Your graphing calculator may not be getting much use these days now that other mobile devices can do the job, but it still has a few tricks up its sleeve if you’re willing to do some tinkering. Christopher Mitchell’s latest project, ArTICam, lets you…
(Note: This is one in a series of occasional pieces in the run-up to the series finale of Mad Men with cultural relevance to the period of the show and today.)
Today we think of the 1970s as the heyday of the conspiracy thriller, a genre which received a superhero updating in this year’s smash Captain America: The Winter Soldier. After the disillusionment of Vietnam and Watergate, the times made sense for chilling cinematic assessments of how society works.Or doesn’t.
But the reality is that the conspiracy genre flourished a decade earlier, before most of the disillusionment. And it did so in large part at the encouragement of none other than the President of the United States.
John F. Kennedy encouraged the making of a group of films emphasizing an insidious threat from right-wing forces within and the existential dangers of the nuclear age. He began doing this after the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle, in which CIA and Pentagon leaders unsuccessfully pushed him to intervene directly with US forces after a covertly-backed Cuba invasion by exile forces went unsurprisingly sideways. Kennedy intensified his cinematic efforts after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the Pentagon brass pushed for a US invasion of Cuba. Which as I discussed here last week, could easily have triggered a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
As fate would have it, all but one of these films — the 1962 classic The Manchurian Candidate, starring and produced by JFK buddy Frank Sinatra — appeared after Kennedy’s assassination, though principal photography on all was completed beforehand.
Out of all the films, which also include Fail-Safe, Dr. Strangelove, and The Best Man, Seven Days In May is the most explicit about an overt right-wing military takeover of the US government. It also received the most overt support from Kennedy, who made the White House available for some filming.
Former Kennedy White House advisor and eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger and others discuss why President John F. Kennedy wanted Seven Days In May made into a movie.
A cracking thriller in atmospheric black and white, Seven Days In May is stylishly directed by Manchurian Candidate director John Frankenheimer, who went on to do campaign commercials for the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, the director’s Malibu houseguest when he was assassination after delivering his California presidential primary victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel. The film features a top cast in top form, with friends and rivals Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, also the film’s producer, starring as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his Marine colonel top hand, who quickly comes to suspect that his charismatic four star Air Force general boss is hatching a plot to seize the presidency for himself in a military coup.
JFK had wanted his friend Henry Fonda to play the embattled president, whose polls have plummeted in the wake of a nuclear peace treaty with the Soviet Union and an unfortuitous economic slowdown. But Fonda was unavailable, since ehe was filming another role JFK wanted him to play, that of the president pushed to launch an all-out nuclear war in Fail-Safe.
Frederic March stepped in instead. The two-time Oscar winner doesn’t cause the charisma overload that the Lancaster-Fonda face-off would have. But, sad sack though he seems at first, he’s plenty forceful enough. And he underscores the reality that the charismatic figure can easily be the one who is in the wrong.
For much of the film, March’s older, much less vigorous President Jordan Lyman seems very overmatched by Lancaster’s crisp ramrod charisma as General James Mattoon “Gentleman Jim” Scott. But with a little help from his friends, he may get by.
Chief among these crucial friends is a mere acquaintance, Marine Corps Colonel Martin J. “Jiggs” Casey, director of the Joint Staff, which provides planning and staff services for the heads of the armed services who make up the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Demonstrating how the Pentagon has continued to grow over the past 50 years since the Cold War heyday, the Joint Staff director gig is now a three-star general slot. Its most famous recent holder? General Stanley McChrystal. He had the post just before he became our Afghanistan surge commander. Before he was fired by President Barack Obama for gross disrespect toward civilian authority.)
While Burt Lancaster has arguably the showier role of the film’s two big stars, it’s producer Kirk Douglas who is its lynchpin and beating heart. Scorned by some of the far right-wing officers around Lancaster’s General Scot as “a bleeding heart liberal,” Douglas’s crisp Col. Casey actually agrees with Scott that the Soviets are duping the president on the nuclear peace treaty. But he stands on his oath of office as a Marine officer, which is not to the military or some martial ideal but to our democratic process and systems of laws in the form of the Constitution.
Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s screenplay, which is top-notch throughout, is especially adept in its use of Douglas’s character.
After noting a number of disquieting facts, Casey makes up his mind after viewing a big Scott speech the general asked him to watch. Introduced by the country’s leading right-wing commentator, Scott whips up a huge crowd of veterans with a message of star-spangled strength. The white horse is clearly waiting just off stage.
The rest of the cast is top-notch as well. Standouts include Oscar-nominated Edmund O’Brien as an alcoholic Southern senator who has to undertake a big mission to protect his presidential pal, Martin Balsam as the sort of confidential aide every major politician needs, and Ava Gardner as Scott’s faded glamour girl ex-mistress who knows where the bodies are buried. John Houseman also stands out as a slippery Navy admiral who dallied with Scott’s coup.
So, can it happen here? Could an unpopular president pursuing a “treasonous” course during frightening times run afoul of the military brass and right-wing media?
Uh, sure. To the extent that they would mount a coup? That’s tougher. There are an awful lot of folks in the military who take their oaths seriously.
In the film, those loyalist elements — personified by the Douglas character — loom large.
The trailer for Seven Days In May.
But it has certainly happened elsewhere lately, and we’ve either helped or gone along, in Egypt and Ukraine.
Was JFK serious about this as an actual threat or was he symbolic in encouraging a cultural counterweight to right-wing forces in the military, media, and politics?
That’s hard to know.
But when the commander of the Air Force accused him during the Cuban Missile Crisis of appeasing Communism and creating “another Munich” for refusing to launch air strikes and invade Cuba, JFK may have believed he was face to face with at least one top officer who would gladly boot him out of office by force. That was General Curtis LeMay, incidentally, architect of the vast strategic bomber force in the 1950s and in 1968 the vice presidential running mate on Alabama Governor George Wallace’s right-wing racist ticket.
Seven Days In May isn’t the grand and strange class that Frankenheimer’s earlier Manchurian Candidate is. It’s far less sardonic, satirical, and surrealistic than the latter film, which continues to echo in the culture in ironic ways. (Recall the far right talk of Obama as a “Manchurian Candidate,” from people who obviously don’t understand the movie, in which the title character is a tool intended for left-wing forces which turn out to be right-wing forces.)
Seven Days In May is far more straightforward. It’s a gripping, stylish, well-written thriller that is well worth seeing.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Decked out in black tie and formal dresses, guests at Mr. Jefferson’s Capital Ball finished their salmon with horseradish sauce just as the band lured them onto the dance floor with classics including “Shout” and “My Girl.” Some of the people who paid up to $400 a couple to attend the event in the Grand Ballroom of the historic Mayflower Hotel joined in the Electric Slide.
The ball was more than just another Friday night party to ease Washington into the weekend. It had the commendable purpose of raising money for scholarships to the University of Virginia.
But not the kind of scholarships that go to low-income students based solely on their financial need. The proceeds from Mr. Jefferson’s Capital Ball are destined for merit aid for applicants who have the high grade-point averages and top scores on entrance tests that help institutions do well on college rankings. Merit aid can also attract middle- and upper-income students whose families can pay the rest of the tuition bill and therefore furnish badly needed revenue to colleges and universities.
As institutions vie for income and prestige in this way, the net prices they’re charging the lowest-income students, after discounts and financial aid, continue to rise faster on average than the net prices they’re charging higher-income ones, according to an analysis of newly released data the universities and colleges are required to report to the U.S. Department of Education.
This includes the 100 higher-education institutions whose leaders attended a widely publicized White House summit in January and promised to expand the opportunities for low-income students to go to college. In fact, the private universities in that group collectively raised what the poorest families pay by 10 percent, compared to 5 percent for wealthier students, according to the analysis by The Dallas Morning News and The Hechinger Report based on information the U.S. Department of Education released this month covering 2008-09 to 2012-13, the most recent period available.
Not only did the White House pledge schools raise their net prices faster for the poorest than for higher-income families on a percentage basis, the new figures show; nearly a third increased the actual dollar amount more quickly for their lowest-income than their higher-income students.
At the University of Virginia, for instance, the poorest students saw their net price climb $4,313 over that period, compared to $2,687 for students in the top earning bracket.
“Institutions need to remain vigilant in making sure that the students with the highest need have the highest access to aid,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell said when asked about the disparity between the promises made by institutions and their real-world performance.
The White House has scheduled a follow-up summit for Thursday on the issue of keeping college affordable for the lowest-income students.
At the first summit, UVA President Teresa Sullivan was among the leaders who pledged to help poor families afford the price of college. From the start of the economic downturn through 2013, however, UVA raised the net price for its very poorest students by 69 percent, more than three times faster than for wealthier students, whose tuition increased 21 percent, the federal figures show. And even since January, beginning with the class that entered this fall, the public university dropped a policy of meeting full need for the lowest-income students without requiring them to take out loans and now asks in-state families to borrow up to $14,000 over four years and out-of-state families up to $28,000.
“All too many elite, extremely wealthy colleges and universities that should be operating as engines of socioeconomic mobility are instead calcifying inequality,” said Michael Dannenberg, director of higher education at the nonpartisan think tank The Education Trust.
What’s “Net Price”?
Colleges are required to annually report their average net prices—the total cost of tuition, fees, room, board, books, and other expenses, minus federal, state, and institutional scholarships and grants — to the Education Department. They must also break down those prices based on students’ family income, from the lowest — $30,000 or less — to the highest — $110,000 or more.
There are limitations to the data. They cover only full-time freshmen who get federal grants, loans, or work-study jobs. The most recent figures cover the period ending more than a year before that January White House summit. And some schools dispute how net price should be determined and use their own calculations that are different from the federal formula.
But the figures give the only available picture of what students from different income brackets pay to study at the same university or college. The data also make clear that, while lower-income students at many of the institutions represented at the White House summit still pay less than higher-income ones, their net prices are rising faster on an inflation-adjusted percentage basis than the net prices charged to students more able to pay. In some cases, costs for the wealthier families are actually falling.
Even at the 36 taxpayer-supported public universities that signed the White House pledge, poor students paid an average net price of about $8,000 in 2008-09 and almost $10,000 in 2012-13. That’s a 25 percent increase. During the same period, wealthier students at those schools saw their average net price go from about $18,000 to $21,000, a 16 percent increase. The figures have been adjusted for inflation.
Universities “are giving lots of merit aid to kids who don’t need it,” and less financial aid to those who do, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank The Century Foundation.
In fact, Kahlenberg said, “There are powerful incentives for universities to avoid admitting and enrolling low-income students. The way that universities compete is on prestige and on the U.S.News & World Report rankings, and you get no credit for having a generous financial aid program that brings in more low-income students.”
Colleges Respond
A UVA spokesman stressed that Mr. Jefferson’s Capital Ball is run by an independent foundation of alumni and other supporters, not by the university itself. He also said the elimination of the no-loan policy for low-income students was unavoidable because the cost of assisting them exclusively with grants had nearly doubled since 2008. Requiring all students to borrow is projected to save the university more than $10 million through 2018.
“UVA has committed to providing the necessary need but also needs to ensure that the program is sustainable,” the spokesman, McGregor McCance, said.
Heated protests over the changes, however, brought attention to the fact that, even as it was cutting the cost of providing financial aid to its poorest students, UVA was spending $12 million on a new squash facility and increasing its marketing budget by $18 million annually. Since then, a member of the Board of Visitors, Blue Ridge Capital president John Griffin, has pledged $4 million for scholarships for high-achieving low-income students and to seed an endowment for financial aid for top low-income undergraduates.
A few other universities and colleges that were represented at the White House “Improving College Opportunity” summit said their net prices for low-income students appeared to be increasing more quickly than they really have because they use different formulas than the federal government does to calculate whether or not a student has financial need.
For example, while the government takes into account only the income of the custodial parent in the case of a divorce, these colleges also factor in the income of the parent who does not live at home, and often the value of real estate and other holdings. This means they do not necessarily regard as low income the same students the federal government does, and may not provide them with much financial aid.
That’s one reason Claremont McKenna College said it appeared to have more than doubled its net price for its poorest students — 10 times as fast as for their richer classmates — in spite of also signing the White House pledge, spokesman Max Benavidez said.
“Moving from one formula in reporting aid to another completely different methodological formula may account for the misimpression of a large increase,” Benavidez said, though he would not provide the formula the college uses.
Another White House-pledge college that uses its own formula to calculate need, Oberlin, did provide specifics. While federal figures show it doubled the net price for its poorest students at a rate 10 times as fast as for the highest group, Oberlin’s own calculations — which include the earnings of both parents in cases of divorce, making fewer students qualify as low income than the federal method—show that the net price for the poorest students hardly budged in the last three years and fell in 2012-13, said Debra Chermonte, dean of admissions and financial aid.
Nor are seemingly wealthier families always necessarily able to afford tuition without help. Some may live in places with high costs of living, leaving them less disposable income, or have children close in age who go to college at the same time.
“You might be making $200,000 a year, but you just got divorced and that’s a factor and this is a factor and there are other factors,” said Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University.
Another president, Patrick Leahy of Wilkes University, said, “There’s plenty of aid going to the $80,000 [earners] and below, but once you get to $80,000 it’s not like it’s some magic number and you can suddenly afford tuition.”
Other universities and colleges at which the net price for low-income students has shot up faster than for higher-income ones conceded that financial aid based on merit, as opposed to need, is increasingly important to their bottom lines.
“Tuition-driven schools like UVM must think holistically about the entire undergraduate population and use more merit aid than in the past,” said Enrique Corredera, spokesman for the public University of Vermont, another school that signed the White House pledge but has more than doubled the net price for its poorest students, from $4,500 in 2008-09 to $11,000 in 2012-13. Meanwhile, the net price for students in top income group stayed flat at $21,000 a year. “We do this to attract academically talented students, who play a significant role in determining our ability to attract other students.”
Corredera said wealthier students, whose families can afford to pay at least some of the tuition, also subsidize financial aid for their poorer classmates.
That subsidy is under attack in some states. The board of governors of North Carolina’s public universities, for example, is considering capping the proportion of tuition revenue that could be applied toward financial aid for low-income students, arguing that more affluent students shouldn’t be forced to cover the costs of their less affluent classmates. Iowa has already stopped its universities from using any of their in-state residents’ tuition toward financial aid.
Cuts in state allocations for higher education have also reduced the money available for financial aid for low-income students, said some other public universities, including the University of Arkansas.
“People who come from at-risk families are just as smart, just as talented as anyone else, and should have the same opportunities,” the university’s chancellor, G. David Gearhart, said at the time that he, too, signed the White House pledge. “A flagship, land-grant university should take this responsibility. It’s a big obligation but it’s one that is part of our heritage.”
Yet the University of Arkansas raised its net price for the poorest families by 9 percent while lowering it 6 percent for wealthier ones between 2008-09 and 2012-13. The lopsided changes in cost there came even before the Arkansas State Lottery Scholarship was cut last year by more than 50 percent, said university spokeswoman Laura Jacobs, threatening to reduce even more funding reserved for low-income students.
“There’s a glaring lack of political leadership around this in the states,” said Michael McLendon, professor of higher-education policy at Southern Methodist University. Rather than in need-based financial aid, McLendon said, “It’s politically popular to invest a lot of state money in merit-based aid. It’s very appealing to the middle class.” But, he said, “It’s not helpful for boosting higher-education access or completion for the poorest kids.”
There’s at least one glimmer of promise for critics of current aid practices. As the heat on this matter is being turned up, states, on average, slightly increased the share of financial aid they allocated for low-income students, as opposed to other students, in 2012-13, the latest year for which that figure is available, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs.
On the other hand, the inflation-adjusted total amount of aid declined.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University, in collaboration with the Dallas Morning News and the Education Writers Association.
Related stories:
College, federal financial aid increasingly benefits the rich
Poorer families are bearing the brunt of college price hikes, data show
Spiraling graduate student debt raises alarms
College-rating proposal shines spotlight on powerful lobby
The real cost of college? It’s probably even higher than you think
CHICAGO, Nov 29 (Reuters) – A Nordstrom worker shot by her former boyfriend in a Chicago store died on Saturday, police sources said.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office identified the victim as Nadia Ezaldein, 22, of Hialeah, Florida. The man, identified as Marcus Dee, 31, shot himself and was declared dead at the scene, police said. His place of residence was not known.
The shooting, on the second floor of the high-end retailer in the popular “Magnificent Mile” shopping district, sent Black Friday customers scattering from the store.
The woman’s family said Dee had physically abused her throughout their relationship, and had harassed both the woman and her family since their breakup last December, the Chicago Tribune reported. (Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Dan Grebler and Clarence Fernandez)
C. M. Rubin’s global education report from the UK, Puerto Rico and Pakistan.
In November, I continued my conversations with world leaders on the frontiers of education reform. Each of this month’s leaders dealt with situations that seemed unmanageable: from entrenched gender stereotypes to impoverished conditions. But by following alternate routes and proposing new self-images, all three were able to foster unprecedented growth.
From Manchester, I talked to Principal Vicky Beer, a leader of By Schools for Schools, an agency led by successful school principals that encourages schools to cooperate in order to bring about further improvements. She shared with me how this collaborative system fosters growth that cannot be attained when schools work independently from each other. Education Professor Mel Ainscow commented that the program differs from mainline British reform measures, which tend to focus on “top down interventions” at the level of individual schools, often putting the pressure and blame on teachers. He added, “In essence, it builds on the idea that within schools and the communities they serve, there are untapped resources that can be mobilized in order to transform schools from places that do well for many children to ones that can reach out to all.”
From Puerto Rico, I talked to mathematics professor Dr. Hector Rosario about how negative gender stereotypes can get in the way of academic performance, and about strategies for resisting this. Puerto Rico and Finland have shown that without such stereotypes, the gap between male and female performance in math has disappeared, however, the United States still has work to do. Rosario presented statistics that demonstrate that stereotypical assumptions lead to poor performance, advising that “the US could have a large return if it invests in improving girls’ image of themselves and boys’ image of girls as mathematically and scientifically capable of climbing equally great heights.”
From England, I talked to Sir Michael Barber (Chief Education Advisor, Pearson) about his recently published report, The Good News from Pakistan, which showcases the revolutionary reform movement he started in Punjab – an initiative that posed one of the greatest challenges to education improvement in the world. As Britain’s Special Representative on Education in Pakistan, Sir Michael proved that even the most difficult jobs, when met with rigorous responsibility, can be completed with effective results. Pakistan is not only looking up, with more students completing education programs, but is also showing it’s own leadership, and thus growing independently from external aid. He had once called it the biggest education reform challenge on the planet, yet saying, “I always thought that one of the big problems in Pakistan would be that in the people’s heads, they really didn’t think things could change. My personal job was never to doubt that we could do this. So I always expressed confidence, but probably the thing that I’m most excited about is the new confidence and belief that the people have that they can change things.”
All three commitments–Sir Michael’s commitment to a promise of change in a country that seemed to have little hope; Dr. Rosario’s commitment to balancing gendered representation of mathematics; and Vicky Beer’s commitment to the community as the locus for growth–have shown excellent results and have proven that to change one’s imagined sense of the problem is the first step to changing the problem itself.
C. M. Rubin
Photo is courtesy of Sir Michael Barber and the Good News from Pakistan report.
C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland, is the publisher of CMRubinWorld, and is a Disruptor Foundation Fellow.
Ebay’s back with another great Black Friday weekend deal, this time for PlayStation owners. There’s not much to explain here; you give eBay $40, and they’ll email you a code for $50 to spend on PlayStation Network. Happy gaming! [eBay]
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama tried to draw attention to independently owned businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a day that is increasingly being marketed as one for deal-hungry consumers to remember to patronize these mom-and-pop outlets while doing their holiday shopping.
He bought bags of books — 17 titles in all — during a stop at Politics and Prose, a popular Washington bookstore now owned by a former Washington Post reporter and his wife, also a former Post reporter who also worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House and State Department.
In recent years, the Saturday after Thanksgiving has been advertised as “Small Business Saturday.” It’s designed to drive foot traffic to independent businesses in between the frenzy of Black Friday sales at mass retailers and the Cyber Monday deals available online.
Obama browsed the bookstore’s racks with his daughters, Malia and Sasha. He held one shopper’s baby and chatted with author David Baldacci. While paying at the cash register, another patron encouraged Obama to close the U.S. facility in Cuba where suspected terrorists are detained.
“Hope you can close Guantanamo,” the patron said.
“We’re working on it,” Obama replied, then cheerily added to the crowd of shoppers: “Any other issues?”
Obama also joked, “Hope it works,” when he handed his credit card to the cashier. That appeared to be a reference to when a restaurant declined his card while he dined out in New York City in late September.
Obama bought a mix of titles apparently chosen to satisfy readers young and old. The White House declined to reveal how much he paid.
Among the books in the president’s shopping bags for mature readers were “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China” by New Yorker writer Evan Osnos, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by surgeon Atul Gawande and “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr.
For younger readers, Obama’s purchases included three titles in the “Redwall” series by Brian Jacques, two titles in the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park and “A Barnyard Collection: Click, Clack, Moo and More” by Doreen Cronin.
Obama and his daughters also shopped at Politics and Prose on the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year.
Charlie Cook, one of the most respected political experts in the country, believes Hillary Clinton has only a 25-30 percent chance of running for president, and in any case he thinks she is either “rusty” or “she has lost her fastball.” He bases that on her disastrous book tour, in which she said some very inappropriate things and also did not sell many books.
Performing arts organizations are complicated enterprises to run. Keeping them afloat prompts ever-new experiments. One of the latest is the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, formed by clarinetist cum entrepreneur Benjamin Mitchell and an ambitious group of L. A. musicians, inspired by New York’s Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Its goal is straightforward: create audience encounters of a closer kind with engaging performances of classic and new works. Its means are unorthodox: as with the Orpheus, scrap the conductor in favor of more collaborative leadership on and off the podium.
Founder Mitchell says it this way: “I decided to create Kaleidoscope for a multitude of reasons. Although there are many wonderful orchestras in Los Angeles, and some groups occasionally perform without a conductor, we would be the only professional orchestra that performs solely this way. I’m passionate about sharing a collective vision in much the same way chamber music creates a more intimate experience for the musicians involved and presenting concerts at the highest level possible. I also want us to explore less traditional ways to reach out to audiences that help the concert experience be more personal and meaningful to all people.”
Kaleidoscope’s season launched last weekend at two local churches in Pasadena and Santa Monica. I caught the second performance last Sunday at the latter city’s First Presbyterian Church, a music-friendly space known to audiences for its live acoustics and residency of Jacaranda Music. Featured were two perennial favorites by Copland and Beethoven, not novel choices but surefire crowd pleasers.
Copland’s beloved Appalachian Spring is an atmospheric 1945 score of rural Americana based on an earlier ballet. Characterful solos by woods and brass, especially from Mitchell’s clarinet, colored quiet evocations of the nation’s expansive heartland, suggested by the work’s frequent open fourths and fifths and folk tunes of the early pioneers like the now ubiquitously heard “Simple Gifts.”
Even more impressive was a tour de force performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which Richard Wagner famously called the “apotheosis of the dance.” It’s a rhythmic, tuneful joyride from the first movement’s charmed awakenings to the last one’s frenzied bacchanal. The 35-member ensemble’s snap-crackle performance of it brought the audience to its feet at the conclusion.
The gentleness of the Copland and the rambunctiousness of the Beethoven showcased two sides of an already remarkable group cohesion within the ranks of an orchestra whose members range in age from mostly younger adults to a few seasoned pros, and whose permanent membership is still a work in progress, according to Mitchell.
Successful music ensembles of all sizes must conform as one unit to the ever-shifting tempos, dynamics, and rhythms of great works of music. To make that happen, the conductor’s role is often likened to that of an autocrat. Kaleidoscope’s approach attempts to achieve equally precise results but in a more democratic way; leadership comes from within the ranks. Players engage in give-and-take discussions at rehearsals, but when it’s performance time they take their cues from their section leaders or, if playing as a full ensemble, from the concertmaster.
Notable discipline in this performance was characterized by consistent bowing patterns in the strings. Also notable was that leadership positions shifted between the two works. Concertmaster and section leaders in the Copland became last chair players in the Beethoven. That switch reinforces a more democratic, less autocratic approach to Kaleidoscope’s music making.
As go democratic societies, perhaps also will go this new Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra’s foray into an uncertain but hopeful collective future. We wish them well in their new endeavor.
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Concerts continue this season at Pasadena’s First Baptist Church and Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church, as follows:
Series 2 (Feb. 6 & 8) “Paris to LA” will feature works of Debussy and Ravel paired with Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony.
Series 3 (March 6 & 7) “Tales and Tribulations” will focus on tales of childhood through Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.
Series 4 (May 1 & 3) will conclude the season with world premiere performances of Los Angeles-based composer Lior Rosner’s Awake and Dream, featuring violinist (and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra Concertmaster) Katia Popov, as well as Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.
Tickets are $25 for general admission, $10 college students and senior citizens, and no charge for ages 17 and younger. For more details on artists and ticket information, see: www.kco.la
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Photo of Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra by Kathryn Nockels used by permission.
Photo of Benjamin Mitchell by Carlin Ma used by permission.
Rodney Punt can be contacted at Rodney@ArtsPacifica.net
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Officials say New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, has been hospitalized.
The governor’s office says Saturday the elder Cuomo is being treated for a heart condition. A gubernatorial spokeswoman says the 82-year-old former three-term governor is in good spirts and is thankful for the best wishes and support he’s received.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo also spent the Thanksgiving Day holiday at the hospital with his father.
Mario Cuomo’s condition and details on his heart condition weren’t disclosed. The spokeswoman says more updates will be provided “as appropriate.”
The Daily News first reported the ex-governor’s hospitalization.
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