Welcome to my attempt to keep a weblog, a running sort-of diary on my own web page. There is a tendency to put lots of details of our lives on social media like Facebook or Twitter. I feel there are details of my life of some interet to my community of followers that aren't up to the level of posting on Facebook. So here it is.

     Link to the most-recent entry at the bottom.

     The last four nights were four concerts at four different venues from four different organizations, all of which I support enough to get occasional libations and victuals before concerts. (The American term for victuals is "vittles.")

     2024 January 18, Thursday, was jazz vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. (So when does a singer become a "vocalist"?) I didn't remember ever hearing of her, but I met somebody at Mesa Sunday night who was a big fan, so she likel has a following. She was soft and sweet and seductive and I can't think of any other "S" adjectives here so I'll just say it was a wonderful evening.

     2024 January 19, Friday, was Neil Berg's history of rock-and-roll music at Highland Church in the Musicfest series. He does these concerts where he tells and retells the history of rock and roll with different samples and examples. He has a team of terrific Broadway-circles singers and a band and there wasn't one song in any of his three concerts I attended where I wished he would get to the next one. They were all great and his storytelling is wonderful.

     2024 January 20, Saturday, was the Righteous Brothers at the Chandler Center for the Arts. It looks like an old movie theater and they even sell popcorn, but it has no such history, just a great place for a concert. The Righteous Brothers are neither religious-righteous nor brothers, just a six-decade history of terrific music. Bill Medley is still going at eighty-three, Bobby Hatfield passed away, and Bucky Heard is great, the band is great, the backup vocals were great with Bills' daughter, and his grandchild was on stage for a brief visit. You may know their song "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."

     2024 January 21, Sunday, was the Blue Note Quintet, five jazz veterans of the Blue Note label, at the Mesa Arts Center. These five musicians only started playing together a week ago for this tour. It was an interesting jazz experience for me as I've heard a lot of jazz in my not quite three score and ten and it always takes me somewhere, a different place, a different view, a different emotional state, something different, something else. This ninety minutes of wonderful jazz absolutely didn't do that. Instead this music made me delightfully and deliriously happy to be there and then, right where and when I was in my present state. It's a subtle feeling, I don't know if it was the music or my mood, but it was a special evening.

     This last concert, the Blue Note Quartet, was the kind of music and mood where I wish I could have brought my tape decks and microphones to record the evening so I could relive it as I have relived jazz nights from my graduate-school days in 1980 and 1981.

     As I put the vinyl record on my turntable, I glanced at the label to see that the pianist was none other than our own Jeffrey Siegel. Wow!

     So I brought this record to my next Jeffrey-Siegel concert to share the moment. His eyes lit up as he recalled making that recording so long ago. He recalled arranging with the conductor to record "Rhapsody in Blue" on 1974 February 12, precisely the fiftieth anniversary of the piece. So the fifty-years-and-fifty-years split wasn't just to the year, it was to the day. Jeffrey Siegel was even nice enough to autograph the record box for me.

     I went to the ballet last night, Ballet Arizona's show "Contemporary Moves." I enjoyed it, there was the usual spectacular dance atop recorded music instead of live, but still great.

     The first two pieces were good modern dance, but very little ballet. Somebody said, "Well, it's contemporary," as if that explains why something is either off subject or not very good. It was very good, no problem there, but I find myself whining fairly consistently that ballet shows should be at least 50% ballet.

     My friend suggested I have a more open mind. I asked him how he would feel if he showed up at the opera and there was a four-piece jazz band. "It's contemporary, isn't it?" He said there was some good, recent opera and I said, "Yes, that's my point. I would love to see this modern dance at modern-dance shows, I go to a lot of modern-dance shows, Paul Taylor, Dave Parsons, Momix, Pilobolus, Alvin Ailey, Dorrance, et cetera, but I think ballet shows should have more ballet." There are wonderful new ballet works, most notably my experience with "PS" a year and change ago in Philadelphia.

     The last piece "Rio" was a perfect example of new ballet at its best. It took a piece by Philip Glass, you know the style, endless repetition of a theme without the inspiring musical journey of "Bolero," so it was the dance that nourished the music and made it grow in joy and wonder.