Christopher O'Riley Just finished reading Haruki Murakami‘s odyssey of the night, After Dark, a twilight time-scale similarly circumscribed by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake and Martin Scorsese in After Hours: minutes shy of Midnight to sunrise. It’s amazing how life-changing events take place in this book while so many millions sleep, and how sleep becomes the preferred …
Just finished reading a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami, a Kundera-ean McGuffin, a bonfire, the search for rootedness, revenge/regret, a super-frog (easily the funniest/darkest of all Murakami’s tories, for me), storytelling/legendary friendships/loves, all under the shadow of the Kobe Earthquake (1995.01.16). Exquisite miniatures, all, from my favorite writer of the moment.
Had a great time, early last March, playing a private concert in honour of Andy Warhol muse (and companion of Salvador Dali) Ultra Violet, at the home of a friend of mine who’d introduced me to Andy at our weekly chamber music soirees at his balconied Central Park apartment. I performed my arrangements of Lou …
From the Top taped a show commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the opening of Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts in their Poncho Hall on April 26th. Pretty heady stuff, treading the boards where John Cage prepared his first piano, due to the stage being too small to accommodate the percussion ensemble he called for …
From the Top did a most pleasurable Pacific Northwest sweep this week, with great kids from the area and beyond, first at Tacoma’s Tivoli Theater, then at the Cornish College for the Arts (got my honoris causa there last year) in Seattle. Gunther Schuller, my mentor of many years, on hearing my Radiohead et alia …
In my current Haruki Murakami binge, just finished reading this exquisite daPontean Romance, Sputnik Sweetheart, a book resplendent with troubled and fantastical relationships, interactions and friendships with metaphysical consequence and resonance; Murakami at his most unabashedly musical; an otherworldliness as a Philip K. Dick-style alternate reality (much akin to PKD’s Exegesis, in the falling cards …