Category Archives: Stroking My Chin
Reporting from the other side
Is it over?
For the first time in three weeks, a day in my Google Calendar is completely, utterly empty. There’s nothing there but the date – June 11 – and a blank expanse of white space. My brain is fried, my innards are pickled, my back is killing me, and my culture tank is fully [...]
The end is near
This would seem to be it.
Yesterday’s Piccolo Finale was a sweat-soaked circus of blanketed picnickers who tried bravely to ignore the heat, but they may as well have tried to ignore the pull of gravity. Ninety-six degrees hung over Hampton Park like Hell’s own furnace turned on us, and in the end even the lure [...]
Buzzcast central
On Friday, the Lowbrow slipped away from morning coffee for a duck into the ersatz podcasting booth at The Post and Courier, where he and fellow CP blogger Jonathan Sanchez became one with an entourage of that paper’s present and former Spoleto reporters and bloggers. Listen to the resulting “bloggers summit” podcast here.
After the big [...]
Liberté, fraternité, egalité
The Lowbrow’s heading into the lion’s den this morning. Earlier this week, I proposed a dual-podcast to my blogging compatriots at The Post and Courier, and Geoff, Dan, and Janet seemed to think it was a swell idea. I’d been struck by a post Dan wrote on Monday about blogging as a meta-narrative that has [...]
The poster boy finally gets his day
Composer Philip Glass has just enough of a mix of pop culture caché and serious classical cred to make the premiere of his Book of Longing last night one of the ’07 festival’s top must-be-seen-at events. After all, the man’s face is plastered on every available surface across the peninsula; he’s more recognizable than Bono [...]
So two comedians walk into a ballet studio…
My 90 minutes with Philip Glass’ Book of Longing is now already almost 27 hours past, and on top of that I have to distill some thoughts on today’s final Music in Time concert and this evening’s encounter with the extraordinary (get a ticket now at any cost) Aurelia’s Oratorio. But first, a word on [...]
Spoleto central: Kudu Coffee
If, as Geoff and Dan at SpoletoToday have observed before, the Spoleto press room this year is not quite as buzzing with activity as in previous years, the unofficial top artist hangout spot this festival is more than making up for it. That would be African-themed Kudu Coffee on Vanderhorst Street, half a block from [...]
Hotter than Dutch love
The twenty-something hipster quotient at Friday’s Spoleto Soiree was off the charts and into another realm altogether. You could have powered a small city for a week on the sexual energy crackling around the Gaillard Exhibition Hall, fueled by several open bars, pulse-punding ung-cha-ung-cha from a DJ in the corner, enough liquor to fill the [...]
Talking dirty: a defense of Closer
In today’s Post and Courier, Spoleto overview critic Joshua Rosenblum strokes his chin over a pair of festival plays that have infidelity as their common theme – Spoleto’s drawing room comedy The Constant Wife and Piccolo’s production of Closer, in the little festival’s Stelle di Domani series. In his smartly written argument, Josh observes that [...]
Getting forensic on Spoleto 2007
The 31st Spoleto Festival USA is officially in the past tense. It’s now time to get forensic on the thing. But that’s less easy than it sounds. Part of the difficulty in summing up the festival after the fact lies in its nature; as Mayor Riley noted during the mid-festival tribute to founder Gian Carlo [...]