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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Happy birthday Elliott Carter!

Today is the 100th birthday of Elliott Carter. This differs from yesterday's Messiaen Centenary in that Carter is still alive. I took advantage of this fact when I was a Juilliard student by going down to the Village and playing for him, with pianist Pedja Muzijevic, his elemental and formidable Duo. There was a band at the time called CARTER THE UNSTOPPABLE SEX MACHINE and of course when Helen Carter greeted us I remembered I hadn't peeled the sticker off my score. In any case, Carter loved us and I've just posted the performance (from my third-year Juilliard recital "An Evening of American Music," Nov. 30th, 1992, in Paul Hall, of all places):



PS - If you haven't voted yet, please consider doing so. I'm still losing. Badly. Think Sarah Palin in Berkeley.
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Paul Festa’s first film, Apparition of the Eternal Church (2006, 51 min), is a profoundly original investigation into the act of listening to music (cast: Justin Bond, John Cameron Mitchell, Harold Bloom; screenings: Grace Cathedral, Barbican Centre, Library of Congress; press: “Remarkable”–The New Yorker; “Stunning”–Chicago Sun-Times; “Sublime”–Globe & Mail; numerous awards). Festa performs the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, opposite members of the San Francisco Ballet and The Cockettes, in his award-winning second film, The Glitter Emergency (2010, 20 min), a silent-film drag ballet comedy (“Enormous visual and musical inventiveness… full of pleasure and joy….Festa gives a bravura performance."—Film Threat). He produced, wrote and edited, with director Austin Forbord, and was chief archivist, for the documentary Stage Left, A Story of Theater in San Francisco (2010, 80 min: with Robin Williams, Bill Irwin, Peter Coyote; “Intriguing...entertaining...a valuable record”—Variety). Performances as violinist and actor: Center for Performance Research, Kunst-Stoff, TheatreFIRST, Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, North Bay Shakespeare. US, Boston, NYC, SF, LA and DC (Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress, on the “Betts” Stradivarius) premieres of Messiaen’s Fantaisie for violin and piano. He is the author of OH MY GOD: Messiaen in the Ear of the Unbeliever, based on Apparition of the Eternal Church, and several anthologized essays. Current projects include an experimental documentary about his life in music, and a novel. Education: Yale (B.A.; prizes, honors, distinction), Juilliard (Cert., Adv. Cert., scholarships). Residencies: Yaddo, MacDowell, ODC Theater, Centre des Récollets.

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