If you are in the music business, Google's "Alert" service is a useful tool, sending links to your email inbox (and/or your manager's or publicist's) for reviews of your performances or your recordings of which you might, otherwise, not be aware. But more often than not in recent months, I've clicked on the Google Alerts in my inbox only to find that it was a news article about my Google double. Unless your name is really unusual, you have one too---or maybe quite a few. (It's another time-honored time-wasting internet game, looking into what "alternative universes" you inhabit, well, your name anyway.)

Although I have come across a few sporadic references to a number of different "Phillip Bush"-es around the country, the one who has been coming up all the time recently in my Google Alerts lives, as it turns out, less than 150 miles away from me. Phillip Bush is almost thirty years my junior, has just finished his senior year at North Rowan High School near Salisbury, NC, and is the NC state 2-A champion in both the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints. (OK, for those of you who know me and my stellar athletic gifts, get the snickering out of the way now...) Here is a piece in the Salisbury Post on some of his latest exploits. Phillip Bush will be attending Appalachian State University in the fall and presumably continuing to compete in track and field, so this Phillip will be following that Phillip's progress closely.

Great piece by Daniel Wakin in Saturday's New York Times on the ripple effect created when Barbra Streisand hired 58 top NYC freelancers to make up the orchestra for her upcoming European tour. Rarely does the mainstream music press bother to "pull the curtain back" to look at the lives of outstanding-but-not-household-name performers in this way...One thing is certain: the new music scene in New York City (and therefore to at least some extent, in the U.S. at large) would not be nearly so vibrant without the presence of live music on Broadway. Another important contributor: the continued existence of regional orchestras within a 100-mile radius of the city.

Last Sunday the New York Times ran an extensive profile of Leon Fleisher, who as he nears his 79th birthday (not the 80th as the NYT says), is about to release his second recording of the Brahms Piano Quintet, this time with the Emerson Quartet. (Fleisher's first recording of the work was made in the late 1950's with the Juilliard Quartet for CBS Masterworks.)

Teaching students is on my mind a lot this week; I'm up in Charlotte coaching high school musicians in chamber music works at a week-long camp, and also this week in Columbia the Southeastern Piano Festival is taking place at USC. And so in that spirit, this thought from Fleisher for young pianists kind of sums up the whole business, I think:

“Whatever you do with your fingers and your hands must be in the service of an idea, an ideal that you hear in your head before you play. If before you put the key down for a single note, unless you have a goal for that note, it’s an accident.”

 

Time Magazine has recently made its entire archive available online, which makes for some fascinating time-wasting (if you'll pardon the pun) opportunities. During one recent bout, I came across this quote:

"On any night of the week, the [current television] season has proved to be so dreary and derivative that even the networks have given up and are tossing out a big block of expensive shows that only recently were touted as hot stuff. All are going off the air...If [the remaining shows] are to stand as the criterion for the best in television entertainment, the networks are in worse trouble than they know....TV obviously suffers from a severe underdose of talent. There are just not enough good writers and performers to satisfy television's voracious appetite, so even the best entertainers can rarely sustain anything beyond mediocrity. Then there is the problem of finding the right format for a series. Solution: imitate successful formulas. The quest for originality, in short, stops at the Nielsen lists, and fresh ideas are in as short supply as fresh talent...Should [network VP's for programming] reflect their own and critics' sophisticated tastes, or assume that the average viewer simply wants mindless rubbish?"

The date that was written? Nov. 18, 1966. Choice in television has proliferated, but as I'm sure you've often asked yourself, "How can there be 75...100...150 channels and STILL nothing good to watch?"

So it was with great delight that I checked out the first episode last Monday night of "Creature Comforts," a brilliant little summer replacement series brought to you by the Wallace and Gromit folks and broadcast each Monday at 8 PM on CBS. Like many inspired ideas, the premise is extremely simple but delightfully realized: regular folks are interviewed about a variety of topics, and their answers are voiced by a coterie of claymation critters of every variety...birds, mammals, bugs, you name it. The half-hour show jumps around from one set of characters to another, and sometimes the choice of which animal speaks which words is only revealed after a few onscreen appearances (like the buildup to a good punchline). Beyond that I won't try to describe the show...better you should see it for yourself, tomorrow night at 8 PM on your local CBS station.