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Cantara Christopher Gives Her Beloved Conductor John Wilson Crib Notes on Todd Field’s Screen Masterpiece, Tár: Love, Teshuvah and Filipinos Will Save Western Music, Part 2

I’ve been saying for years that I long to get into your head, John. Now here’s a movie that shows me the inner workings of a fellow creator so consider the pressure off. I still want to sleep with you though.

Reminder: These crib notes are all meant for you and you alone, my love. Fold them up and put them in your wallet till you need them!

Part 1: Playing to the New York Crowd; Kavanah and Teshuvah in the Kabala; That Fantastic Red Handbag; We All Know That Conductors Hate Sopranos; Lunch With Elliot, or Tosker, Man!

In Part 2:

  • The Master Class
  • Rules of the Game
  • Vita’s Novel

THE MASTER CLASS

  • 11-minute continuous single sweeping shot. Field just outdid Renoir.
  • This is the scene that made Scorsese murmur to himself with satisfaction, That’s my girl.
  • Sarah Chang the prodigy—yes, she would now be an elder to these younglings.
  • René Redzepi! That quip is sooo Frasier.
  • I think she’s referencing Stockhausen in the Punkt Kontrapunkt remark. But who am I to know? They were barely getting over post-“Verklärte Nacht” Schoenberg, the boys in composition class.
  • Olive is a composition student as well as conducting. Max is not.
  • Max is doomed from the start. He chose as his jury piece a composition by the last master class teacher. Because he was inspired? wanted to play it safe/go with the trend? didn’t know any better/has a limited scope? Have these limitations on his scope been imposed by a racist society? These questions except the last go through Lydia’s brain like Mr Spock processing info bytes.
  • Lydia hates the modern atonals, John Cage et al. Pleads for the younglings to invest emotionally in the classics.
  • Man, I can’t wait to get to Olive Kerr. In fact, it’s either her girlfriend in the top row up there who’s shooting this or someone in Max’s support/political group, whatever the fuck that is.
  • Okay, here’s the Olive Kerr thing: one, consider the audience arrangement, John. And I’m really asking because I don’t know if you’ve ever given a master class. Because Lydia really, really pays attention to who’s sitting in front. Mostly it’s girls, and girls of a particular type she finds attractive. Fresh, bright, round faced. And she’s got aural instincts! And she’s a composition student!
  • Without breaking her stride, she subtly shifts her talk toward connecting, in subtle but undeniable ways, with Olive. Some people find this creepy. Some people are gwilo morons. I talk about this subtlety in the “The God Drug Tribe” so stay tuned.
  • When Lydia decides she’s given up on Max, which is early but not too, it’s then she goes all out lesbo commando. I mean, superhot in a Waldorf teacher kind of way!? Manages to bait Max and enchant Olive in the same breath! I know, I know the kid was humiliated but he sooo had it coming.
  • One more! This is the second time Asians are shown in a clear and lengthy shot. And in a strangely apt position. Field uses Asians like David Mamet uses Asians in The Spanish Prisoner, and that’s okay.

RULES OF THE GAME

  • All that talk about composer-muse Alma Mahler leaving Gustav Mahler for architect-and-founder-of-the-Bauhaus-movement Gropius and there goes Lydia back to her Bauhaus apartment in Berlin.
  • Oh, and remember the character who’s at the center of Renoir’s 1939 movie, The Rules of the Game? Octave the failed conductor. Played by the director himself.
  • Metoprolol! breathes the woman who was hospitalized twice for congestive heart failure, the first time at Hospital Eugenio Espejo, Quito.
  • Who Killed Cock Robin? sings Petra loudly. It was the sparrow with his bow and arrow, don’t you know? Klezmer. Sheesh.

VITA’S NOVEL

  • The book is Vita Sackville-West’s novel, Challenge. It was Lydia’s gift to Krista, who has returned it.
  • The love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita is the kind of story that helps define you, if you’re a high-minded yet passionate lesbian who needs to have those two facets of your personality merge in a single narrative. Challenge is Vita’s love letter to Virginia, and a challenge. It’s about a dynamic artist-hero named Julian who claims a beautiful artist-heroine named Eve to be by his side as together they scale the Parnassus of Art. It’s filled with prose like this:
[T]he poet, the creator, the woman, the mystic, the man skirting the fringes of death—were they kin with one another and free of some realm unknown, towards which all, consciously or unconsciously, were journeying? Where the extremes of passion (he did not mean only the passion of love), of exaltation, of danger, of courage and vision—where all these extremes met—was it there, the great crossways where the moral ended, and the divine began? Was it for Eve supremely, and to a certain extent for all women and artists—the visionaries, the lovely, the graceful, the irresponsible, the useless!—was it reserved for them to show the beginning of the road?
  • Vita cast herself as Julian and Virginia as Eve. Lydia went through some cost and effort to find this 1923 first edition to give to Krista. Lydia cast herself as Julian. Remember that when you see that dream sequence late in the movie, that’s a memory of when things went waaay the wrong way and the deepest part of Lydia’s wasn’t just challenged, it was threatened. Drawing the curtain here.

Next: The God Drug Tribe

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Cantara Christopher Gives Her Beloved Conductor John Wilson Crib Notes on Todd Field’s Screen Masterpiece, Tár: Love, Teshuvah and Filipinos Will Save Western Music, Part 3

Ever forward, hope to finish by the end of the week.

Part 1: Playing to the New York Crowd; Kavanah and Teshuvah in the Kabala; That Fantastic Red Handbag; We All Know That Conductors Hate Sopranos; Lunch With Elliot, or Tosker, Man!

Part 2: The Master Class; The Rules of the Game; Vita’s Novel

In Part 3:

  • The God Drug Tribe
  • Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987) and Olga Metkina (2002?-????)
  • John Mauceri and the You-Don’t-Belong-Here Blues

THE GOD DRUG TRIBE

  • Shipibo-Conibo, of course. But first I want to tell you about my first musicology professor, Dr Johannes Riedel (1913-1993). What do he, I, and the tribe all have common? Ecuador.
  • When Dr Reidel was about 25 or so and in school in Berlin, he found out he was about to be deported back to his native Poland, which would’ve been bad for him of course, but for his young wife Judith as well, who surely would’ve ended up in Auschwitz. So to save his wife from being murdered in the ovens, he took a job in a faraway Catholic high school on the coast of Ecuador, teaching choir while studying the region’s Hispanic-based music in preparation for his longed-for-in-the-distance postgraduate work, hopefully in a free country.
  • When I met Dr Reidel I was 14, in a citywide high-school student arts program run by the city of Minneapolis, they were that rich in those days. The Minnesota Opera. The Minnesota Orchestra. Skrowaczewski, man! In college, my dorm (F only) was right across the common from Northrop Auditorium, so I ushered every week to get into the concerts free. Skrowaczewski brought us Karol Szymanowski’s Song of the Night.
  • I wish you and I had been in the Urban Arts Program together John, conductor of my heart. We would’ve had such fun together.
  • But back to the Shipibo-Conibo. More than once while Mister Grumble and I were hanging out in the Mariscal we’d run into hippie backpackers who’d ask us if we knew where the tribe with the god-drug—ayahuasca—could be found. When we told them they’d have go down south, way south, most of them balked and opted just to score crappy weed from the local dealers, which ironically all came down from Mexico anyway.
  • So—ayahuasca+the Shipobo-Conibo is a known thing among the heads among us, one of whom is, at it turns out, Lydia Tár herself.
  • LYDIA IS A HEAD—AND A HEALER. Pay close attention to how she treats Sharon’s dickey heart. I know all about this.
  • Pay attention too to her particular awareness of the energies of those people surrounding her, especially the ones she’s attracted to.
  • This is not a topic fit for the gwilo robots in our “civilized” places and Lydia is smart enough to know she’d be derided and condemned if she talked about it. So let me talk about it because I’m nobody so this won’t get back to me.
  • Ayahuasca is a psilocybin that comes in liquid form. Under close supervision by a shaman (that guy in the photo and in her dreams), you drink it from a bowl and it makes you throw up all the bad stuff in your body/spirit. Then when you’re nice and clean the channels are open and you are confronted with not only your true self, but the Divine.
  • This confrontation can break lesser minds but Lydia has a great, strong mind. I can understand her desire to share her experience with those she considered her equals, going up the Ucayali with Francesca and Krista. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for her. Some rivers you have to travel alone.

more soon…

Next: The Bernstein Tapes

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Cantara Christopher Gives Her Beloved Conductor John Wilson Crib Notes on Todd Field’s Screen Masterpiece, Tár: Love, Teshuvah and Filipinos Will Save Western Music, Part 4

Copy to come…

Part 1: Playing to the New York Crowd; Kavanah and Teshuvah in the Kabala; That Fantastic Red Handbag; We All Know That Conductors Hate Sopranos; Lunch With Elliot, or Tosker, Man!

Part 2: The Master Class; Rules of the Game; Vita’s Novel

Part 3: The God Drug Tribe; Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987) and Olga Metkina (2002?-????); John Mauceri and the You-Don’t-Belong-Here Blues

In Part 4:

coming…

copy to come…

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Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, Sung by Anna Moffo (1964) and Played by the Sinfonia of London (2022), Conducted by John Wilson

One of these is a true vocalise, sung by soprano Anna Moffo and conducted by the legendary Leopold Stokowski.

The other is a strictly instrumental vocalise (which is perfectly all right, Rachmaninoff wrote it for instruments, too) played by the Sinfonia of London, conducted by my bonny John Wilson.

By the way John, if it were in your power to enter the mind and body of any orchestra conductor who ever lived—while they were conducting a particular piece at a particular time and place—who would be that conductor? and what would be the piece, and where and when?

(This is mine. Bernstein—Berlin—Beethoven—Reunification)

Save your answer for when we actually meet.

And Happy New Year to you over in Berlin at Circus Roncalli, my love.

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“Bird Songs at Eventide” by Eric Coates, Sung by Kathryn Rudge, Just for My Bonny 2022 Gramophone Award Winner, John Wilson

John mi vida, white-hot flame of my heart: In celebration of your latest award, I’m serenading you tonight with a song I know you know, because you’ve played it and I’ve sung it, and somewhere in that magical Music Room out there, you and I are playing and singing it together.

My John Wins Another AwardAbove John, his award, and a Chandos exec: Eric Coates’s enduring 1926 sheet music hit, “Bird Songs at Eventide” sung by Liverpool-born mezzo Kathryn Rudge, played by RAM professor James Baillieu.

Here also are the lyrics, which were written by the father of your old housemate: 

Over the quiet hills 
Slowly the shadows fall; 
Far down the echoing vale 
Birds softly call; 
Slowly the golden sun 
Sinks in the dreaming west; 
Bird songs at eventide 
Call me to rest.

Love, though the hours of day 
Sadness of heart may bring, 
When twilight comes again 
Sorrows take wing; 
For when the dusk of dreams 
Comes with the falling dew, 
Bird songs at eventide 
Call me to you.

~Harry Rodney Bennett (1890-1948), writing as Royden Barrie

Listen to John’s new orchestra the SINFONIA OF LONDON here

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Paris Trout with Dennis Hopper and Barbara Hershey, Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, 1991

paris trout

Search the term “bottle+rape+scene+dennis+hopper” and you’ll likely be sent to this entire film, my ex-friend Steve Gyllenhaal’s second feature directorial effort (at 42, he’s 73 now) and Hopper’s purportedly favorite role. Bottle rape at 42:00. There’s a creepy, dreamy, nasty edge in almost all the sex scenes of Steve’s movies, something I think he picked up from David Lynch in imitation of the form—but not the substance—of Lynch’s genius sex-weirdness… Steve, you might remember, directed the 20th episode of the 2nd season of Twin Peaks. But no, nothing of Lynch’s great vision rubbed off on Stephen; ever a journeyman, he was more in the same bag with those mediocre, cold “auteurs” of his era John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.

If we were still talking I would probably bring it up, but as he seems lately to have gone completely off the rails with his bizarre blogging I figure it would be pretty pointless.

UPDATE 11/11/19—Looks like Steve’s getting me in hot water again. Check out these now-archived bizarre reactions to this posting in the Hollywood Babylon group on Facebook. These females and their insulting, sexist, racist remarks impressed me so much I used their names in my latest porn novella.

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The Music of Humoresque (Jean Negulesco dir, Warner Bros 1946): Lalo, Waxman, Wagner etc; Plus My Continuing Lust for BBC Conductor John Wilson, Part 1

There is so much to love in this Joan Crawford flick I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, it is my second-favorite Crawford movie (the first being Rain obviously, as I was in the 1980 version). Secondly, Oscar Levant. Oscar Levant! Novelist Nora Johnson’s object of teenage lust!

Thirdly, the B&W gorgeousness of the movie itself.

The entire film HUMORESQUE (1940) is available to watch here

Fourthly, the music (see below)…

HumoresqueAbove: “City Montage” from Humoresque by Franz Waxman. John Musto, Russell Warner arrangers; Andrew Litton conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

I’ll add links as I find them and like them:

  • Antonín Dvorák / Humoresque, op 101 no 7 in G-flat major
  • Howard Dietz+Arthur Schwartz / I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan
  • Richard Rodgers+Lorenz Hart / My Heart Stood Still
  • Cole Porter / You Do Something to Me
  • Cole Porter / What Is This Thing Called Love?
  • James F. Hanley / Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart
  • Al Dubin+Harry Warren / Don’t Say Good-Night
  • George+Ira Gershwin / Embraceable You
  • George Gershwin / Prelude II
  • George Gershwin / Prelude III
  • Frederic Chopin / Etude in G-flat major op 10 no 5
  • Frederic Chopin / Ballade No 4 in F minor op 52
  • Richard Wagner / Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
  • Georges Bizet, Franz Waxman arr / Carmen Fantasie
  • Edouard Lalo / Symphonie espagnole in D minor op 21
  • Felix Mendelssohn / Violin Concerto in E minor op 64
  • Franz von Suppé / Poet and Peasant Overture
  • Pablo de Sarasate / Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) op 20
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Violin Concerto in D major op 35
  • Henryk Wieniawski / Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor op 22
  • César Franck / Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major
  • Edvard Grieg / Piano Concerto in A minor op 16
  • Sergei Prokofiev / Piano Concerto No 3 in C major op 26
  • Dmitri Shostakovich / Polka from the ballet The Golden Age op 22
  • Johannes Brahms / Waltz in A-flat major op 39 no 15
  • Johann Sebastian Bach / Sonata No 1 in G minor BWV 1001
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov / Flight of the Bumblebee

Read sort of the Part 2 of this, “The Erotic Spell of Full Evening Dress”, here

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My First Music; Or, In Other Words, Pre-John Wilson from 1955 to 1972: 3 English Girls (Petula Clark, Lulu, Dusty Springfield) Plus 1 Aussie (Judith Durham)

I’ll add comments as they come to me.

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Richard Rodney Bennett’s Concerto for Stan Getz Played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Conducted by Bonny John Wilson (Chandos, 2017)

A few insights on the orchestral pieces of the lively and prolific Richard Rodney Bennett (“A Collage Artist” will be the post’s title) to be finished as soon as I, one, do a little necessary sex writing, and, two, actually buy the complete Chandos 4-volume set of the work of John’s distinguished mentor, conducted by John. For now, here’s a recording from a BBC broadcast (yes, bonny John is conductor) that starts off with a few words from the composer himself:

John AlbumAbove my beloved John at 28 and his major musical influence, Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012) [download PDF of Feb 2020 issue of Gramophone with John’s interview here]: Concerto for Stan Getz (I know I knocked their album Orchestral Jazz and rightly so, but this is a swell picture)

By the way John, with your brimming schedule I can imagine you’re not much of a reader, but I’m sure like many you like having useful books at hand, so here are a couple in pdf:

NOTE: “[The English temperament] is disciplinable, and steadily obedient to certain limits, but retaining an inalienable part of freedom and self-dependence, [with a propensity for] spending its exertions within a bounded field, the field of plain sense, of practical utility.” ~ Matthew Arnold The Study of Celtic Literature (1867)

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John Wilson Conducts the Sinfonia of London at the Royal Albert Hall in a Concert of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Others, 16 July 2022

From The Guardian, Fiona Maddocks: “The final work, Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations, was one of the best, most alert and detailed performances you could hope for. Wilson, whose gestures on the podium are so unassuming he appears to do nothing more than beat time, had scrutinised the score, and asked probing questions about every familiar phrase, making it fresh. The Sinfonia of London, mostly a recording ensemble, is made up of leading principals or chamber musicians who want to play for Wilson. You can hear their devotion.”

MY BELOVED CONDUCTOR SPEAKS!

[Proms Director] David Pickard and I had a conversation about Sinfonia Of London’s connection in the past to English music, principally John Barbirolli’s famous record of English music for strings and it is as we know Ralph Vaughan Williams’s 150th anniversary so I thought opening with the Tallis Fantasia would be (a) good thing. And built that around I guess the English romantics and a fairly recent work by a living composer, Huw Watkins, who is Welsh and one of my favorite composers and a piece which he actually happened to write for Adam Walker, who’s our principal flute. The rest of the program con-sists of things you might know and you might not know. Walton’s Partita, which is a tour de force but it’s rarely done, and I think that’s because it’s so impossibly difficult. … Very difficult! One of the first violins came up to me and he said, “This is absolutely bloody murder!” We really sweated over it, and I—I hope to pull it off.

John & SOLAbove: Partita for Orchestra by William Walton (1957) written originally for the Cleveland Orchestra.

Sat 16 July 2022 18:30
Royal Albert Hall
London, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Adam Walker (flute)

EXTRA! Available in PDF:

The entire audio of the BBC Proms 2 BRITISH CLASSICS can be downloaded here

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Hollywood Soundstage; or, John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London Play Orchestral Music from the Movies (Chandos, 2022)

Love this cover. Actually, it’s kind of sophisticated. Look! It has the magic words Hollywood and John Wilson and nothing more need be said. Now I know what to get for Christmas for my other old lady friends.

Hollywood SoundstageAbove: John conducts the Sinfonia of London in Frederick Loewe’s “Embassy Waltz” from My Fair Lady.

Actually, I think that’s Musical Director Johnny “Two-Harps” Green up there with the MGM Orchestra.

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“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Cole Porter from Born to Dance (Roy Del Ruth director, MGM 1936), Just for My Bonny Conductor, John Wilson

Because sometimes you just want to see a beautiful sad-eyed woman singing this song to yet another oblivious bloke in white tie and tails.

Here’s an American musical film starring Eleanor Powell and James Stewart, directed by Roy Del Ruth and released in 1936 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The score, a smutty parody of HMS Pinafore, was composed by Cole Porter.

The plot is sublimely ridiculous: While on leave, sailor Ted Barker (played by James Stewart) meets Nora Paige (Eleanor Powell) at the Lonely Hearts Club, which is owned by Jenny Saks (Una Merkel), the wife of fellow sailor “Gunny” Saks (Sid Silvers), oy. Ted instantly falls in love with Nora. Ted later meets Broadway star Lucy James (Virginia Bruce) aboard a submarine while she’s on a publicity tour. Her damn dog falls overboard, Ted rescues it, and Lucy falls in love with him. Though Ted has already scheduled a date with Nora, he is ordered by his captain, Dingby (Raymond Walburn), to meet Lucy in a nightclub. Nora, who lives with Jenny and her 4 year-old daughter, Sally (Juanita Quigley), aspires to become a Broadway dancer. However, her newfound career is in serious jeopardy when she inadvertently comes between Lucy and her producer McKay (Alan Dinehart). Nora distances herself from Ted after seeing pictures of him and Lucy in a newspaper the next morning. Lucy pressures McKay to stop the press campaign, threatening to leave the Broadway production if any more photos or articles about her and Ted are published. Nora becomes Lucy’s understudy and re-considers her attitude towards Ted. But she’s suddenly fired after McKay tells her to perform a dance that Lucy considers undanceable. Ted, of course, to the rescue. That’s our Jimmy.

Besides Eleanor Powell and James Stewart, the cast also featured Virginia Bruce (here singing the above song), Una Merkel, Sid Silvers, Frances Langford (as a brunette), Raymond Walburn, Alan Dinehart, Buddy-freakin-Ebsen, little Juanita Quigley, Barnett Walker, and Reginald-double-freakin-Gardiner as the policeman who conducts “Easy to Love”.

But sometimes, as I say, you just want to see a beautiful sad-eyed woman singing this song to yet another oblivious bloke in white tie and tails.

Read my short piece “The Erotic Spell of Full Evening Dress”, about John in full dress, here

The complete film BORN TO DANCE is available to watch here

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My Beloved Conductor John Wilson’s Concert Schedule 14 September 2022 Through 25 June 2023

After wading through the unsurprising reviews of John’s 16 July concert at the Royal Albert, I thought I’d list his upcoming performances:

Above: I’m afraid nothing on this list arouses my delight except the Martin-Blane standard, “Love”, here suavely sung by the co-composer himself, Ralph Blane; kickass arrangement by Ralph Burns, who 6 years later orchestrated Richard Rodgers’s No Strings.

The dates link to the ticket sites. The other highlights link to available recordings.

Wed 14 September 2022 19:30
Göteborgs Konserthus
Gothenburg, Sweden
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Elschenbroich (cello)

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Thu 15 September 2022 19:00
Vara Konserthus
Vara, Sweden
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Elschenbroich (cello)

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Wed 21 September 2022 14:00
BBC Philharmonic Studio
MediaCityUK, Salford
BBC Philharmonic
Timothy Rideout (viola)

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Sat 08 October 2022 13:30
Duke’s Hall, RAM
London UK
Royal Academy of Music Orchestra

  • Lili Boulanger: D’un matin de printemps
  • Robert Schumann: Symphony No 3 in E flat, op 97, ‘Rhenish’

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Thu 20 October 2022 19:30
Sheldonian Theatre Oxford
Oxford UK
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Louis Schwizgebel (piano)

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Sat 11 November 2022 19:30
Duke’s Hall, RAM
London UK
Royal Academy of Music Orchestra

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So speaks my beloved conductor John Wilson: ‘I am delighted beyond words to be taking Sinfonia of London on our first live tour, playing in some of the UK’s most exciting venues.  All ninety of us are looking forward to welcoming audiences who know the orchestra through our recordings, our televised appearances at the BBC Proms, as well as anyone coming to hear us for the first time. We hope our programme will thrill and inspire you!’

Sat 26 November 2022 19:30
Symphony Hall Birmingham
Birmingham, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Martin James Bartlett (piano)

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Mon 28 November 2022 19:30
St David’s Hall
Cardiff, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Martin James Bartlett (piano)

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Thu 1 December 2022 19:45
The Anvil Theatre
Basingstoke, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)

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Fri 2 December 2022 19:30
Barbican
London, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano)

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Sun 4 December 2022 19:30
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall
Nottingham, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Martin James Bartlett (piano)

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Sat 31 December 2022 15:00
Berlin Tempodrom
Berlin, Germany
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Circus Roncalli

  • Nino Rota: Musik aus dem Film ›Der Pate‹
  • Leroy Anderson: ›The Typewriter‹ und ›Fiddle Faddle‹
  • Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Musik aus dem Film ›Robin Hood‹
  • Maurice Ravel: ›Boléro‹
  • Henry Mancini: Musik aus dem Film ›The Pink Panther‹
  • …und mehr…

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Sat 31 December 2022 19:00
Berlin Tempodrom
Berlin, Germany
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Circus Roncalli

  • Nino Rota: Musik aus dem Film ›Der Pate‹
  • Leroy Anderson: ›The Typewriter‹ und ›Fiddle Faddle‹
  • Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Musik aus dem Film ›Robin Hood‹
  • Maurice Ravel: ›Boléro‹
  • Henry Mancini: Musik aus dem Film ›The Pink Panther‹
  • …und mehr…

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Thu 5 January 2023 17:00
Stockholm Concert Hall
Stockholm, Sweden
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Kim Criswell (vocals)

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Thu 9 March 2023 19:30
Caird Hall
Dundee, United Kingdom
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Timothy Orpen (clarinet)

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Fri 10 March 2023 19:30
Usher Hall
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Timothy Orpen (clarinet)

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Sun 12 March 2023 19:30
Glasgow City Halls
Glasgow, United Kingdom
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Timothy Orpen (clarinet)

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Thu 11 May 2023 20:00
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough (piano)

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Thu 12 May 2023 11:00
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra

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Sat 13 May 2023 14:00
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough (piano)

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Wed 17 May 2023 20:00
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough (piano)

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Thu 18 May 2023 13:30
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough (piano)

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Fri 19 May 2023 20:00
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough (piano)

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Sat 20 May 2023 20:00
Sydney Opera House
Sydney NSW, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Stephen Hough (piano)

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Wed 7 June 2023 19:00
Queen Elizabeth Hall
London, United Kingdom
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

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Wed 8 June 2023 19:00
Queen Elizabeth Hall
London, United Kingdom
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

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Sat 17 June 2023 19:30
Snape Maltings Concert Hall
Snape, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Roderick Williams (baritone)

  • Paul Dukas: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
  • Sally Beamish: Four Songs from Hafez (world premiere of orchestral version, Britten Pears Arts COMMISSION)
  • Ottorino Respighi: The Fountains of Rome
  • Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances

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Sat 18 June 2023 16:00
Snape Maltings Concert Hall
Snape, United Kingdom
Sinfonia of London
Pavel Kolesnikov (piano)
Samson Tsoy (piano)

  • William Walton: Scapino
  • Frederick Delius: Summer Night on the River
  • Britten: Scottish Ballad, op 26
  • Elgar: Symphony No 2 in E flat, op 63

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Sat 24 June 2023 20:15
The Concertgebouw
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Howard McGill (saxophone)

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Sun 25 June 2023 14:15
The Concertgebouw
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Howard McGill (saxophone)

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Posted on by Cantara Christopher

Cantara Christopher in Sadie (Bob Chinn director, Mitam Productions, 1980) as Indexed in the Database of the British Film Institute; and “Pictures of Lily” by Pete Townshend

This isn’t the picture of me at the BFI Database. It was sent to me by “John Fairfax”, who saw my posting on Twitter about my last feature film and my irritated comment about how I thought the British Film Institute had mixed me up with another (probably Asian) actress. And the dear chap actually went through the grueling task (in the name of research, of course) to find proof positive that the girl in the sarong in the other screenshot is not me, mostly because of the arms, hair, and height. And he sent it to me! So here I am in Sadie, a softcore version of Maugham’s story “Rain”, entertaining two men on the island, presumably Borneo. The bloke in the cap is my husband Doc, the only one on the island allowed to touch my goodies.

Sadie, 1981Above: The Who and Pete Townshend’s love song to sex workers everywhere, “Pictures of Lily”.

This was not only my last feature, but the last film of any length (including loops, shorts etc) I did during my screen days in San Francisco, before I got pregnant and eloped with the father of my child to New York’s East Village.

For years I’ve talked about my porn career like it was a lark—a daredevil stunt I pulled and lived to tell the tale. I certainly was never more physically beautiful than when I was in my early 20s, and really, I’ve got to tell you, it is a kick in the first flowering of old age to know that somewhere, somehow, even now yet still, someone is probably doing the stroke dance with one of your pictures. Because as long as a buck can be made from it, porn will never disappear.

Now here comes the freakin’ British Film Institute to spoil my fun. Now I have to consider myself a lousy but legitimate actress rather than a pretty good porn one? Do you Brits have to put a damper on everything?

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