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Aspen Music Fest 101
A front-row seat to watch violinist Gil Shaham perform Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, opus 61, with David Zinman conducting the chamber symphony - the final piece on that evening's program - was there for the taking for anyone willing to plunk down a 10 spot.
Reasoning I'd catch the evening performance later, I headed to adjacent Harris Concert Hall for a 10 a.m. Piano Master Class led by instructor Ann Schein. It was $22 - the most money I spent all day.
I had no idea what to expect, but I was handed a program as I descended into the auditorium - three pieces by Franz Liszt and contemporary work by Ligeti that I planned to hate, but didn't.
The plethora of master classes and student recitals over a nine-week festival season are, I gather, a chance to catch the rising stars of the classical world in their "I remember when" moments - akin to seeing the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in 1961.
Kay Scarpetta knifed by Agent Lesbian
LIKE all the best romances, it began with a smouldering glance and "electricity in the air". It ended with a bungled kidnapping, attempted murder and salacious accounts of lesbian hanky panky. More than a decade after Patricia Cornwell, the bestselling crime novelist, was unwittingly thrust into an explosive tabloid saga involving revenge, obsession and scantily clad FBI agents, one of the leading characters has decided to tell her story. In Twisted Triangle, a book to be published in April, Cornwell’s brief lesbian dalliance with an FBI instructor named Margo Bennett is subjected to excruciating scrutiny - not to mention excruciating prose of the "As their eyes met . . ." variety. Bennett’s decision to tell her story to a professional ghost-writer has reopened a painful but mostly farcical episode of seduction, betrayal and bullet-proof vests.
Congress sends economic aid plan to Bush
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, skipped the vote. The Republican front-runner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, cast his first vote of the year on the bill, voting "yes." McCain had missed the vote the evening before. Reid defended his decision to try to pressure Republicans on the larger proposal by offering it as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition along with the rebates for the elderly and veterans. "I feel very strongly that we did the right thing," Reid said. Democrats said Republicans would pay a political price for their opposition. "If today (Republicans) are squirming because they voted 'no,' that's what democracy is all about," said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the head of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee. "The political chips will fall where they may." But Democratic Sen.
NHL pioneer O'Ree works for diversity
It's interesting that the NHL All-Star Game happened to be in Atlanta this year, 50 years after Willie O'Ree broke the color barrier in the NHL. This city, which hosted a luncheon to honor O'Ree on Friday, is also where he got his first taste of the South during segregation. .
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