Yes, the blooming azaleas and pear trees are a big reason to love living in Columbia at this time of year, but of course I am really speaking about March Madness. The frenzied speculation about who'll be invited and who'll be left out, the David-vs.-Goliath matchups in the first few days that often produce stunning upsets, the brief glorious moment of heroes who will not go on to NBA stardom but whose names may linger in college basketball lore forever...it's all precious to me. Having grown up "north of the border," this time of year is just a little more intense for me than for most of my compatriots in this state, I suspect. (This is the problem Dave Odom faces here at USC---in the end, it's a football school- and state- first and foremost.)

Oh, how are my brackets doing, you ask? Well, my shoulders are rubbed raw from patting myself on the back over my correct predictions of the Montana over Nevada and the Northwestern State over Iowa shockers. And that's what I'll be talking about if anybody asks me this weekend. Of course, I will try to avoid mentioning that I also missed Texas A&M over Syracuse, Bradley over Kansas, Indiana over San Diego State, etc., etc. Truth is, I was a mediocre 22-10 in the first round. However, my Final 4 are all still alive as of this moment. Duke over UCLA and Connecticut over Boston College in Final Four, and UConn to top the Dukies for the title. That's what reason tells me to pick, but my heart is, naturally, elsewhere.

Cleaning up some old website bookmarks, I came across this extraordinary radio interview with Condoleezza Rice which aired on public radio station WNYC in New York at the beginning of 2005. The link contains a transcript, but you can click on a link within the site to play the entire show. I've got to say that Rice has always scared me a bit, because she always seems wound so tight. Naturally since she works for an administration I detest, that's tended to affect my view of her as well. I've known of course about her extensive study of classical piano, and the fact that she continues to play the piano to the present day. The couple of very brief clips I've seen of her playing confirmed certain ideas I had of her---she was playing quite competently, but you could easily see the obvious tension in her physical approach---wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, even jaw, all locked tight.

So it came as a revelation to read this transcript of Gilbert Kaplan's interview with her on this radio show. You can see or hear it for yourself, but I just wanted to mention several things that impressed me tremendously. For one thing, rather than parroting the media's oft-repeated line that "she gave up a career as a concert pianist, etc.," Rice speaks quite humbly about her realization after sophomore year college that "I was pretty good but not great... I thought I'm maybe going to end up playing piano bar or playing at Nordstrom, but I'm not going to end up playing Carnegie Hall and so I started looking for something else." Secondly, she speaks about connecting things artistic and spiritual to real-life experiences, specifically a powerful moment she felt in 2000 standing on the Mount of Olives in Israel and recalling her love of the Beethoven oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives."

Finally, (and maybe this is not surprising considering that she is an intellectual at heart) her knowledge of music extends beyond the mere playing into a pretty comprehensive understanding of style and history. For example, she cites Mussorgsky's "Khovanschina" as an opera she loves, before mentioning "Boris," or when she speaks of the Russian "Five," or her perceptive understanding of timbral issues in discussing how certain of Brahms' "Haydn Variations" work better in the original two-piano version. Oh, and then to top it off, her favorite pianist of all time (and this REALLY stunned me)---was Artur Rubenstein. Go figure. Somebody I had pegged as a Stoic turns out to admire the ultimate Epicurean.

So my next question is, how can she stand to be in the same room as that smug Philistine?

Somewhat overlooked in the discussion over Charlotte' s bid (now successful) for the NASCAR Hall of Fame is the new building's potential effect on the city's architectural profile. I only just read today that Charlotte had engaged the architectural firm of Pei, Cobb, & Freed to design the building. News reports make it sound as though I.M. Pei himself will design the building...but Pei will be 90 next year, Freed just died a few months ago, and if you look at the company's website, one might justifiably come away with the conclusion that its best work is behind it. Another view of the proposed Hall of Fame can be seen here.

There's no question (Mayor McCrory has said as much) that Charlotte thinks the NASCAR Hall will "brand" it, give it an identity in the general public's mind (pause for indigestion to settle...). Will the Hall of Fame building itself achieve iconic status, will it establish a visual component to the general public's image of "Charlotte," in much the way Santiago Calatrava's astounding Milwaukee Art Museum has for that city, or Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao did for that similarly middle-sized, identity-challenged city? Well, let's not get carried away yet.

There has been some interesting architecture happening in Charlotte in recent years...my question in this case with the Pei commission is, is this one of those typically Charlottean/corporate (think, "conservative bankers") decisions that is behind the architectural curve, not ahead of it? Sure, I.M. Pei is probably the one architect whom at least a few in the boardroom at Bank of America could name, but did the city send him this gig 10-15 years too late? Could Charlotte have gotten someone more on the cutting edge instead? Yes, the "inverted racetrack" exterior shape is clever. I have seen only these few pictures available on the web and in the paper, but the proposal seems almost too dignified for what is, after all, a monument to stock car racing. Why not go for something a little, well, racier?

Is it just my impression, or does there seem to be an epidemic afoot ?

I don't know if you can still get tickets for the Saturday, March 4 concert with Marina Lomazov as soloist with the SC Philharmonic, since her concerts tend to sell out, but by all means try! Marina is playing the First Piano Concerto of Sergei Prokofiev, so it's the perfect combination of electrifying performer and composition. Written when he was still a conservatory student of about 20 years of age, it's a work that grabs you by the scruff of the neck from its opening moments and rarely lets up for its fifteen-minute length. It's in-your-face stuff, the epitome of youthful energy and brash confidence. With Prokofiev's later output in mind, it's quite amazing how in an early work like this he had already found his distinctive voice. At the time nobody knew quite what to make of it.. But Prokofiev was undeterred and his belief in this concerto has long since been validated. It may not possess the fully-ripened, comfortably masterful handling and grandeur of the 2nd and 3rd concerti, but is astonishing in its own way. Think Clay versus Liston.