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If you think a quintet with the name Classical Jam is just a bunch of young hotshots who enjoy bashing Beethoven and back-beating Brahms, you would be right — and wrong.
The members of the group — a vibrant ensemble for flute, percussion, violin, viola and cello — are indeed hotshot musicians, graduates of Juilliard, the Oberlin Conservatory, the New England Conservatory and Indiana University. But in addition to performing works by Mozart, Bach and Brahms with the utmost respect and m...
Classical Jam, consisting of Jennifer Choi, violin; Cyrus Beroukhim, viola; Wendy Law, cello; Marco Granados, flute, and Justin Hines, percussion, performs Aug. 30 at the Levitt Pavilion at SteelStacks in Bethlehem. The free concert, only the second classical concert presented in the Levitt series in its two years, fea...
"It's an unusual combination of instruments, but when I put the ensemble together about five years ago, I wasn't thinking about the instrumentation but rather the performers, all highly trained musicians and teaching artists at places like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic. Everyone is interested...
Law formed the group to bring classical music to new audiences, especially those who feel they can't relate to it.
"I just basically got tired of being told that classical music was dying," Law says. "I thought, you know, there's got to be a way to connect with contemporary audiences, and there's got to be a way to do it without sacrificing the integrity of the music. We just have to be creative in out programming and how we engage...
With that mission, Classical Jam presents a wide variety of programs. On Aug. 30, in a program called "From the Street to the Concert Hall," the group will examine how composers throughout history have incorporated popular elements of their time into their music. Pieces such as Piazzolla's "Oblivion" and "Escualo" are ...
In addition to some straight-up classics, which include Mozart's D Major Flute Quartet, the group will get its improv juices flowing with Law's "Hong Kong Jam," as well as in a piece by percussionist Hines. "I wrote 'Hong Kong Jam' because there's not a lot of stuff written for our instrumentation," says Law, who was b...
Law admits there was some resistance from the ensemble to its name when she first suggested it. "But I kind of went with my gut feeling — I thought the name actually does describe what we do. We are a classical ensemble, we do advocate variety, and jam is the fun part of what we do — we love to improvise. But we also i...
Says violist Beroukhim, "With an older crowd, we won't do anything too crazy, but we still do quite a bit of improvisation, and they seem to like that very much. We don't improv the hard-core classical pieces, although we might take a well-known piece and kind of go into our own world a little bit, put our own spin on ...
Both Law and Beroukhim agree the best thing about playing in the group is the way everyone contributes something unique to the music. "It's a process of mutual discovery, everyone bringing their own creative insights to it. It always changes from performance to performance, and never goes stale," Beroukhim says.
•Classical Jam, 7 p.m. Aug. 30, Levitt Pavilion at Steelstacks, First Street and Founders Way, Bethlehem. Free. http://www.artsquest.org, 610-332-1300.
Although Labor Day officially celebrates the economic and social contributions of American workers, it has come to be celebrated by many of us as the symbolic end of the summer.
Either way, it's a most American holiday, and what better way to celebrate than by hearing some mostly American music performed by a quintessentially American band.
On Sunday, the Allentown Band presents a Labor Day concert at the Mauch Chunk Opera House in Jim Thorpe. Theaters such as the Opera House were built for community bands, and John Philip Sousa, who greatly influenced the Allentown Band, and his band were regular performers there.
Featured performers include band clarinetist Steve Reisteter, soprano Evelyn Stewart and baritone Chet Brown.
Certainly one program highlight will be hearing Reisteter hit the highest note the clarinet is capable of (the C two times over the staff) in Andre Messager's "Solo de Concours," a 5-minute tour de force of devilish difficulty employing all forms and styles of playing. No wonder the English translation of the work, com...
Soprano Evelyn Stewart is well-known to area audiences, with solo appearances with the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, the Allentown Band, the Moravian College Orchestra and many others. The Moravian College grad will sing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "God Bless America," and a duo with baritone Chet Brown in se...
Brown, a vocal instructor at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts, performs locally with the Frank DiBussolo Group. He'll be featured in "God Bless the USA" and Hoagy Charmichael's "Georgia on My Mind."
Also on the program are many band favorites, including Suppe's rousing "Poet and Peasant Overture," Meredith Willson's "76 Trombones," a medley of Morton Gould classics, music by Richard Rodgers, and, of course, Sousa.
On Sept. 4 at the Carmike 16 theater in Allentown, "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci," opera fans' favorite double billing, can be seen in an encore presentation of a live performance from La Scala in Milan, Italy.
Ever since the Metropolitan Opera combined both short operas on a double-bill in 1893, the pairing has been referred to in the operatic world colloquially as "Cav and Pag."
Presented in HD and surround sound, the performance features tenor José Cura as the tormented, betrayed Canio in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and tenor Salvatore Licitra as the unfaithful husband Turiddu in Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana."
Running time is 2 hours and 55 minutes.
•"Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci," 7 p.m. Tuesday, Carmike 16, 1700 Catasauqua Road, Allentown. Tickets: $25. 610-264-9694 or http://www.carmike.com.
Other performers on the show include Cardi B, Halsey, Khalid, Mariah Carey, Carrie Underwood and Post Malone.
Swift joins previously announced performers Cardi B (with Bad Bunny and J Balvin), Halsey, Khalid, Mariah Carey, Carrie Underwood, Post Malone featuring Ty Dolla Sign, Ciara, Missy Elliott, Dua Lipa and Panic at the Disco, who will pay tribute to Queen. Tracee Ellis Ross is hosting the fan-voted awards show, which will...
Cardi B tied Drake for the most AMA nominations this year, with each scoring eight nods. Other top nominated artists are Ed Sheeran and Post Malone with six noms each, followed by Camila Cabello with five nods.
"The King's Speech" is favored in the original screenplay category.
Through the years, the Academy has favored one-legged ballplayers, Opera-singing polio victims and riled-up do-gooders. Are today’s nominees on target?
If, as many awards gurus predict, Aaron Sorkin and David Seidler win Oscars for writing The Social Network and The King’s Speech, respectively, it will be the first time in history that biographical screenplays will have won in both writing categories, adapted and original.
Although the odds seem tougher, the same would be true if Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy’s adaptation of 127 Hours and the original by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson for The Fighter prevailed. Either way, the “reality” factor has recently become more popular with Academy voters than ever before, accounting f...
Since the dawn of talkies, 21 films that were predominantly biographical have won writing Oscars of one kind or another, out of 86 nominations. While the nature of Hollywood biographies has changed and broadened over the years, The King’s Speech has one thing in common with a majority of its predecessors that The Socia...
The first two biographical films to win writing Oscars, in 1937 and 1938, were Warner Bros.’ seriously venerating studies of two major 19th century French figures: The Story of Louis Pasteur, about the pioneering chemist, written by Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney, and The Life of Emile Zola, concerning the writer ...
None of these, nor any of the five other biographies nominated in the 1930s — Rasputin and the Empress, Viva Villa!, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Great Ziegfeld and Young Mr. Lincoln — seems especially germane to the time they were made in the way such films would in later decades. The only biographical film during the 19...
The other nominees included two more in the genius-scientist subgenre, Edison, the Man and Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, plus the musical Jolson Sings Again and the ultra-low-budget gangster film Dillinger. The Stratton Story, about a one-legged baseball player, copped a best story win for Douglas Morrow.
Two other great films from the period are relevant, even though they can’t strictly be called biographies because their central figures were fictionalized. In 1941, Charles Chaplin was nominated for his script for The Great Dictator, in which he portrayed a ruler who was Hitler in everything but name. The following yea...
Six of the eight bio-scripts nominated in the 1950s were about real-life performers or artists. The only winners among the octet, both in 1956, were studies of beleaguered female singers: Love Me or Leave Me, about the scandal-plagued chanteuse Ruth Etting, for the screen story by Daniel Fuchs, and Interrupted Melody, ...
Royals and political/military figures dominated the eight nominated biographical films of the 1960s, most of which reached well into the past. The winners, all based on distinguished plays, were Becket, adapted by Edward Anhalt; A Man for All Seasons, by original playwright Robert Bolt; and The Lion in Winter, by James...
The 1970s saw some new types of people serving as the subjects of the nine biographical films nominated for their scripts, as well as a shrinking period between current days and those onscreen. Two were about New York City cops: The French Connection, for which Ernest Tidyman won for best adaptation in 1972, and Serpic...
The 1980s, when 10 biographies received writing nominations, saw the political-activist model blossom for the Academy. The winner among them was Gandhi, with John Briley honored for his original screenplay, and other contenders in this group included Coal Miner’s Daughter, Reds, Silkwood, Salvador, Gorillas in the Mist...
In the 1990s, portraits of artists further increased in popularity among Oscar voters, with five of the decade’s 13 biographical script nominations being so oriented. The only winner among them was Gods and Monsters, a heavily fictionalized look at film director James Whale, adapted by Bill Condon, but also nominated w...
During the past decade, when a record 14 Oscar-nominated scripts featured biographical underpinnings, the subjects and natures of the films varied ever more widely. The three winners centered on distinctly unusual individuals: an unstable mathematician in A Beautiful Mind, adapted by Akiva Goldsman; a Polish musician w...
Five more nominees focused on figures involved in the arts in the widest sense: American Splendor, The Aviator, Finding Neverland, Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck. British royalty popped up yet again in The Queen; a familiar American president returned in Frost/Nixon; political activists were center stage in Erin ...
It is also possible that contemporary activist do-gooder types are now the most likely candidates as subjects for modern inspirational films. Still, the past is always more reassuring than the present, which is why there will always be room for films like The King’s Speech, in which history can be molded in such a way ...
A worker cleans a window in Ho Chi Minh City. "You think you got it tough? Think again," reads the caption for the pic.
Snails steamed with lemongrass and served with ginger fish sauce, an exotic dish in Vietnam which many believe is very nutritious.
Workers at a mechanics shop in Ho Chi Minh City.
A snack bike in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam's overloaded bikes have caught the interest of many visitors, and photojournalists from various agencies including Daily Mail and Business Insider.
Contact numbers for construction services are seen on a wall in Ho Chi Minh City. The illegal advertisement practice is prevalent across the country.
A woman catches fish in baskets in Ha Long Bay.
A church built by the French during the colonial time in Da Lat, the Central Highlands.
The Tomb of Khai Dinh (1885-1925), one of the emperors of Vienam's last ruling family Nguyen in Hue.
A man sells home-made herbal tea on a street in Hoi An.
A chessboard of rice fields captured from an aircraft in northern Vietnam.
The game and fauna service said on Friday they had recently found a young Bonelli’s eagle dead, believed from poisoning, along with a number of birds of the corvids species in a field in Menogeia in the Larnaca district.
A number of rodents were also found dead close by.
“At first sight the cause of death seems to be poisoning since the birds had no visible injuries while there were also dead insects on the rodents, which is usually the first indication of poisoning,” the game and fauna services said in an announcement. The eagle was taken to the state vet services for further tests.
The Bonelli’s eagle (Aquila fasciata) is a species under threat in Cyprus.
This is the second such incident the past six months in the Larnaca district, the service said.
Last September three Black-winged Kites (Milvus migrans) were found dead from poisoning in a farming area near the village of Maroni. Close by, game fund officers had found pieces of meat and animal entrails.
The service said that birds of prey die from poison baits placed by farmers and others to kill foxes and wild dogs that attack livestock.
“Unfortunately, poisoning is one of the main causes of the decline of the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) population in Cyprus – poisoning was the cause of the death of seven griffons in the period 2015-2016 and one of the reasons for the disappearance of the cinereous vulture as a nesting species, while several species ...
Poison baits also kill other species, it said, such as partridges, ducks, rabbits and mouflon.
It reiterated that poisoning animals and especially predators is an illegal and immoral act with multiple negative consequences to the environment.
BirdlifeCyprus said earlier in the week that during a recent bird count of the vulture population, in total and across all observer teams, they recorded 17 vultures.
The service urged the public to notify authorities when coming across dead wildlife.
There is simply NO WILL to limit and licence access to deadly POISON, much of which are banned substances in EU anyway, let alone the will to monitor or enforce any such access. POISON is Cyprus equivalent of GUN CONTROL in USA, the hunters and peasants insist on right to use poison in this Banana Republic. Furthermore...
Unfortunately no surprise. Wildlife is not protected.
How are these nasty people getting hold of poison so readily , the government needs to radically restrict access to such poisons .
An illegal practice which never seems to be solved by the relevant authorities. What a godforsaken country.
When the tribal leader is praising ‘pottery’ what do you expect ?
Introducing a weekly universal basic income (UBI) for everyone in Britain would have a net cost worth less than the aggregate cuts to benefits since 2010, according to a report.
The government could make tax-free payments of £60 to every adult, £175 for those over 65 and £40 for each child under 18, regardless of other income, in a proposal designed to cut rising levels of poverty and inequality across the country.
The report by the economists Stewart Lansley and Howard Reed, and published by the leftwing thinktank Compass, said that the net cost of reworking the tax and benefits system would be £28bn, a figure less than the aggregate cuts to welfare since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.
The changes would return social security spending back to the level of a decade ago to help cover the costs of the UBI, alongside what the economists said would be some modest increases in income tax for higher-paid workers.
The report comes a week after the launch of a similar plan from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank was welcomed by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, in a signal of the growing interest in UBI, and as economists increasingly look at ways to finance a basic income proposal.
Under the NEF proposal, the tax-free personal allowance would be scrapped and the proceeds used to fund a flat payment of £48.08 a week for every adult.
There are concerns that UBI systems diminish work incentives, although supporters say they will become increasingly necessary as the rise of the automated economy will put greater numbers of workers’ jobs at risk.
UBI trials in Finland, the only advanced economy to launch such a widespread scheme, found that people receiving basic incomes were happier, but they were no better and no worse at finding employment than a control group.
Some economists on both the left and the right have argued for UBI as a source of personal empowerment, providing citizens with more choice over work, education, training, leisure and caring. Others argue that UBI would be too expensive and would be difficult to set at the right level, so higher spending on public serv...
Supporters of UBI include Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the RSA thinktank, who conducted a review of the gig economy for Theresa May and had previously led Tony Blair’s policy unit. The RSA has worked with the Scottish government to pilot UBI schemes in Scotland.
The Lansley and Reed plan would include the abolition of tax-free allowances to help finance the new UBI. However, it also calls for the introduction of a 15% income tax band for the lowest-paid workers, while existing income tax rates would rise by 3p in the pound.
Child benefit and the state pension would be scrapped, with the UBI rendering it redundant. However, most other elements of the benefits system would remain.
Overall, 75% of households would benefit from the changes, while the richest 25% would lose money. Other impacts would be for child poverty to be cut by more than a third and pensioner poverty by almost a third.
Lansley and Reed said the total cost of the UBI would be as high as £300bn, although this would be mostly covered by the tax and benefit changes, with the final £28bn covered by returning welfare spending to 2010 levels.
Like the Price of Gas? Just Wait!
The worthy journalists of the mainstream media have not seen fit to raise urgent questions about the soaring price of gas, and the current the current administration's role in causing it. Contrast that with the intensely critical commentary directed at George W. Bush when gas spiked during the latter part of his tenure...
Of course, the MSM silence is not amazing at all. President Obama is the darling of the media, and they want desperately to see him re-elected. And investigating the causes of the high price of gas wouldn't help their crusade, because in truth, the outrageous price of gas is primarily Obama's fault -- nay, his design.
In truth, Obama's Green Regime has done everything it can to retard domestic fossil fuel production. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has locked away vast new areas of our country even from exploration, much less from exploitation, of the enormous reserves we possess. Obama has killed (at least for now) the Keysto...
The Green Regime's scheme has been from the jump to jack up the price of fossil fuels in order to get Americans to adopt so-called "green energy" sources, such as solar, wind, and bio-fuels. To this end, even as the administration puts every road-block in the way of domestic fossil fuel product, it lavishes millions of...
The net effect has been to increase our reliance on Middle Eastern oil even more, precisely at a time when that region is reaching the high point of its crescendo of crisis.
But in the immortal words of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "you ain't seen nothing yet!" Obama's controversial EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, has pushed through the agency a passel of new regulations that will raise the cost of electricity dramatically over the next three years.
These new EPA regulations -- clearly intended to make up for the fact that the administration couldn't get its cap-and-trade legislation through Congress even when its own party controlled both houses -- and their baleful effects are the focus of a detailed new study by economist Kathleen Hartnett White (of the Armstro...
In her study ("EPA's Approaching Regulatory Avalanche: 'A Regulatory Spree Unprecedented in U.S. History'"), Ms. White reviews ten major new rules that either have been already adopted or are under review by the agency. She argues convincingly that the EPA is using the Clean Air Act (in a way never intended by Congress...
The rules she discusses are the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), the Electric Utility Maximum Available Control Technology Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants ("Utility MACT"), the Industrial Boiler MACT, the Portland Cement Kiln MACT, the Cooling Water Intake Structure Rule, the Coal Combustion Residuals Rul...
Ms. White estimates that these rules, scheduled to become operational by 2015, will cost our economy more than $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of jobs. This would occur in the midst of the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.
Four of the rules in particular urgently need congressional scrutiny. They clearly aim at severely curtailing coal-fired generation of electricity, with nothing yet available to replace the power. White notes that numerous studies by various organizations, including the Federal Energy Reliability Commission and the Nat...
The result will likely be prices spikes and brown-outs, doubtless leading to job losses here and more companies relocating abroad.
White notes that many of these regulations are based on shaky science, with both the National Academy of Science and even the EPA's own scientific advisory panels criticizing the scientific basis of the various new regulations.

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