When I interviewed John Cage in 1987, he told me something I’ll never forget—that attending Edgar Varèse’s concerts conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky in Philharmonic Hall in downtown Los Angeles in the late 1920’s were “statements of belief” for him. The experience set Cage on course for a lifetime as a composer of new and challenging music.
In 1976, while working in Paris teaching ESL to middle managers at a French language school, I splurged and bought two tickets to the Béjart Ballet. I wasn’t making great money so this was a big expense. I had a hot first date, however, and wanted to have a special…
I had the good fortune to attend the 5th annual Concours d’Elegance in Beverly Hills at the 1920’s Greystone Mansion, organized and presented by the City of Beverly Hills and Friends of the Greystone. I wanted to share a few highlights.
I love to feel something when I drive a fast car, or as a passenger in a nice car with a good driver at the wheel. Rental cars don’t matter, though when in Europe on nice big autostradas I always drove small cars like Renault 5’s and would have loved a Ferrari…
Last night, as I ground black pepper and sprinkled some French sea salt into my salad, I stopped to ponder how we take these spices for granted. Back in the Middle Ages, before the Portuguese, Dutch and other voyages of discovery sailed to Indonesia, India, and beyond, spices were worth…
When I was 12 and 13, cycling was everything to me. I rode around 100-150 miles weekly, was on an informal team called “Le Voyageurs” (The Travelers), complete with jerseys, chamois-seated shorts, toe clips – the whole deal. A weekend ride would have us all ride from Santa Monica Canyon up PCH…
Zhuang Zedong, the Chinese ping pong champion, has just died. He sought out and met his American counterpart, Glenn Cowan during a visit to America in 1971. Zhuang was an important private diplomat for Mao’s China, and after this meeting the U.S. Team, including Cowan, was invited to compete in…
I am a lover of cats and always have been. We always had a cat in the Schnabel household growing up. I’ve written about Scarlatti’s Cat Sonata and have watched countless cat videos. I’m a sucker for felines. When you adopt a pet, however, you sign a Faustian bargain. All the love and…
Today is Veteran’s Day, formerly Armistice Day, the 11th day of November, the day the armistice was signed in 1918. Walt Disney was sixteen and officially underage but somehow managed to make his way to France in 1918 as a Red Cross Ambulance Corps driver. Although he didn’t see much…
I love cars. I’ve owned a Jaguar XK 150S, the model predating the E-Type, a Citroën DS 19, an Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider, etc. I especially loved the Citroën. One time David Byrne arrived late at the studio and had to park illegally. I offered to park his car. He told me…
In 1973, fresh out of grad school and after an unhappy spell in law school, unable to land a job teaching in American community colleges, I found two job postings on a UCLA international job bulletin board. One was to teach English at a brand new university in Constantine, Algeria.…
The world has watched the Olympics in London, now continuing. It’s interesting to go back a ways and see an Olympics from an earlier time, Tokyo 1964 in the classic documentary by Kon Ichikawa. It was the first big international event held in Japan since the second world war ended. You…
The other night we hosted a dinner party and one of our guests worked at JPL. I brought out my copy of Murmurs of Earth, published by Time Warner about 20 years ago to document the contents of the Voyager Golden Record. It’s one of the box sets I saved…
I lived in Paris for several years in the 1970s. Things were cheaper then–five francs to the dollar–but gourmet dining in fine restaurants was out of my reach. I usually ate at North African restaurants, or enjoyed the humble, bland faire at the Cité Universitaire. I nevertheless had vicarious methods…
I was both a literature and French major in college, so I could read Samuel Beckett’s novels and plays in both languages. His plays used a literary device called “stichomythia,” which had characters speaking short lines back and forth, so it was easy to read in French. Beckett, like Joseph Conrad or Vladimir Nabokov,…
George Whitman just died at the ripe old age of 98. He opened the famous Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare & Company in 1951, renaming it in 1964 in tribute to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore of the same name that closed at the onset of World War II. She ran it as a publishing company that famously published James Joyce’s revolutionary novel “Ulysses” in 1922….
In writing a recent blog, inspired by Gustavo Dudamel’s orchestral version of a popular Puerto Rican band’s hit song, I began to muse on the subject of music education in Venezuela and the U.S. There are a million kids enrolled in Venezuela’s music system, called El Sistema. Some of them, like Gustavo…
I love David Byrne and Barry White, and I love cars, too. My favorites include the 1953 Packard Caribbean convertible, Henri Chapron Citroën DS 23 Pallas, 1956 Buick Roadmaster, Ferrari 365 GTB, Maserati 3500 GT… all cars I can ill-afford to own let alone properly maintain. When David Byrne once…
Keith Jarrett has released another solo album, this time called Rio. As the title would suggest, it was recorded in Rio de Janeiro. On it we hear the now familiar musical mood swings: from angular vertical runs, acrid harmonies, to unbearably lovely encores. The audience once again goes wild at…
Ever since I became entranced by Coltrane’s song “India” in my bedroom when I was sixteen, living at home, I’ve been aware of the power of music to affect the heart, soul, and spirit. Music has always exerted a powerful force on me, even before I could really put its magic powers into words….