pt at large

Andrew Cuomo: Let’s ‘Kick Coronavirus’s Ass’

Andrew Cuomo: Let’s ‘Kick Coronavirus’s Ass’

There's a reason Maureen Dowd had won a Pulitzer Prize: Here she is writing in the New York Times about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/sunday/cuomo-new-york-coronavirus.html?smid=em-share

My unedited response a minute after reading it.

I laughed, i cried. Since the first time I saw him do a briefing in early March, I tune into TV around noon every day to watch, to listen to him minister to the country with FACTS, a command of numbers and what they mean and portend, pride for his state and its willingness to take on his proposals to collectively manage the unthinkable and flashes of humor that defuse tension.

His personal stories about mother or his “Cara is that true?” questions to his 22 yo daughter sitting at the rear of the room show a mix of paternal pride and his ability to have a big tent mind-set to collect facts from all quarters and put them to work in policies. I guess what that’s the kind of positive bullying that Maureen Dowd talks about.

Her reporting on Cuomo, mixing anecdotes, quotes, reporting about his bullying ways, with references to his father who he sounds and talks so much like, made her comparisons to Trump factual and not polemic. No question that the governor is a driven man but I like the road he’s driving down.

Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, “There is no road…walking makes the road.”  That’s Cuomo. He’s walking the walk.

NOTE

You can watch his press briefings on youtube

Louisiana: New Orleans to Lafayette in Crisis

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic

March 29, 2020

Louisiana, especially New Orleans, is getting crushed by  COVID-19. I was introduced to New Orleans and southwest Louisiana in 2009. The experience changed my life. Check the "Louisiana" archives on this page.

My born-and-bred Baton Rouge guide loved knew just about every good place to eat, dance, and see some history every mile down I-10 from New Orleans to Lafayette. She taught me how to pronounce words a Yankee would never ever get right if he said them like they were spelled (or could pronounce in the first place). I learned how to dance to Cajun and zydeco music, tasted exotic (to me) foods boudin, gumbo, jambalaya, alligator, shrimp grits and gravy,po'boys (dressed!), andouille, crawfish étoufée, muffuletta for starters.

From 2009 till last February, I've met some of the friendliest, most welcoming people on the planet. I've visited Lafayette scores of times since my first visit in 2009. It was named the happiest city in the USA in 2014. Based on my most recent visit with dear friends in February, that hasn't changed much.

Last Saturday, I sat in front of my computer and tuned into a Zoom party organized to give all of us required to stay indoors a lift and put some money in a tip jar for the Lafayette musicians whose performance fans from southwest Louisiana, both coasts and lord knows where else watched.

Like everyone else, I've been watching the COVID-19 numbers in Louisiana getting larger and larger. I am praying all my friends are safe and stay healthy.

A few days ago, I sent this image with the note, "To all my Louisiana friends...sending positive energy and luminous love your way..."

We can't have dinners or dance together but there's comfort in staying connected with Zoom and Skype and text until we get to the other side of this.

 

 

Robin Redbreast Chirps..."Play Ball!"

Robin Redbreast Chirps..."Play Ball!"

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic

March 28, 2020

Chirrup, chirrup...

The gate to the track was locked. I headed for home.

I stopped in my tracks when I heard that familiar chirp. A flood of memories ensued. Since I was a kid, seeing, and especially hearing, robins had been a sure sign that Spring had arrived.

Time to take my trusty leather Rawlings baseball glove out of the closet, oil it up, put a baseball in the glove's 'pocket' and stuff it under the mattress to form the shape I wanted. No matter that playing in the field across the street a couple of weeks after the snow finally melted meant wear an extra layer of sweater and sacrifice a pair of sneakers for the next couple of weeks, mud season. The field was still squishy, the grass hadn't even begun to green up. The leather baseball we agreed to sacrifice felt like a shotput by the time a game was finished. Nevermind that in early Saturday morning games you could see your breath. We were playing baseball!

As the years passed, the field appeared to get smaller as we got bigger. Hitting a homer was no longer a prodigious feat but watching the ball carry across the street and into the woods was still a major satisfaction

Standing in front of that locked gate, it was comforting to let the childhood memory envelop me. I felt the contours of the glove on my hand, the camaraderie of boys immersed in play, the smell of the soaked grass underfoot…a wonderful time travel moment, consoling and momentarily freeing from the exigencies of life in this moment in time.

Today, the threat of COVID-19 has closed every park in town. The robins thank god are not under order to stay in their nests. A few chirps was all it took to take me back to a simpler time, when all I had to worry about was being on time for dinner and keeping my beloved baseball glove oiled and ready.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/baseballs-glove-man-77865726/

Sign Of The Times

March 24, 2020

State and local lockdown...unprecedented measures, themes of science fiction become reality.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Puccini in a Tshirt

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic

March 24, 2020

One of my favorite tenors, Roberto Alagna, in jeans and T shirt,in rehearsal with with wife Aleksandra Kurzak, sing "Vogliatemi bene" for Puccini's Madam Butterfly..totally blew me away, watching the singers and orchestra, dressed more like Saturday afternoon in the back yard, sing and play some serious stuff.Their was nothing held back in the singing or orchestra and an occasional outburst of playfulness, some mugging by the two stars, that was amazingly refreshing.

I'm playing the chorus...opera in a T shirt and jeans...a mind boggling way to see how art is created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tpVBbZtak8

and in concert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvCx9dMn6pE

LitHub: A Literary Lifeline In A Time of Pandemic

Dispatches In A Time Of A Keep Your Distance Stay Home Pandemic :LitHub - A Literary Lifeline In A Time of Pandemic

March 22, 2020

State of mind...

Desperate is not the right word but it's in the ballpark playing left field with pandemic in center and stay at home in right. Reminds me of Abbot and Costello's Who's On First. For me, a sense of humor these days is a necessity to balance anxiety, fear, and walking in the dark. So is music, subject for another day.

Today's life ring for the waters I'm bobbing around in...literature. If reading is one of your things, LitHub is a godsend. Sign up and you  get an email with links to several stories a day. You can cherry pick ones that look appealing or just click into unknown territory.

Another cool thing. Every email starts with an image captioned TODAY and a piece of literary trivia.

I need information and balance. A dose of fear, anxiety, and social responsibility keeps me 6 feet away from anyone else on my daily walks. To be honest, I wouldn't have latched on so appreciatively to this literary link in non pandemic times. I embrace this link and literature today more than I probably should have in my years at St. Michael's college.

If you're of a certain age, required to grasp the cultural references, here's a start that might perk you up.

Go to https://lithub.com/  , scroll down right side column to SUBSCRIBE TO THE LITHUB DAILY, ENTER YOUR EMAIL

I spent two weeks in Rome,Tuscany, Milan in July, before the contagion. When I saw this photo for the poem on the March 23 Lit Hub, I knew where it was from.

 

A Virtual Dance Party...Boston to Lafayette

March 20, 2020

COVID-19 has closed down gatherings of more than 5, 10, 25  depending on your source. No contact closer than 6 feet, stay close to home. For sure, no public dancing.

I needed a dance fix.

8:00 PM
Text my friends Bernard and Rubia in Lafayette. 
“Put on your dancing shoes, The Revelers are in the CD rack, we’re gonna have a party in our kitchens!”

“Call us in 15, we’re finishing dinner.”

8:15 PM
Sent them a set list of 4 songs. A brief phone conversation about logistics ensues. "We’re going to connect a cell phone to a little boom box on the counter," they say. They are all in.

8:20 PM
Crank up the volume on the speakers in my kitchen.
Dial Lafayette on my cell phone.
Cue up the music… whoop and holler dancing around the stools around my kitchen table as if they were other dancers crammed into the tiny dance floor at The Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette. I'm in the moment in my own alternate reality, feel the energy of the crowd, imagine the band on the stage about two feet above the dance floor, the musicians taking turns with their solos and me and my imaginary smiling dance partner in synch, styling away with spontaneously invented moves that draw smiles from the other dancers.
I can hear Bernard and Rubia doing the same thing together in their kitchen.

Our little fais do do finishes with a waltz, often a way the band in a Cajun dance hall ends an evening.

The best dance in Lafayette that night…maybe in all of southwest Louisiana and probably the only one!

Facetime, Zoom, Skype…we’re gonna get creative. We’re not going to miss a beat.
Danses virtuelles, la vague du futur

Based in Lafayette, this band has a national following. These top notch musicians play a mix of Cajun, Zydeco, swamp pop, covers and original material in one of the most musically alive cities in America.

PS

Asked Bernard to tell band members he knows what we just did... could be a wave of the future!

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Back Bay Chorale: The Golden Age of Brass Concert

COVID-19 is a game changer, the world’s pace of life is changing daily. If you’re a music lover as I am, showing up for live concerts and shows is now a no-no.Tonight’s concert is the last one I will attend for a while. My devices are ready to fill the gap. I’ll play my favorites on my phone, laptop, listen to my favorite radio stations, and dance in my kitchen. Music is another game changer, but the best kind for me, a mood enhancer, a psychic salve. I can get lost in song. And I don’t have to wash my hands after listening.

The Back Bay Chorale: The Golden Age of Brass

Saturday March 7, 2020, 8 PM
The Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

A special night for singers, musicians, the crowd, and director Scott Allen Jarrett -A Rich Program Delivers A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

This was no ordinary evening of cultural entertainment. The tide of COVID-19 was rolling in to Boston. The public was skittish. Whether patrons would attend or not was in question. In the days preceding, several public events had been cancelled. When we arrived at 7:15 PM, about fifty people were rattling around in the pews of the historic Emmanuel Church. That’s about 500 people short of its capacity. Not encouraging.

You could see the relief on their faces at precisely 8 PM when the performers filed onto the stage. About 300 patrons awaited them. The loyalists in the pews knew the score, not the one on the pages of the performers' song books but the chance that this would have been a major (but understandable, considering the circumstances) disappointment for the 110 singers in the chorale, plus the six soloists, and the six musicians with period style instruments in hand, if the audience had stayed home.

The reception was not lost on esteemed conductor Scott Allen Jarrett. Visibly moved, he stepped down into the aisle on level with the first row, hands clasped, and delivered his own solo of heartfelt gratitude. Ardent supporters had showed up for the Chorale. He was aware that tonight there could have been more people on the stage than in the audience. It was a poignant moment.

In another departure, Jarrett took the time to give us a tutorial on tonight's program, "The Golden Age of Brass" that featured the music of Giovanni Gabrielli (1553-1612), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) and Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672).

“The late 17th century composers wrote some of the richest pieces in the canon. I love their work. They added new techniques to older tradition to enrich choral singing, they are not played as often as they deserve to be and we’re thrilled to perform them for you tonight.” Their collective creativity introduced contrapuntal technique and fused Italian and north German musical and concerto styles.

I am familiar with the Italian names Monteverdi and Gabrielli thanks to my Saint Michael's College professor Dr. William Tortolano  The Germans Schütz and Schein not so much. They all made stirring polyphonic music. (By the way, Dr. Tortolano, at 90, "still practices on the organ at Saint Michael's when the priests are not looking!")

Sitting in a semi-circular pocket in the midst of the chorus was the early instrument sextet, Dark Horse Consort. The sextet plays three sackbuts (early trombones), two cornetti (early trumpets), keyboard and a strange looking theorbo (a plucked string instrument of the lute family). The small grouping of brass and strings was calibrated to undergird the chorale and soloists with just enough instrumentation to be heard, not overwhelm, and add a soft brass layer to the chorale. The aptly named cornetti were so small they looked like a children’s instrument (but certainly didn't sound like ones).

Add the 110 member chorus, three female and three male soloists who could blow out candles on a birthday cake at ten paces and you got a glorious sound that filled the acoustically perfect Emmanuel Church with music that was divine.

Choral, even classical music, are becoming less played and performed as a host of rich popular music takes over the airwaves. It took my ears a few minutes to become accustomed to it. Soon, I felt myself settling into the warm curve of the 150 year old sturdy burnished oak pew in the venerable church. I was transported into a world of long ago when the sounds of voices in harmony and a few brass and stringed instruments could transport you a little closer to a world you imagined you would some day inhabit.

 Ready to perform...

As the chorale settles into their places, conductor Scott Allen Jarrett delivers an impromptu heartfelt thanks to the audience for showing up...

and an explanation of why tonight's music is special to him and why it was chosen...

A standing ovation...Well done!

Artistic Consultant Justin Blackwell and Artistic Director Scott Allen Jarrett

Stained glass window, back of church, behind the pews

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Sonny Landreth Slides Into Somerville

Sonny Landreth
February 25, 2020
Once, a theater space in Somerville, MA

Sonny Landreth… you not going to see a more spectacular display of slide guitar virtuosity for a long time.

The silver bottleneck on his pinky flashed as fleetingly as a shooting star as he nimbly rode it up and down every inch of the guitar’s neck, caressing, thrashing, plucking every inch with jaw dropping riffs, his hands inches apart from the bottom of the neck of his Resonator and the throat of the guitar body. Mesmerizing.

The blues he played in the first half of his set was lyrically drop dead beautiful and played with the atmospherics that few players can emulate. Not much body language, the man just sat there, whaled away with alternating finger fast slides and achingly slow holds to caress one note. Gasps were audible, some of them mine. His percussionist and rhythm guitar player were on stage but all eyes were on Sonny.

Long gray hair flowing straight down to his shoulders, faded shirt and jeans, he looked more like a geek at the back of a computer store. When he sat on a wooden chair and made that guitar sound like the sound track to a rocket to heaven or a slow decent into the blue room in hell, the rest of the outside world simply disappeared from consciousness. For many, he ascended a throne for the next 45 minutes.

Sonny got into an instrumental run for the second half of his set. As brilliantly as he played, my ears got used to the unremitting genius of his playing and longed for another killer blues song to complement his playing. The full house at Once Theater in Somerville didn’t seem to mind.

You’re gonna have to go some to find virtuoso slide guitar playing like this. In the spirit of Mardi Gras, which was today, he played a zippy Zydeco song with so much zap that a few couples found enough space to dance in the corner.

He’s on the road with Long Tall Marcia Ball. There, my friends, is a double bill of Louisiana music that has more energy than a bomb hurricane.

Photo, videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.