Jeanne Cooper passes away

I was saddened this morning to hear of the passing of Jeanne Cooper, star of "The Young And The Restless" on CBS. My mother has watched the show since it started in 1973, and Ms. Cooper had starred as Katherine Chancellor almost since the beginning. I grew up watching the show with my mother, at first during the summer when I was home from school, then sometimes at night when we would record that day's show and watch it on the VCR. About a decade later, my then-wife (who is also a longtime fan) would watch the show on VHS or on our DVR. So I spent at least 20 years off and on watching Ms. Cooper on the show. My mother said she feels like she's lost a member of our family, and I feel the same way.

A few quick thoughts on Friday night's New York Philharmonic concert

On Friday night, we attended the New York Philharmonic's performance of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 and Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 6. Pinchas Zukerman was the soloist, with Christoph Eschenbach, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, conducting.

Bruch's concerto has long been one of my favorite works, but I don't think I'd heard it performed live until Friday evening. Zukerman was of course outstanding and Eschenbach kept the orchestra out of his way. Some of the tempi were a little slower than I like but that relaxed pace helped in the romantic second movement. Zukerman received a long ovation after the energetic finale. I've seen him perform once or twice before with the Philharmonic and I think I enjoyed this appearance more than the others. I'd heard him play some of Bach's "Brandenburg" concertos a few years ago but I think his tone is better suited to Bruch's work than Bach's.

After the intermission, Eschenbach led the orchestra through a powerful reading of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony. The horns in particular stood out, as their fanfares were wholly distinguishable from those of the trumpets and trombones. I enjoyed Principal Oboe Liang Wang's work in the Adagio movement, and the strings and winds were crisp and forceful in the scherzo. Eschenbach led with a moderate amount of movement on the podium, using his upper body and keeping his feet mostly in place on the podium. I left Avery Fisher Hall humming some of the brass fanfares from the piece, and they stuck with me over the weekend.

From last week: quick thoughts on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Spoilers ahead, so beware if you haven't seen it yet...

I loved revisiting this universe. From the opening showing the dwarves at the height of their power, to hints of Smaug, to Hobbiton, Gandalf, Frodo(!), and the elves, it was great to be back. I especially enjoyed all the musical cues. All the themes Howard Shore used in the Lord of the Rings saga came back here, along with new music for the dwarves at Erebor and The Company. I grinned with sheer joy whenever I heard a musical cue for the elves, the eagles or the Hobbits theme.

I knew it was going to be a long movie with far more material than we needed, like Radagast, the backstory with Azog the Pale Orc, hints about the Necromancer, and so on. I don't care. I didn't mind that extra footage at all, and in fact actually enjoyed it. The 3D was better than I expected, but it didn't add that much to the movie. I started to get a headache near the end, but I may have been sitting too close (2nd row from the center aisle). I'll sit further back the next time I see it. Also, I saw it in regular 24FPS 3D, not the 48FPS version that some have said looks too real. What I saw looked good enough to me. I'd be fine with a 2D version, in fact.

Peter Jackson made these movies for LOTR fans, and as a huge LOTR fan I have a well-established bias. If you loved the first trilogy then I think you're going to enjoy this movie. If you didn't see the original trilogy or were bored, The Hobbit isn't going to change your opinion. 

Rush might have sounded great, but I couldn't tell

The Barclays Center in Brooklyn had a long and twisting path from dream to reality. It took years just to sort through the lawsuits designed to stall or prevent its construction, then once construction began, those of us who live in Park Slope and Fort Greene endured traffic jams, noise, and dust. Finally, late last month, this new arena opened just blocks from my apartment. Monday night's Rush concert was my first opportunity to see the arena and hear a band I've enjoyed for years (and seen live once before, in 1994).

I liked the massive entranceway, with its high ceiling and what should be a gorgeous view of the basketball court as you walk in. The wide concourses looked inviting and the Brooklyn food vendors beckoned with local options like burgers and Fatty Cue barbeque. As we took the escalator to the upper level, I gawked at the club level's carpeted lounge. As we found our seats, while I didn't like the narrow aisles and gaps between rows, I loved the sight lines. The steeply raked upper deck meant that we had an excellent view of the stage below and to the left of us, with no heads in front of us blocking our view. I can only imagine how good the view would be for basketball or, dare I say it, hockey. And I really enjoyed the convenience of walking to and from the venue, a first for me.

Unfortunately, the sound in the upper level was absolutely awful. The bass thrummed throughout the arena, but the notes themselves were so muffled and lost within the space that I sometimes couldn't tell what Geddy Lee was playing. Alex Lifeson's guitar didn't fare much better. Neal Peart's drums sounded great during his solos, except when the bass thrumming shook the entire building and covered him up. The worst part were Geddy Lee's vocals. I'm not kidding when I say that I could barely understand a word he sang or spoke. Most of the set list consisted of newer material that I didn't know, and since I couldn't really hear any of it, I found myself checking Twitter and catching up on the presidential debate. The free wi-fi worked much better than the sound, by the way. Even when the band played songs I know by heart, like "The Spirit of Radio" or "Subdivisions," I couldn't pretend to sing along because I couldn't follow the vocals.

I've never been more disappointed in an arena show. Rush is an amazingly talented band that's been playing for 40 years, and their songs got completely lost in the Barclays Center. I don't know if it was a failure of the band's sound technicians or the arena's acoustics, but something was terribly off. I'm going to wait a while before I go to another concert at this arena.

Bach, Schoenberg, and Mozart: 3 German-speaking guys walk into a concert hall...

I hadn't heard any of the works on Saturday night's New York Philharmonic program live in concert before. Of the three, I was most familiar with Bach's Piano Concerto in D minor, which soloist Emanuel Ax played to perfection. I enjoyed the balance between the piano and the strings, which brought out harmonies from the second violins and the violas. Ax had not played this concerto before, an amazing fact when you consider the scope of his career. 

Prior to performing Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Ax and music director Alan Gilbert spoke to the audience about the work and twelve-tone compositions in general. Gilbert said that 12-tone music didn't need to be frightening. He said that while some composers had taken the concept and applied it to their works with mediocre results, it was possible to find beauty in this type of music. Ax and Gilbert then highlighted some of the key melodies in the concerto, as guideposts for the audience. I've seen Gilbert do this sort of talk before pieces in the past. I think it does help an audience that's likely to be unfamiliar with a work and perhaps apprehensive about it. I was able to follow the structure of the piece and identify the elements that Ax and Gilbert had noted. But I had a difficult time "getting into" the work. Without a tonal melodic frame of reference, I didn't have anything to latch onto and follow on a deeper musical level. Near the end of the piece, my mind wandered and after a few minutes I realized I hadn't been paying attention to the music at all. I don't want to dismiss atonal or 12-tone music completely, but it's just not for me.

After intermission, the Philharmonic closed the program with Mozart's Symphony No. 36, "Linz." I adore Mozart's music, so one of his greatest symphonies was just the palate cleanser I needed. The orchestra and Gilbert turned in a sparkling performance. I wouldn't say they found something new in their interpretation of the music, but I'm OK with that. Listening to the New York Philharmonic play Mozart in concert is like listening to Bob Dylan sing "Like A Rolling Stone," or Pavarotti sing "Nessun dorma." It's the greatest orchestra in the country playing music they know inside and out, with a skilled music director on the podium. I think you take that performance every chance you get.

All-streaming music, all the time? Not for me, yet.

Lifehacker's Whitson Gordon wonders whether we as music consumers are ready to give up our personal music collections and move to streaming services full-time. He discusses the pros and cons of Spotify and Rdio vs. iTunes or a MP3 collection on a mobile device. His conclusion is that the streaming services aren't quite there yet.  Between missing artists and awkward handling of local tracks that they don't own, getting everything you might want from a streaming service isn't possible yet.

I don't have an opinion about any of the streaming services. I still have two CD racks in my apartment that I haven't decided what to do with yet. I haven't taken any of them off the shelf in at least a couple of years. Some of them haven't moved off the shelf since I moved into this apartment four years ago. And while I haven't taken an official inventory, it's possible that I have twice as much music on my computer as I have on those shelves. But I hang onto these CDs, especially the rock CDs, as if they're some sort of lifeline. I have this irrational fear that if I sell the CDs and keep the music on my computer, that someday the RIAA will track me down and make me pay exorbitant rights fees for my own music. (I wouldn't get rid of the classical CDs, in some cases because of the excellent liner notes, and in others because they're rare or more meaningful to me.) If I'm not ready to part with my actual CDs, the physical representation of the sound, I'm definitely not ready to erase the 100+ GB of music files on my hard drive and rely on the Internet to provide my entertainment.

Let's try this again in five years. Maybe by then the various services will sort out this mess and ubiquitous Internet connections will make my computer's hard drive obsolete.

About this Lance Armstrong news...

Ryan Hudson at SBNation has some thoughtful commentary on Lance Armstrong's decision not to continue fighting the USADA's doping charges against him. Go read his piece, then come back. Or don't; I won't be upset.

I'd long held the opinion that Armstrong was clean, largely because no one was able to pin a beyond-a-shadow-of-doubt positive drug test result on him. I saw the continued efforts by French news organizations and anti-doping agencies as witch hunts, or people with axes to grind. But as more positive tests took down other riders (Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Alberto Contador)  and the drumbeat against Armstrong continued, I stopped thinking about Armstrong's claims of innocence. If he was guilty, they'd eventually find something, even if the statute of limitations had expired or the positive tests came decades after his Tour victories. Well, here we are. By essentially pleading "no contest" Armstrong will lose his Tour wins (despite  tenuous USADA authority to remove them) and be banned from a sport from which he retired years ago. It doesn't matter. At this point I assume everyone in cycling is on something. I assume it about all sports, actually. Humans are not meant to ride 100 miles a day for three weeks. What difference does it make if they're riding while on EPO or extra-oxygenated blood or horse testosterone? How is that any different from having a faster bike or a better organized team?

I give up. Everyone is on something. Every athlete wants a competitive advantage, and if it's not available legally then they'll get it illegally. And what's stopping them? Everyone else is doing it.

I'll tell you who's riding clean: I am. I ride my bike three or four times a week on water and Clif bars. I used to idolize Lance Armstrong and imagine him riding up the hill in front of me, "dancing in his pedals" as one of the Tour commentators once said of him. But that was years ago. Now, I don't need his inspiration. He doesn't need to be my hero. And he shouldn't be yours either. None of our star athletes should be.