Category: Books

Sarasota Scene: Music & More

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MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC!

Recently, we’ve gorged on music—-several instrumental treats plus the Sarasota Opera’s lovely production of Madama Butterfly.  Last Music Monday, Sarasota Orchestra principal oboe, Christine Soojin Kim, was the guest along with the world renowned Bertram Lucarelli.  Although Mr. Lucarelli no longer performs (he’s 80 and reported that after the age of 70, the breathing just doesn’t work the same), it’s clear he is still passionate about this instrument.  We, the audience, were party to a coaching session with Ms. Kim.  She played a beautiful Mozart piece for piano and oboe, and he offered suggestions and comments as she played and then re-played certain sections.  It was a learning experience for us (and it seemed so for her).  She was a good sport to have a master class before 800 people!

This past week, we were introduced to a young French cellist, Edgar Moreau, and the pianist, Jessica Xylina Osborne who often plays with him.  They were a delightful pair and we learned about how she views playing with a wide variety of soloists and whether he approaches orchestral work differently than solo events.  Note that she calls herself a pianist, not an accompanist, as they are partners in the musical enterprise.  They shared works by Bach and others.

Finally, we got to hear again Sarasota’s own Betsy Traba, principal flutist in the Sarasota Orchestra, along with pianist Joe Holt and soprano Jenny Kim-Godfrey. They performed works by Poulenc, Saint-Saens, Mouquet and Mozart.  This was a Lunch Look, Listen recital at Michael’s on East and part of the Festival of French Music being offered this month and next.  All of these young (and established) musicians are worth watching!

DINING FIND–SARASOTA

Although we might not be the hip demographic Coolinary is looking to entice upstairs on Main Street, the Chief Penguin and I very much enjoyed our first meal here.  We were early birds at 5:15 for dinner before the opera and were soon joined by some other couples with the same intent.  It’s a surprisingly large space with a long bar and a mix of normal tables and those trendy high ones (my feet always dangle miles above the floor).

Between us we sampled the Caesar salad (the addition of some apple was unusual, but good); cauliflower fritters (three large battered slices) with a blue cheesy dipping sauce; house smoked salmon; sizzling shrimp on a skillet (love the concept, but they were under seasoned which the chef could easily remedy); and the baby back ribs from the bar food section of the menu.  All the portions were decent to large size and the ribs were especially good.  

Entree choices include grouper, salmon, red snapper, beef, lamb and chicken, and at least one vegetarian dish.  Posters on the wall highlight a number of late night events with live music.  Service was attentive and efficient and we plan to return.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

I’ve had Colson Whitehead’s new novel, The Underground Railroad, on my stack for several months and just finished it.  I found it a powerful evocation of slavery and one woman’s journey toward freedom.  The cruelty, violence, brutality and denigration of slavery are all here along with the courage and risk-taking of those people who are conductors on the railroad.  When Cora makes her escape from the Randall plantation in Georgia she has limited knowledge of the fortitude and resilience that will be required of her.  

Whitehead’s choice to make the stations on the railroad real tunnels and stations is inspired, while his creation of varying sets of rules and expectations for the different states, particularly horrifying in North Carolina and on the surface more civilized in South Carolina, grounds the novel in an unexpected way.  Cora’s travels through these and other states, plus her encounters with slave catcher Ridgeway, graphically highlight how many ways there are to stifle, humiliate and even kill a person.  This book was named to 11 best books-of-the-year lists and won the National Book Award for Fiction—lots of attention and definitely deserved! I recommend it without reservation.

 

Note:  Photo of Ms. Kim from the orchestra’s web site; restaurant photo from Trip Advisor; Mr. Whitehead’s photo from literary-arts.org

Tidy Tidbits: Matters of the Heart (Mostly)

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With Valentine’s Day almost here, it seems appropriate to focus on love and romance and lighter fare.  Here are some notes on TV viewing, recent reading and a restaurant (new to us) that would fill the bill for a delicious meal.

ON THE SMALL SCREEN:  Love and Lust

Everyone learns early on that Henry VIII had six wives and that they all came to unpleasant or untimely ends.  Historian Lucy Worsley, both author and TV presenter, is our guide and expert host for a look at his queens, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr, from the women’s perspective.  Animated and knowledgeable, Worsley is ever present in this dramatization.  Her showing up as a lady-in-waiting with a wink to the at-home audience is a dramatic device I found more annoying than enlightening.  Nonetheless, this is an almost saucy take on the king’s roving eye and his desperate drive for a male heir.  Entitled, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, this three part series is on PBS.

ON THE PAGE:  Hearts & Flowers

Sometimes one craves chocolate or a bonbon.  And sometimes I need a break from more literary fiction to read a novel that is engaging, has a complement of romance, and requires no mental strain.  Novels like this present problems—tangled family relationships, secrets that are hurtful, failed marriages—but in the end, things slot into place for a happy ending.  Not a messy or twisted resolution like real life, but satisfying in a way that lets you, the reader, forget politics or the petty annoyances of your own life.

Susan Wiggs writes this kind of women’s fiction and her ongoing series, Lakeshore Chronicles, set in the Catskills, follows the trials and tribulations and loves of the various members of the extended Bellamy Family.  The most recent novel, Starlight on Willow Lake, deals with a widowed caregiver who, struggling to make a life for her two daughters, takes on the care of a prickly demanding quadriplegic whose son has been both physically and emotionally distant.  It’s a good read.  

ON THE PLATE:  Tampa Table

We went up to Tampa the other night for an alumni event at a local restaurant and were pleased to be introduced to Grille One Sixteen.  An attractive open space done in dark wood with white chair seats and a very long, white bar, this dining room delivered on the food.  The Chief Penguin sampled the shrimp and grits and I enjoyed the glazed salmon served on a bed of succotash.  The Caesar salad to start was a generous portion and nicely, but not overwhelmingly, garlicky.  Pre-dinner nibbles at the table included dumpling bites and long strips of Nueske bacon (my favorite!) in a tall glass.  Dessert was little glazed doughnuts, a house specialty.  The full menu also includes a range of steaks, baby back ribs, meatloaf, and burgers.  Based on this meal, I’d happily return!

Header photo:  Painting by Carmen Herrera photographed at the Whitney Museum.  Hearts are free clip art from the web.

 

Tidy Tidbits: Music, Books, Food

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MUSICAL NOTES

Did you ever realize that many of Richard Rodgers’ wonderful songs are waltzes?  At Music Monday, we were treated to conversation with Edward Alley (conductor) and Marcus DeLoach (baritone) along with DeLoach’s warm and luscious renditions of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” and other songs from Showboat and South Pacific.  Kudos to June LeBell for the consistently high caliber of programming she presents!

I like that music director Anu Tali is expanding the Sarasota Orchestra’s repertoire beyond the usual standards and pushing the audience to listen outside its comfort zone.  This past week’s concert was nicely balanced between two Tchaikovsky works and Symphony No. 6 (Strata) by contemporary Estonian composer, Erkki-Sven Tuur.  Mr. Tuur was present and addressed the audience before the concert.  His advice to not try and understand the work, but rather to just immerse oneself in the music was helpful, and I found myself enjoying the wall of sound in the opening section (lots of vibrant percussion) and then appreciating the lighter, higher notes that followed.  It was not discordant and hard to listen to like some contemporary music.

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is a very familiar piece and one I’ve heard many times, but never quite like this performance.  Pianist Simon Trpceski’s rendition was robust, almost fierce at times, and watching his hands and feet, hands as they sped over the keys and feet as they stomped on the pedals and then retreated, added to the enjoyment.  He and the orchestra were well matched in the intensity of the playing and the audience responded with vigorous applause.

READING

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.  This slender novel by the late Fitzgerald was first published in 1978 and recently recommended to me by Elsie at Bookstore 1.  Widow Florence Green decides her small town should have a bookstore and that she should create one.  She opens her small shop, adds a lending library as well, and assumes that all will be well.  With economical sentences that pack much into a few words, Fitzgerald captures the personalities and often small-mindedness of a town set in its ways.  Short on action, this is a slice of life in England in the late 1950’s.

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien.  O’Brien is a noted Irish author of novels, short stories, plays, and poetry and has been much praised.  This is her most recent novel and I’m reading it for my book group.  The main character, Dr. Vlad, is a charismatic healer and teacher who comes from away to take up residence in a small village.  Some of the chapters seem to stand alone and the characters don’t yet seem to have jelled.  I’m not sure what to make of it, but will definitely finish it.

LOCAL DINING—CASUAL & ELEGANT

Cedar Reef Fish Camp.  This casual restaurant off Route 70 in Bradenton near I-75 is a good choice for lunch.  We met Pennsylvania friends traveling south (a repeat of last year) and again found it tasty and reasonably priced.  Their cedar planked salmon is excellent, the French fries too temptingly good, and the regular fish and chips good also.  The special Alaskan Pollock fried fish was skimpy, but then it was one of the cheapest items on offer.  For non-seafood lovers, there are burgers and chicken.  Seating is at booths or tables and the dining room staff were all most welcoming.  They also have two locations in Venice and do take reservations.

Bijou Café.  With white tablecloths, this softly lit dining room always feels and looks elegant, the service is gracious, and the food delicious.  We connected with quasi-local friends here for lunch and appreciated the wide range of menu choices.  The Chief Penguin tucked into the short rib sandwich, the chicken paillard was excellent as always (a larger portion for those hungry at noon), and the crab salad special a hit.  For a leisurely, relaxed meal in downtown Sarasota, this is the place. Reservations recommended as it is popular at all times.

Photos copyright JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

New Books by Desmond & Collins

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RECENT READING

I have two nonfiction books to recommend and, with you know who now in office, the first one about poverty seems especially appropriate.

Evicted:  Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond.  This is an important book and one that takes a different look at the lives of poor people in Milwaukee in 2008 and 2009.  Desmond views poverty as a relationship between landlords and tenants and shows how entangled and enmeshed renters’ lives are with landlords who hold the threat of eviction over them.  Desmond lived in a trailer park inhabited by white residents for four months and then spent 10 months living in an apartment owned by a black woman.  Like many people, I thought that most poor people lived in public housing, but in this city, and probably more generally, public housing was very often not available, the wait time was years or decades, or the individuals who needed it most didn’t qualify for one reason or another.  Most of those evicted or those who moved out voluntarily (rather than being given an eviction notice and taken to court) were women and especially women with children.  Having children tripled the odds of being evicted.

Once evicted, these folks often had to look at 80 or 90 apartments before finding a place to live; if unsuccessful, they ended up in a shelter for weeks or even months.  And the rents they paid for their apartments (frequently in poor condition with non-working appliances or holes in walls or roofs) were market rate—the same amount as paid for nice, clean apartments in the more desirable neighborhoods.  Over the course of his field work, Desmond followed eight individuals and their families and observed their struggles with addiction, job loss, new schools for their kids, and the possibility of jail time.  Only one person, a single male, succeeds in breaking the cycle, overcoming his addiction and becoming a productive citizen again.

Matthew Desmond, a Harvard professor who won a MacArthur Fellowship (“Genius” Award) in 2015, offers his thoughts on possible solutions in a very comprehensive “About This Project” at the end of the book.

When in French:  Love in a Second Language by Lauren Collins.  This is yet another memoir in my ongoing fascination with reading about how other people perceive their lives.  A New Yorker staff writer, Collins’s book is ostensibly about falling in love with Olivier, moving to Geneva, marrying him, and dealing with communicating with him and others in French.  But it’s much more than that.  Collins is a small town Southern girl from Wilmington, North Carolina, who moves to London where she meets Olivier and then follows him to Geneva when his job takes him there.  She is biting in describing her response to the city of Geneva and candid about her linguistic faux pas and her cultural misconceptions.  Along the way she provides nuggets of information on the history of languages and her canvas becomes much larger than just her stumbling journey to fluency.  At some points, I felt she was trying to cover too much material, but I stuck with her.  Here’s one example of some linguistic history:

In 1880 there were 641 German newspapers in the United. States. …One of them, Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, had been in 1776 the first publication to announce that the Declaration of Independence has been adopted.  English speakers had to wait until the next day when the document’s full text appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Post.

And one of her observations on her extreme desire to get married:

I had exactly two anxieties about cross-cultural marriage:  (1) I feared being marooned, at the end of my life, in some French nursing home where no one had ever heard of baseball; and (2) it made me sad to think that my kids would miss out on one of the great joys of an American childhood, learning to spell Mississippi.  But, generally, I didn’t see what the big deal was.  Tied up as I was in rules, timetables, and proverbs about buying cows, I couldn’t take Olivier at his word.  [That he loved her and wanted to be together and have a family with her.]

If nothing else, you will think a bit more about the language you speak and how you acquired it, and if you’ve ever tried immersion in another country and language, you’ll empathize with her experience.

Header photo:  Taken at Selby Botanical Garden (JWF)