Citing Political Repression of Former President, German and Czech Presidents Refuse To Meet With Authoritarian Ukrainian President At Yalta

Nightmare: Sea Creatures Clog Intake At California Nuclear Plant

Salp

Japan to Forgive Myanmar Debt to Support Reform

Last Hill Before Spain Edition: More than half of young U.S. college graduates now jobless or underemployed

Associated Press Credit: cnn.com.

Skyline Non-Drive

Average Age of U.S. Workers Making $10 or Less Per Hour Is 35 Years Old

A Little On The Little Data Book On Financial Inclusion 2012

The Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion 2012 is a pocket edition of the Global Financial Inclusion Index ("Global Findex") database providing country-level indicators on the use of formal bank accounts, payments behavior, savings patterns, credit patterns, and insurance decisions. It provides data on financial inclusion by key demographic characteristics—gender, age, education, income, and rural or urban residence. The book includes summary pages for 147 economies and regional and income group averages. The Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database is a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to measure how people in 148 countries - including the poor, women, and rural residents - save, borrow, make payments and manage risk.

Probably None Were In The Orchestra ...

"Dozens of students at Berkeley High School are facing suspension or expulsion after school officials say they got into a computer system and changed their attendance records. Principal Pasquale Scuderi said on Wednesday that 50 students will be suspended and two or three expelled."

"It’s fine to lose to someone, and galling to lose to no one" -- Amen

Ann Patchett on the Pulitzer Prize Award Committee and American literature 2012

Politics and Prose

Second Story Books

Moe's Books

Parnassus Books

Photo credit: (c) Jessica Malikowski 2012 for the Tor House Foundation, Carmel, California.

Art Now! From On Long-Term Loan To The World Bank To The Permanent Collection Of The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.

[Click on image for enlargement.]

Image credit: Oleg Kudryashov, Coronation, 1984. [Not currently on view].
© 2012 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

23 per cent of EU citizens were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2010

Eurostat

Almost 28 per cent of Greeks faced poverty and social exclusion in 2010, according to Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency

Eurostat

“Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts” by Kevin Puts [And Mark Campbell], commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Opera in Minneapolis on Nov. 12, 2011

SETTING
The stage of an opera house,
a village church, an apartment in Paris,
a battlefield in Belgium near the French
border on and near Christmas Day, 1914.

The opera is sung in English, German, French, Italian, and Latin.

Since 2006, Mr. Puts has been a member of the composition department at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Arditti String Quartet Recording Of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's "The Tree Of Strings" (2000) To Be Released In U.S. On May 8

Image credit: Camels VI, VII, VIII by Nancy Graves, Mixed Media [burlap, skin, and wax on armatures of wood and steel], 1968-69.

Photography by Thomas Quigley (c) 2009 Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY via Artes Magazine.

Tao House In Spring

Pre-hearing

"One could make an interesting comparison between Lachenmann's Accanto and Lazkano's Ortzi Isilak as being symbolic of two eras that enjoyed two very different relationships with sound. Lazkano does not take up the strict categorization of Lachenmann's "musique concrète instrumentale"--instead, the breathing sounds, crackling and creaking are used simply to keep the music from slipping into sounding too "beautiful.""

*

Ramon Lazkano's Lurralde (Territory), for the Diotima Quartet, was premiered last month at Ars Musica in Brussels, Belgium, European Union. It will be performed in Washington, D.C., tonight, at the Embassy of France.

On Hearing Or Performing John Cage's Violin And Piano (Or Shô) Piece Two4 Twice

(This history also helps explain a major difference in the two performances I have participated in. [Paul] Zukofsky, at the premiere [November 15, 1991, Washington, D.C.], sustained the violin's notes to create an uninterrupted stream of sound which is the result of one possible reading of the score... Irvine Arditti, in the performances recorded here, remains equally faithful to the score while surrounding the violin's notes with silence.)

From Pianist and Conductor Stephen Drury's Writings

Information That The Middle-Class Can Surely Use: IMF Identifies $74.4 Trillion Of Potentially Safe Global Assets

International Monetary Fund

Roger Reynolds And George Washington

"Roger Reynolds is currently at work on a multimedia piece based on the writings of George Washington, which is scheduled for performance by the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center in October 2013."

4.1 Million U.S. Private Sector Jobs Created During The Past 25 Months

Roughly 10 percent of them in U.S. manufacturing

Yet Once More (Three Musical Days In April In The Nation's Capital Starting Tomorrow)

Im Zeichen des Streichquartetts ***

CAGE: Two4
BEETHOVEN: Grosse Fuge, op. 133
BERG: String Quartet, op. 3
ADÈS: Four Quarters
BARTÓK: Quartet no. 4 in C Major
NANCARROW: Player piano study no. 33 (transcribed for string quartet)
HOSOKOAWA: Silent Flowers (1998) and Blossoming (2007)
IVES: String Quartet no.2
LARA: Au-delà du visible
LAZKANO: Lurralde
BIANCHI: String Quartet no. 6
LIGETI: String Quartet no.2

Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, and the Embassy of France.

(The LOC evening and NGA noon concerts are FREE; the Embassy of France concert on Thursday evening is buy one ticket and bring a friend or loved one for free. The Embassy of France event includes a post-concert wine reception.)

*** "The string quartet forms the focus of this year’s [2010] Donaueschinger Musiktage. With the Arditti Quartet from London, Quator Diotima from Paris, and the JACK Quartet from New York, we have invited three string quartets representing three generations and three different cultures of interpretation.

This year’s festival will feature world and German premieres of 22 works by composers from 15 countries. Among them – posthumously – is Arc-en-ciel by Ivan Wyschnegradsky for six pianos, whose microtonal tuning system is used by Georg Friedrich Haas as the foundation for his Concerto Grosso for six pianos and small orchestra. There will also be premieres of works by Peter Ablinger, Andrzej Adamek, Aaron Cassidy, James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough, Vinko Globokar, Alan Hilario, Felipe Lara, Liza Lim, Alvin Lucier, Philippe Manoury, Michael Norris, Klaus Ospald, Alberto Posadas, James Saunders, Simon Steen-Andersen, Marco Stroppa and others. All of these were commissioned by the Südwestrundfunk (SWR)."

Too Big To Fail

REMARKS BY GENE SPERLING BEFORE THE CONFERENCE ON
THE RENAISSANCE OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURING
Gene Sperling
March 27, 2012
(Link to speech near top of article]

Photo credit: Associated Press.

This Week, Nation's Capital Welcomes Arditti, Jack, And Diotoma String Quartets (Missing In Action, Birtwistle's "Tree Of Strings")

Tree of Strings

Arditti's Own Voice

Small Change: Trailblazing Quatuor Diotima Revises French Embassy Program For April 12

Embassy of France, Washington, D.C.

New Program:

Ana Lara (commissioned by the Auditorium du Louvre) - Au-delà du visible

Ramon Lazkano (b. 1968 San Sebastian, Basque region) - Lurralde

--Intermission--

Oscar Bianchi (b. 1975 Milan) - Quartet no. 6

Gyorgy Ligeti (1945 Transylvania region, Romania) - Quartet no. 2


Replacing:

Smetana Quartet #1 "From My Life"

--Intermission--

Manoury "Tensio" for string quartet and electronics

*

The Quartet has given première performances of new quartets by Pauset, Dillon, Kyburz, Durand, Lévinas, Mochizuki, Durieux and Posadas.

Eurostat: 50.5 Percent Of Young Spaniards Now Without Jobs

[Click on image to enlarge.]

Credit: Eurostat

Reminder: When Ives, Debussy, Bartok, and Hindemith Met Takemitsu And Hosokowa (And Nam June Paik)

Program Notes to National Gallery of Art Noontime Cherry Blossom Recital Celebration

Nam June Paik (artist)
American, born South Korea, 1932 - 2006
Ommah, 2005
one-channel video installation on 19-inch LCD monitor, silk robe
Gift of the Collectors Committee

Copyright © 2012 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

*

[Aide memoire: Eight years ago was a memorable day (Palm Sunday) in Lviv, Ukraine, Future European Union].

Groundgraph Day

[Click on graph for enlargement.]

Graph credit: Zach Pandl of Goldman Sachs via Financial Times.

Renaissance Concert Notes (Tallis Scholars In Virginia Tomorrow Night)

The Field of the Cloth of Gold

Image credit: luminarium.org. With thanks.