Kathleen Edwards at the Art Center

Canadian songstress Kathleen Edwards brought her angst ridden oeuvre to the Art Center last night with the impact of a 10 ton truck. From the first note the room was drifting on her amazing world weary vocal sound and the orchestral magic that came from the guitars of Kathleen and her husband/bandmate Colin Cripps. The show included all the favourites including a great renditions of "Six O'clock News" and "Asking for Flowers." A poignant moment in the show was when she did the song "Alicia Ross." About a woman who had her child abducted in Canada. She acknowleged that "this goes on every day." Edwards went on to say "You know, how could a parent get up out of bed every morning after knowing that that's the fate that their child met?" The meat of the program was made up of material from the superb "Failer" record as another highlight of the show was the moody "Lone Wolf." She recounted the first tour she did was the last time she was in Carrboro and that that was 7 years previous. She was clearly glad to be back and the audience was clearly glad to see her.

Richard Thompson at the Art Center

So raconteur, songwriter and guitar genius Richard Thompson played a sold out show for the second night in a row at the Art Center in Carrboro on Monday, March 9th. I won't recount the proceedings in their entirety (it was superb!) but want to emphasize two things. First that the man is a true artist. As always in the middle of his set he starts taking requests and someone calls out "Vincent Black Lightning." No surprise there, he must have played this song a million and a half times. He could just stand there and do a rote repitiion of the song in a spiritless way or he could just say "no way I'm ever playing that song again - ever!" Instead he travels all the way back to the spark of excitement that generated that song for him and he *brings it* one more time. The rendition of this song always sounds fresh and its because he re-finds the creative energy that generated it.

The other thing I want to mention is during the request taking segment of the show he said "how about lets do a Fairport song." And he proceeded to listen to requests and took an audience poll of what to play. Luckily the audience (and I) went for the elegant "Where does the Time Go." The amazing part was that as he was introducing this song he began to muse about Sandy Denny and her place in songwriting history and he got a bit whistful and slipped out of his normal bravdo into some other zone and had a moment of sorts himself that he effortlessly shared in a quiet, understated way with us how much he missed and appreciated his friend. A truer soft side, never seen before and shared with a full house. Now thats a man who's comfortable in his own skin.

Yes, Artisanal

Batch toning the last step in finishing these darkroom prints. This is an ongoing batch of photographic prints that are drying after being toned with selenium. It makes the silver in the print not tarnish with age and can heighten contrast. Adding a bit of permanence to the work is a good idea considering the time involved in shooting, developing and printing the film. Yet another wet process the prints are put in water then agitated in Selenium until the contrast is how you want it to be and then washed one more time in another tray and put out to dry and be enjoyed!

As you can see I've been printing alot of large images. Been shooting more medium format film which makes for very detailed larger images. Slowly my portfolio is coming together. I'm in a great area to shoot some amazing outdoor locations. The Eno River, Occoneechee Mountain, New Hope Creek and some very beautiful forest in Durahm County.

I felt like all this shooting ahd photography was "action stuff" until I started printing. Then I realised that printing especially a learned craft. So yes, I feel Artisinal when I work on these...

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes

So began the second act of the Broadway musical Rent which I saw last night at the very nice, brand new, Durham Performing Arts Center. This venue gives Durham a performance space on par with Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium. The acoustics in the space and the comfort of the seating combined with great vantage points for most seating locations makes this a nice place to see a performance.

On to the show. Winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize, this incarnation of Rent (loosely based on the opera La Boheme) finds cast memebers Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp reprising the roles they originated on Broadway. The narrative role of Mark Cohen (Anthony Rapp), a filmmaker, holds this whole play together through narration so it was a pleasure having the original seasoned Broadway performer in this role. The other role in this tandem of Broadway vetrans was that of Roger Davis (Adam Pascal), a musician who is HIV positive. This whole show is based on the chemistry of the relationships between love interests and friends. The previous experience of these two key cast members together made the rapport between the characters of Roger and Mark as friends seem so very natural. The show centers around a group of friends and their reaching for a creative open lifestyle that affords them freedom, money, love and creativity all the time. Of course, there are difficulties around each. There is a lesbian couple and a gay couple and they each have relationship issues like normal couples but also have other issues like HIV. In the end their relationships to each other as a group of friends strengthens eventfully through the loss of one of their number named Angel. The music for the night was performed by a terrific band consisting of a rock quartet plus a keyboardist/pianist. Adam Pascal(Roger) actually played guitar so it made him that much more believable in the role when he sang and played. A superb performance from everyone with creative staging and some great singing moments heralds a fine start to Durham's soon-to-be-tradition of hosting fine theatrical events in their new building.

Inauguration Day

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. "

- President Barack Obama's inaugural address, 01.20.09

Midori and Brahms

So the program at Memorial Hall Thursday was described as a program of music composers sharing a kindred spirit. I would say the program had a consistent thread but essentially was fulfilled in the first half of the program. The featured performer was the prodigy Midori. Now fully matured and in her mid 30s this is an artist who has the emotional depth and the technical facility to really interpret music. The program began with Dvorak's Slavonic Dances. Three of them to be precise with the first and third being precisely played and very much of a whirling dance feel. The second piece was of another sort entirely. The Slavonic Dance in F Major Op. 4 was played with the feel of an adagio movement inbetween these other two dance pieces making a concerto of sorts of the three. The beautiful melody and harmonic structure of this second dance piece would set the stage for the Brahms Violin Concerto that followed.

Enter Midori attired in a gauzy white and black patterned gown to quietly stun the room into the best kind of musical submission. Intensity with focus is the only way to explain how this piece was played. The Brahms Violin Concerto seems to be very much a players piece of music with lots of room to showcase phrasing and dynamics. The first movement began with what could almost be called a call and response format where the orchestra and the soloist each essentially played in response to the other. The segments of Midori's violin being emphatic in both body language and expressive playing. Midori does not just play she becomes the music at times. Thoroughly at home in the moment you never get the sense that she's doing anything but being a pure conduit for the music itself. So as for pitch and technique and tone, astounding on all counts. Lovely, resonant sustained high notes as well as clear,pleasing phrasing all around. After the first Allegro movement I could have gone home happy it was so terrific. The following Adagio gave us another view of the composer and the artist both stretching out harmonically. After this beautiful respite the intensity rose again for the final Allegro. This third movement was more integrated than the first as far as the playing went, soloist and orchestra together more. I must say the the North Carolina Symphony rose to the challenge of the dynamics within this piece beautifully under the guest conductorship of Michael Christie. This performance was another great evening of music from the N.C. Symphony season.

Dead Sea Scrolls

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences hosted an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls through Sunday of last week. I decided to go the last day and mentioned to my son that we were going to see the Dead Sea Scrolls that day. A couple hours later he asked "what is this dead sea monkey thing we're going to see." So I had him google Dead Sea Scrolls before we went. Crowded with last minute viewers like myself the exhibition was still enjoyable as they strictly controlled the number of people who could go see the scrolls themselves as the room had to be temperature controlled. The leadup to the scroll room was a informative exhibit about Qumran (the place where these scrolls were found) and the people who might have created them. The scrolls themselves seem to have been hidden due to the advancing Roman army who were well on their way to destroying the second temple (and destroying everything in their path, including Qumran). These texts are the oldest known examples of verse from the old testament. Some 1,000 years older than any previously known written examples at the time they were found. Some of these fragments date back to 1 BCE. These scripts were the original books of the old testament in copies, Genesis, Isaiah, Exodus, Deuteronomy along with some communal rules and communal prayers. Those who wrote these believed they were the true people of God and that others were less faithful to the true calling of the teachings in the Old Testament. Turns out Duke University had a chance to buy a large collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s but declined the purchase. Some antique manuscripts from the Duke Collection were on display in this exhibit. Another surprise were that these scrolls were written on leather not parchment. Their preservation in cool caves inside of clay jars made their survival that much more likely than a paper equivalent.