sundry items of streaming

A couple of nice sets from Kate Lindsey (for La Scala) and Joe Jencks (for Old Songs). These are short-timers, so avail yourselves before they go, and don't forget to tip your musos whenever you can.

A little Michael McGoldrick for the day - slightly truncated but entirely worth an ear

A few tunes on Uilleann Pipes for St Patricks Day in the beautiful setting of my local refurbished Stretford Public hall.Thanks to Kate and staff for letting me wonder in off the street.

tunes are called O'farrells welcome to limerick and the connaught heifers. pic.twitter.com/UmlPO0ofQI

— Michael McGoldrick (@mcgoldrickflute) March 17, 2021

Rhiannon Giddens Month

What's the tagline from that old Army commercial? "Rhiannon Giddens gets more done before 9 am than most people do in a day"? But this would only be a selling point for us if it involved opera and old time...so here she is talking opera and old time with the NEA.

Later this week, she'll be talking mostly opera as the podcast Aria Code cranks up again after a long absence. You can find the new eps here on March 10, as well as the old ones.

And here's a 45 minute docu on the Our Native Daughters project viewable on the Smithsonian Channel for free (not sure about geoblocking).

Lully break

A French baroque interlude via Ensemble Correspondances

taken at the flood

Among the most innovative Shakespeare productions of the last decade were those directed by Phyllida Lloyd for London's Donmar Warehouse, the overarching conceit of which was a group of women prison inmates doing the plays - Julius Caesar, Henry IV part 1, and The Tempest -- as part of a prison theater program. Praises were sung somewhere down the tl of this blog, but if you're in the US and you missed them you can now judge for yourself: This month, St. Ann's Warehouse (where they played in NYC) is streaming the videos of the final run in London on their website. You have until tomorrow to catch Julius Caesar. Henry IV runs Friday through next week and Tempest the week after, concluding with an ultimate binge-watch opportunity Oct. 30 - Nov. 1 when all three plays will be available for streaming.

anarchy branle or justice galliard

Video of recent luting in Rochester and DC

Retro Proms and Folk on Foot

Late to the game, but BBC 3 is making up for the cancellation of Proms 2020 by trotting out some pretty great archival material, and archiving it for a month. You can feast away right here.

The Folk-on-Foot Festival 3 is up on Monday, August 31. The first two iterations had mostly solo artists or those co-habiting in lockdown. This version they get to meet up with bandmates and make some noise at the requisite 2 meters. Start time 2pm BST, or whatever that translates to where you're at. Lineup and other details here, as well as a link to their fundraising -- like the others, this is a 50/50 fundraiser, with half going to participating artists and the other half going to the UK charity Help Musicians.

casting out

Philip Schuyler’s coming down. By the ruling of the mayor, who is listening to members of her staff who know enough history to know that, yes, he was our local general in the Continental Army, but also yes, he was a slave owner. As were many local prominent people of his day, and many Continental Army generals. And that point, though not newly discovered, has finally been elevated from biographical footnote to chapter heading.

This follows Christopher Columbus losing his head and/or his pedestal in more than one location, and the Italian-American Governor of New York defending him (or his bronze representations) as points of pride for Italian-Americans. Some people have suggested replacing him (the statue, not the Governor) with Verdi. But Verdi, by some accounts, though artist and philanthropist, was also a Type A asshole and not above using the word Jew as a negative epithet in his personal correspondence, and people will eventually figure that out.

Of course in other areas of the opera world we’ve had our own recent seasons of iconoclasm, mostly to do with living people with careers and now rap sheets to go with them. Time will tell how all that levels out. But opera people, given the long run, are pretty good at parsing art from artist – just ask any liberal lefty Wagnerite. In the short run, the hammer of justice swings hard, as it should.

There has been debate over what should go on the pedestal in place of Philip Schuyler. And no doubt it has already prompted people to survey the inventory of city monuments, so here is our incomplete list:

• Moses in the park -- more than a bit campy in light of the tulip beds surrounding him and legions of little kids climbing over the rocks at his feet, and a bit ironic when considered in an Old Testament context. Commissioned by the prominent husband of a prominent wife who felt women had no right to a public voice (aka the vote) and used her prominent wifely platform to say so a lot;

• Spanish-American War Guy – nobody here really remembers what that was about but you get extra points if you don’t confuse it with the Spanish Civil War and gold star if you mumble something about remembering the Maine;

• American Civil War cenotaph -- not presently arguable, but long a point of contention between history nerds and skateboarders;

• Police memorial –- unimaginative, derivative in style, ruined a really nice park fountain, and memorializes a PD that has a long, well-documented history of racism and general cack-handedness. So, entirely representative of what it seeks to represent, really. But restore the fountain to the community and find some other way;

…and

• Nipper. Our Nibbles Woodaway. Unofficial mascot of the city, parked on a building downtown that used to belong to RCA. A grass-roots movement to replace Schuyler with Nipper is gaining momentum, but would eventually clash with whoever owns the trademark now. And what does this dog represent? If Schuyler points to the region’s proud and problematic Revolutionary War history, Nipper points to the region’s better-than-average music scene. Cast that in bronze.

Altamont

If you've hung around the Third Floor long enough, you'll know that usually this weekend we've bugged out to Altamont, NY for the Old Songs Festival of Traditional Music and Dance. However, due to the usual suspect, "the fester" (as it's been lovingly referred to for some while) has moved to an online, audio-only version -- find it here. This afternoon has archival recordings from festivals past, many of them great things unheard since back when. A cracking tune from Bua's on right now. And tonight they'll replicate the main stage concert with sets the scheduled performers recorded at home. Other things to follow Sunday, including some plans for a virtual Shape Note sing. Watch that space.

The Wreckers at Annandale redux

The Fisher Center, that Frank Gehry manifestation at the north end of the Bard College campus, is usually an epicenter of happening in the summer, but the grip of Covid reaches even to the perimeter of the Enchanted Forest, so...they're making up for the cancellation of Bard Summerscape and the Bard Music Festival this year with video from festivals past, housed under the rubric #Upstreaming. The latest is Dame Ethel Smyth's 1906 opera The Wreckers, available for streaming here.

and what we wrote about it back when is here.

Every round goes higher

Juneteenth has been celebrated in downtown Rens-wijk for more than a decade, in a neighborhood-funded, door-to-door, word-of-mouth way without the imprimatur of Officialdom. Sort of like the history of Juneteenth itself. Now Officialdom is catching up. Whether it heralds real change or just a new set of curtains remains to be seen, but...

Larry Kramer, 1935 - 2020

a lot to do with why they can mouth about a covid vaccine in a year as opposed to ten

WATCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci remembers the late HIV/AIDS activist Larry Kramer:

"He was just an extraordinary man. ... He changed the relationship between the afflicted community with a given disease and the scientific and regulatory community that has such a great impact on them." pic.twitter.com/MJRSs705VI

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) May 27, 2020