Fourth of July Orchestra and Summer Concerts

The Garden State Philharmonic performs a free outdoor Fourth of July concert at Ocean County Library, Toms River at 7:30 p.m. Anthony LaGruth conducts a program of classical, pops and patriotic favorites. Bring your own chairs and blankets.

The event is part of the Ocean County Department of Parks and Recreation's "Carousel of Music Series". The series features rock tribute bands, brass and wind ensembles, jazz groups and classical orchestras performing each week, Wednesday through Saturday, at a handful of locations: Veterans Park, Berkeley; Ocean County Library; 10th Street Waterfront Park, Ship Bottom; River Front Park, Point Pleasant; Beachwood Beach; and Heritage Gazebo, Bay Blvd., Lavallette. Most of the scheduled events are at the library.

For a downloadable listing, see the The Parks and Recreation website.

--C.
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SCOTUS: Health Care

With the SCOTUS decision, Obama is politically in a better position since the burden of proof now lies with the Republicans -- they have to prove they have something better. The Constitutionality issue was the biggest hurdle. The GOP had successfully painted Obama's reform as contrary to the Constitution, un-American, creating doubt in his leadership (he is a Constitutional law professor after all). Removal of that doubt will peel off a small number of anti-Obamanites from the Tea Party-led herd. The Republican base will be a hotter group but also a smaller one.

Mitt Romney's "Repeal and Replace" is going to be a very hard sell because he doesn't have a workable plan. The free market can't provide health care for everyone. It can provide health care for everyone that can afford it -- damn good health care. But it can't provide health care for everyone. A free market is competitive, which means Tiffany's health care for some and pawn shop health care or none for others. That's what we have now. It's not humane; as humans, it fails to meet our expectation of compassion.

Note the emphasis on "Replace" in Mitt's new slogan. The Republican camp realizes that voters are more united on this point: a majority want health care for everyone.

As to the Obama law itself: It doesn't do a damn thing to limit drug costs. It's confusing enough that I really don't know how it will pan out for the currently uninsured -- a lot of people who labor to get health care to the poor are happy about the law, for what that's worth. Big health care corporations are way too happy.

The budget numbers being tossed around on both sides don't make a whole lot of sense -- I suspect all of them are a fiction because the reality is too complex and messy to nail down, let alone fit into a campaign speech.

But it is a first step. The president and lawmakers have established the first universal health care system. We've never done that before. Probably it will suck. Hopefully it won't suck worse than what we have now. Hopefully we can keep hammering away at it until we get it right.

But flawed as it is, I think voters are not going to want to give it up, now that they have it.

Romney will make this a central campaign platform until he realizes it's a mistake, and by then it will probably be too late.

Thus, my takeaway from the SCOTUS ruling and subsequent hoopla: Bye-bye, Mitt.

--C.
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OperaNJ in Asbury and Red Bank Jazz Cafe

OperaNJ is launching its summer season at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, with New Jersey Symphony Orchestra members in the pit. Those two productions, H.M.S. Pinafore and Il Travotore, will be coming to Asbury Park's Paramount Theater later in July. Check out the group's website for more information.

The Jazz Arts Project presents its Summer Jazz Cafe at Two River Theatre starting 8 p.m. July 6 and 7 with the Mauricio Zottarelli Trio. Claudio Roditi is the special guest Friday and vocalist Fabiana Masili is the guest soloist Saturday. For more information check out the Jazz Arts Project website.

End of 'Best Of ... '

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has terminated its "Best Of ... " programming experiment.

In 2008, the group introduced the idea of one-hour programs featuring shorter works and excerpts as a way to build audiences in some of its outlying venues, including the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank. In the first season, I recall these shorter movements being linked together with narration, drawn from historical documents. The spoken word idea was abandoned pretty quickly and last season I noticed a return to more traditional programming.

This year, the NJSO scrapped the "Best Of..." idea altogether, returning to full programs of standard length. These concerts at outlying venues will be built around traditional repertoire, with few risks. But at least they'll be full-length concerts and complete works.

I'm glad the NJSO saw fit to make the change and I hope they see a boost in their ticket sales as a result. The "Best Of ... " just felt like a waste of a really good orchestra.

You'll be able to read my other remarks about the NJSO's upcoming 2012-13 season in Sunday's Asbury Park Press (Feb. 12).

--C.
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Composers Concordance 'Ensemble'

Just a quick reminder that the final concert of the Composers Concordance Festival 2012, "Ensemble," takes place tomorrow night, Monday, Feb. 6, at William Paterson University and featuring the directors of Composers Concordance, Gene Pritsker and Milica Paranosic with percussionist/composer/conductor Peter Jarvis and flute legend Robert Dick.

You can find a full article, including some remarks from a brief interview with Peter, on the Asbury Park Press website and in today's (Sunday, Nov. 5) "Sunday Best" section of the Asbury Park Press.

--C.
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Composers Concordance Festival 2012

Just a reminder that the Composers Concordance Festival 2012, a series of five concerts, is under way. The collective emphasizes composers' involvement in the performances, so each concert should offer a direct view into creative minds. It's also billed as "the most eclectic contemporary music festival of the season" so stylistic variety should be expected. The group is directed by Joseph Pehrson, Pat Hardish, Gene Pritsker, Dan Cooper and Milica Paranosic. (Paranosic is absent from the photo above.)

Tonight's event, 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 29 at DROM, 85 Avenue A, New York, is the Third Annual Composers Play Composers Marathon. The list of composers participating:

Yael Acher, Cristian Amigo, Loop B, Dan Barrett, Eve Beglarian, Svjetlana Bukvich-Nichols, Peter Breiner, Luis Andrei Cobo, Valerie Coleman, Dan Cooper, Jed Distler, Patrick Grant, Franz Hackl, Sara Holtzschue, Peter Jarvis, Jonathan Kane, Margaret Lancaster, Andrew M. Lee, Peri Mauer, Daniel Palkowski, Milica Paranosic, Gene Pritsker, David Saperstein, Larry Simon, David Soldier, Rubens Salles, Eleonor Sandresky, Ezequiel Viñao and Michael Wolff.

That list is cut-and-pasted from the Composers Concordance website, where you can find out more information.

Upcoming events are "New Blues" featuring the International Street Cannibals Ensemble, 9 p.m. Jan. 31, at 62 Avenue C; "Electronics" 8 p.m. Feb. 3 at Gallery MC, 549 W. 52 St.; and "Ensemble," 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6 at William Paterson University and directed by Peter Jarvis. I'll be writing about this last event for my Sunday column in the Asbury Park Press.

Check the Composers Concordance website for more info! Here's a clip from the website, featuring Dan Cooper's 'Unsubscribe' for piano four hands, played by Taka Kigawa and Dimitri Dover at Chelsea Art Museum in 2010.



--C.
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Music and Human Identity

I just listened to this radio broadcast via a link on the KUT website.

The recording is a fascinating article on the success of a guitar class in a juvenile correctional facility. Music, it seems, has the power to heighten an individual's sense of self-control and self-worth. One of the interviewees even says, playing the guitar allows these kids to discover something about who they are.

This fits in with the findings the students in my class, Music and the Natural World, keep stumbling onto: music acts as bonding agent and, in helping define us within a group, also reinforces and strengthens our identity as individuals. This appears to be a trait of humanity, not just classical music, not just our culture, not just the Western world.

I just touched on this same subject in a column I wrote yesterday for the Asbury Park Press, appearing this Sunday. By way of acknowledging Christmas, Hannukah and the New Years holidays, I point out this role of music in expressing the spiritual and physical bonds we share as humans.

--C.
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