I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES — the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi— among the few financially successful women painters of that era — had a self-portrait hidden under another painting (detected by recent x-rays). For someone who died circa 1656, she has been in the news in recent years: the subject of a 1997 film and a play that won awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Male painters (Rubens, Rembrandt and Tintoretto) painted the biblical story of Susanna and The Elders as a temptress …. while the 17 year-old Gentileschi has her reacting quite differently.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s versionGCONGRATULATIONS to the winner of the run-off election in the central European nation of Slovakia, where a political newcomer attorney named Zuzana Čaputová will become the only elected president in the region to not favor xenophobic policies in fighting corruption. She supports the EU, NATO, climate policies, gay rights and — much like our winning candidates last year — found herself saying, “I suddenly found myself failing to justify why somebody else and not myself should assume responsibility for bringing about change”.
THURSDAY's CHILDREN are named Kitty the Cat and Leila the Dog— a bonded pair turned into a Massachusetts shelter by a family forced out of their home — and were adopted together.
Kitty & Leila — bonded pairWITH THE ATTENTION focused on the NASA announcement that the all-female spacewalk would be cancelled over the lack of … a medium-sized spacesuit, the BBC notes six other ways that the world is not designed for women.
FRIDAY's CHILD is the late Bobsy the Cat— an English kitteh separated from her family for nine years …. before being reunited due to her microchip … at age twenty … who saw her family before she needed to be put down.
Bobsy the CatBRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
JUST for the RECORD — there is no relation between my family and the right-wing blogger Michael Tracey…. given that few people spell my last name other than “Tracy”, it irks to see him quoted so often.
MOTHER-DAUGHTER? — the late anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and former sportscaster-turned-right wing pundit Jane Chastain.
Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) Jane Chastain (born 1943)...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… I have written before about the BBC program Desert Island Discs — where people are asked to name eight records they would bring if stranded on a deserted island. I could not compile my favorite eight — not even close — but what I could do is have a favorite for eight musical genres. And in the choral music category, I would choose one from the Robert Shaw Chorale— which from 1948-1965 was America’s most popular ensemble. The group’s conductor had an extensive career working with orchestras in Cleveland and Atlanta — seemingly holding down many posts simultaneously — thus, a career retrospective (twenty years after his death) seems overdue.
Born in northern California in 1916 to a concert singer mother and minister father, he attended Pomona College and led its glee club. Upon graduation in 1938, someone who took note was the bandleader Fred Waring (who later produced the development of the Waring blender) … and Shaw was hired to conduct a glee club that would sing along with Fred Waring & his Pennsylvanians.
In 1941, he founded the Collegiate Chorale (renamed MasterVoices in 2015) which was (uncommonly) racially integrated for its day. They worked with the NBC Symphony, whose venerated leader Arturo Toscanini was conducting Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. After hearing the chorus (which had been prepared by Robert Shaw) perform the glorious choral movement that ends the symphony, Toscanini is believed to have turned to his players and said, “In Robert Shaw, I have at last found the maestro I have been looking for”. He worked with Toscanini on-and-off again until 1954.
After heading the Julliard School of Music’s choral department from 1946-1948, he then founded his namesake Robert Shaw Chorale— which featured around forty singers at times. Much of their early offerings revolved around classical and opera works, then in the 1950’s began to add Gershwin and Stephen Foster classics.
Along the way Robert Shaw began to embrace modern music; commissioning a requiem for FDR from the German immigrant Paul Hindemith, and Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten and Darius Milhaud were among the composers who wrote for him. Shaw also became noted for mentoring many younger conductors and singers who cited his help.
Still more additions to the music came from sea shanties, musical theater, Irish folk tunes and — perhaps most famously — spirituals and Christmas music. And they were eager to join with other singers: a 1959 recording of traditional Christian music saw a guest singer in the form of Perry Como.
Ever the busy man, he also had instrumental orchestral assignments: 1953-1957 in San Diego, in Cleveland from 1956-1967 (assisting George Szell) … and it was his acceptance of the conductor’s baton for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the mid-60’s that led him to disband the Chorale in 1965 after a seventeen-year run.
Robert Shaw died in January 1999, four months shy of his eighty-third birthday. His legacy includes fourteen Grammys, the National Medal of the Arts in the US, France’s Officier des Artes et des Lettres, plus the Kennedy Center honors in 1991.
Robert Shaw (circa 1948) … and later on in life (1916—1999)Among the traditional spirituals he liked to arrange was Sometimes I Feel Like a Moanin’ Dove — from his album Sixteen Spirituals.
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