Dan Williams’ New Pictures
I think for some reason I have more dear friends in Tucson, where I’ve never lived (but played a lot over the years), than I do anywhere else in the country. At least, I can tell by the fact of my requisite 10 comps per concert, Tucson’s the only place I’ve run out! Played this…
Johannes Brahms ~ Intermezzo, Op. 117 No. 1
Just wrapped our live taping of From the Top at Montclair State University with our special superstar guests, the Shanghai String Quartet. They closed the show in spectacular style with the Finale of Brahms’ G Major String Sextet alongside two of our young guests, Jasper Snow, viola and Chase Park, cello. As appetizer, for my…
Nikolai Grozni ~ Farewell, Monsieur Gaston
I’ve been a fan of Nikolai Grozni since reading his Wunderkind, a novelization of (his?) life at his native Sofia Music Academy. You can still see his own performances as a wunderkind pianist from those early Bulgarian days. Each chapter of Wunderkind is titled by various works of Chopin, et alia, and there exists no…
Mark Z. Danielewski ~ The Familiar, Volume I: One Rainy Day in May
Privileged to have read the bound galleys of this, Mark Z. Danielewski ‘s magnum opus (eventually to be comprised of 27 volumes), The Familiar, to be published by Pantheon in May of next year, Volume II soon to follow in the Fall of 2015 (I’ve read drafts of the first 5 or 6 volumes, over…
J.S. Bach ~ Allemande and Sarabande from the e minor Partita
From the Top recently taped two episodes at UConn/Storrs and the sumptuous Peace Center in Greenville, SC. I’ve been having the most cleansing and enlightening time these days working on the 6th Partita (especially after reading John Eliot Gardiner’s recent biography, Music in the Castle of Heaven set to the accompaniment of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s complete…
Chuck Palahniuk ~ Beautiful You
Chuck Palahniuk is another writer whose complete work I’ve obsessively read ever since happening upon his pre-Saw-series book of guilt, damnation and retribution, Haunted. His grasp and horror at contemporary mores and pop culture-as-cancer at its most Rabelaisian/Swiftian coupled with an addictive prose style reminiscent of the sublimely slaking effervescence of Dickens or Rushdie make…
Jack Ketchum ~ The Girl Next Door
I very rarely stray into horror much anymore, except in the masterful hands of a Stephen Graham Jones, Joe R. Lansdale, Laird Barron, Lucius Shepard, Thomas Ligotti, Richard Laymon. So when I saw this title posted atop a Scariest 100 Horror Novels of All Time list at #1, I figured I should pay attention, particularly…
M. T. Anderson ~ The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party
Highly recommended by readers (and writers) I trust, I was blessedly led to this most unique and memorable book by M. T. Anderson, much of which is the journal of the eponymous son of an African princess, raised and educated at a pre-Revolution center for philosophical inquiry in Boston, the Novanglian College of Lucidity. Octavian…
Aphex Twin ~ produk 29 [101]
Wrapped Episode #296 of From the Top on Friday night under the aegis of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Washington Performing Arts at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. FTT’s relationship with the Cooke Foundation has now been a 10-year partnership, and through their generosity and enthusiasm (Stuart Haney from Cooke has long been a…
Ginette Vincendeau ~ Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
Imagine going through life as a self-considered devotee of the cinema, with favorite directors (Hitchcock, Kubrick, Scorsese, Coen Brothers, Tarantino, to name a few) occupying a place of worship in my heart. Imagine, then, a sudden discovery of a whole body of work, an auteur, who becomes your sole cinematic obsession. I’d heard of Bob…