Spaghetti Western: Contemporaneous in the Spiegeltent

Contemporaneous in the Spiegeltent, warming up for the concert

It is a measure of the power of music, in the hands of Contemporaneous, that the silly season engulfing us decamped, wholly vanquished, within the first bars of Vicenti Alexim’s adroit arrangement of Ennio Morricone’s Il triello. The occasion was Contemporaneous’s appearance at Bard’s Summer Music Festival, the focus of which this year is “Puccini and His World.”

On Creatively Misreading Peter Cole’s The Invention of Influence

. . . thinking we know where we’re going and then
getting somewhere, despite our intention.

—Peter Cole, from Actual Angels

I was tempted into reading poet Peter Cole’s book, The Invention of Influence, by a review in Jacket2.  From the get-go, the signs augured that I’d be in well over my head. Cole is, among other things, “a translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetries, modern and medieval” [Jacket 2], about which I know nothing. But I was intrigued by the idea that his work with translation so powerfully informed his poetry—that Cole was, in this sense among others, a Pasternakian sponge:

[Cole] practices writing as a form of translation, as a “being between” fixed places, with the poet as a transponder, not an orator, a conduit, not a usurper.” [Jacket 2]

I don’t have “proper” receptors for understanding this book of poems, but I’m attracted by its ideas and methods and impelled to attempt to “make it mine.” Here are three examples of my admittedly peculiar process.

My Year in Music, 2014

Contemporaneous “Living Toys” Concert at Roulette (David Bloom conducting)

I’ve had a particularly memorable “year in music” this year. While I’ve listed a “Prufrock’s Dozen” of CDs, this year-end post isn’t a “best of” list in the usual sense, but rather an opportunity to gather together the “best of” my musical experiences throughout the year. The post is divided into three sections: A “Prufrock’s Dozen” of CDs, Live Performances, and Other Significant Music-Related Activities.