Economist magazine identified him as Karlheinz Stockhausen - "seeker of new sounds". Along with Igor Stravinsky, Edgar Varèse and Arnold Schoenberg, Stockhausen was one of a few 20th Century European composers who stood on the shoulders of their European ancestors and created avant-garde 'new classical' music. Stockhausen differed from the others in that (a) his prominence came after WW-II and (b) as the Economist description notes: he was seeking new and unusual sounds, delving into electronic music at an earlier stage than some of his peers. Definitely an acquired taste; his work was often panned and he was prone to overdoing something that conceptually was best done in miniature. But he has many followers, and belongs in any comprehensive discussion of 20th Century orchestral works.
Karlheinz Stockhausen was born near Cologne, Germany in 1928. As a child he was fascinated with sound; hearing tones in ordinary sounds before studying music. In his teens, he lost both his parents: his father a casualty of WW-II and his mother killed by Nazi authorities during their purges of mental institutions - and had himself had to work as a stretcher-bearer for a field military hospital. He studied at the Cologne Conservatory, later at the Darmstadt New Music School as well as at the Paris Conservatoire, where he met Pierre Boulez and studied phonetics, acoustics and philosophy in addition to his music studies.
Returning to Germany in 1953: he took a job as assistant director at the newly-established Electronic Music Studio of the West German broadcasting company in Cologne (and became its head within a decade). His career took off: with notable works such as Gesange der Jünglinge ("Song of the Children", with Biblical source text, 1956) and 1957's Gruppen for three orchestras. His first USA trip in 1958 led to a meeting with John Cage and the two men influenced each others' work: for Stockhausen, it manifested itself in 1960's Carré (for four orchestras) and "Kontakte".
In the 1960's, he went on to compose: an Eastern/African blend called "Telemusik" (1966), a national-anthem montage Hymnen (1967), Kurzwellen (based upon short-wave radio, 1968) and Stimmung (Tuning) for six voices in 1968. He also became active in the Fluxus movement (of performance art) that Yoko Ono became known for. In all of this, he used mathematics and all sorts of sounds for works for solo instruments, chamber music, chorale and all sorts of major works.
Many became interested in his music through testimonials from others. Rock musicians such as Frank Zappa (who was also a disciple of Edgar Varèse) and the Grateful Dead helped garner an audience for him in the USA.
In his autobiography, Miles Davis noted his connections to classical music: private lessons in his youth, a year at the Julliard School, beseeching his peers to examine the scores of Bach available in the library and listening to it at home. But he was always frustrated by those whose interest seldom entered the 20th Century - and cited Karlheinz Stockhausen as someone whose works should be required listening for any aspiring classical musician. Once, on tour in Germany, he told his audience to give up on Beethoven: "You've got Stockhausen now."
Most famously: due to interest from Lennon & McCartney, Stockhausen's face (photo left) appears five faces from the left in the back row on the cover of the Beatles 1967 album Sgt. Pepper (center photo) just to the left of W.C. Fields. Stockhausen has both the initial letter request as well as a telegram from Brian Epstein requesting permission to use his image - which Leo Gorcey (of the Bowery Boys) refused.
His magnum opus (or ego trip, for his critics) came in the 1970's with his seven-opera series Licht ("Light") with one performed each day of the week - and which was not fully completed until 2002. Around that time, a quote that he made about the presence of Lucifer and his works became distorted in translation, leading to reports he considered the World Trade Center attacks a "work of art", which caused some hostile reaction he labored to overcome.
Standing at 6' 6" tall, he was married twice; his second wife Mary Bauermeister was a noted artist who lived in New York during the 1960's (and they married in San Francisco). Of his children, several went into the field of music: two in particular, Markus as well as Simon have noted careers following in his path. His daughters Majella and Christel also are musicians who help oversee his school in Kürten, Germany (and interestingly, where all courses are taught in English).
Karlheinz Stockhausen died in December, 2007 at the age of 79. He won scores of awards during his lifetime around the world (among them an honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) and among the numerous modern musicians and composers who formally studied with him: one was Tom Constanten - a keyboardist for the Grateful Dead for two years leading up to 1970.
Two of his early works are included here: one is the piano-oriented Kreuzspiel (from 1951) as performed by Emmanuel Jaeger below .....
