Monthly Archives: October 2010

Resurrectionist

One of my areas of interest-cum-expertise is the San Francisco Symphony’s long and distinguished history on record, a catalog that dates back an impressive eighty-five years to late January 1925 in a cramped studio on 78th Street in Oakland, where … Continue reading

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Salad Days at SFCM

I arrived at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in January of 1975. Back then it had barely emerged from being a neighborhood piano school. The old Mission-style building in the Outer Sunset district was still more or less unchanged … Continue reading

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Taffeta phrases

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,Figures pedantical; these summer-fliesHave blown me full of maggot ostentation… Oy, what a dandy dish of verbal bonbons. The confectioner is Berowne, protesting to his lady love Rosaline that he is more than … Continue reading

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Mediocrity is a Bore

I’m in curmudgeon mode. I’ve been the village grouse for most of the week. I sit in my rocker by the stove over t’ the General Store, chewing the fat with the other geezers and never missing a beat when … Continue reading

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Head Spinning, Stuff Spilling

My noggin is buzzing and flickering like a computer in a 1950s sci-fi flick. Order is conspicuously absent; there are no controlling leitmotifs or themes overseeing the effluvia of mind-stuff. It just chatters and chomps along, churning out yards of … Continue reading

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Mythbusting Mozart

Another turn of the cosmic wheel and I’m about to deliver my yearly Mozart lecture to my Music 27 class at UC Berkeley. I look forward to it, but as always with mixed emotions, because it’s like strolling through a … Continue reading

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