Posted on by Cantara Christopher

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 1

Everyone is getting the 2022 movie Tár wrong, everyone. Except me and Martin Scorsese.

Which is okay, because if Scorsese, Todd Field and Lydia Tár inhabit the same artistic ecosphere as I do, I don’t feel so alone. In a world 99% made up of Maxes and Tony Tarrs, I don’t feel so much alone.

So John, lamplighter of my heart, in my ongoing quest to give you nice things, I’m going to list some elements—in sequence—in the movie you might find useful next time you cocktail chat with people…

In 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

PLAYING TO THE NEW YORK CROWD

  • It’s Francesca texting Krista on the private flight from Berlin to NYC. It’s Krista who posits to F, you still love her then…
  • Francesca is a Yale School of Music grad, probably post-grad. No matter the impression she gives of powerless and invisibility, she is actually connected and quite probably brilliant—but these days ground down. I know the feeling. Hope you never, my love.
  • The song at the beginning is in Lydian mode. (But you got that, John.) When I was 11, I was captured by the Lydian mode in this popular jukebox tune, side B of NYC-based Left Banke’s hit single.
  • In the (mostly tech/assistance) credits, there are at least 2 real people who lent their names to characters in the story, Francesca Lentini and Sebastian Brix.
  • The New Yorker Festival in which Lydia is interviewed was held 7-9 October 2022. Been to a couple of these. They’re like Glyndebourne, only without the food.
  • Lydia’s hands are beautiful my love, but no more beautiful than yours.
  • The benefit concert for Zaatari would’ve been the 10th anniversary—ten freakin years!—of that crummy refugee camp.
  • Antonia Brico was a big deal in my Women’s Liberation group in the mid 70s. You know, women of achievement. Here’s a 2018 romantic biopic of Brico, entitled The Conductor. And here’s the 1974 documentary.

KAVANAH AND TESHUVAH IN THE KABALA

  • I first got interested in Jewish mystical thought when it kept popping up in Leonard Bernstein‘s writing. The more advanced ideas, I got into at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv. I had a crush on Neil Horowitz so I followed him to Israel, after having won a CUNY scholarship to go. We learned about Maimonides, the Kabala and how to read Hebrew. Then on the way home we did it in the washroom of the El Al.
  • Kavanah means intent, just like Lydia says. She expands on this, simply and forcefully, in the master class scene.
  • Teshuvah is another matter. Teshuvah is the more important, more complex idea and it arrives close to the end of the movie so I’ll explain it more fully at the right time. Teshuvah has to do with the inevitability of creation. So you want to stick around for that.
  • You know John, this stuff is taught at the yeshiva up in Bensham, a couple miles from your childhood neighborhood of Low Fell. I know about Gateshead Talmudical College because a stateless Jewish refugee (from Cuba, he escaped, they took away his citizenship) we knew in Quito, a brilliant scholar downstairs, applied to this school so I got to read all the brochures they sent him.

THAT FANTASTIC RED HANDBAG

  • This scene was so spot on I can’t believe a man wrote it. This is the first scene in the movie that made Scorsese start to sit up in his seat and believe again.
  • Field pulled out all his AFI grad stuff for this scene. Check out Whitney’s enormous rock as she flirts with Lydia. I’m engaged, but that’s no problem. They talk about Stravinsky. Lydia throws in a really, really esoteric Kabalistic reference that goes right past this pretty Smith alum.
  • Lydia points at Whitney’s handbag, which is luscious, and with a price tag of around US800-1200 I’d say. Now, this is where most women (and certain men) in the audience call out with awed recognition, You bitch! We know you’re angling for that bag! And you know that you’re gonna get it! Because you know that rich tramp is gonna call Bergdorf’s and have one sent to you “in token of our meeting” or other bullshit… But in the end, it’s just another cheap trophy you toss to Sharon…
  • And all the while Francesca is the background, texting.

WE ALL KNOW THAT CONDUCTORS HATE SOPRANOS

  • I grew up with the story in music school, probably false, that the legendary Otto Klemperer made Kirsten Flagstad cry in rehearsals, which I suppose was the beginning of my conviction that there exists a natural antipathy between vocal artists and orchestra conductors.
  • So when Francesca texts Krista a shot of Lydia’s digs at the Carlyle, dubbed the “Placido Domingo Suite” and K quips, she thinks she is being ironic, you wonder in passing what the deal is between conductor Lydia and tenor Domingo.
  • But that remark is actually meant to alert us to the recentness of Francesca’s and Krista’s relationship with Lydia. Later in the movie Lydia makes a disparaging remark about the excellent mezzo Samantha Hankey—who rode to prominence quickly in 2018 after winning prizes at Gyndebourne and Placido Domingo’s own star-making Operalia (which he also conducts, by the way)—that clarifies this.

LUNCH WITH ELLIOT, OR TOSKER, MAN!

  • Tosker, man!
  • Mostly Norman Lebrecht-type stuff but we get a few necessary pieces of information, for example the Accordion Fellowship doesn’t simply place fellows in residencies, it fosters (funds?) entrepreneurship. This will figure in the Krista part of the story.
  • Elliot is a banker/lawyer/amateur conductor with biiiig pretensions. Lydia doesn’t notice his predatory tendencies because he’s gotten her fat and complacent.
  • Lydia brings up Max Bruch to affirm her place in Elliot’s society.
  • That bit about Turing Machine (a math rock group) doing Chopin’s Piano Concerto #1 in Japan, conducted by (who we later see is a dodderer) Sebastian Brix rubato has to have gotten a laugh from somebody in the audience.
  • One last one! This is the first time in the movie an Asian is clearly and lengthily shown in the background. Well dressed, middle-aged Chinese lady. You think I don’t notice these things, do you? Gwilo mooks.

Next: The Master Class

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Posted on by Cantara Christopher

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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Posted on by Cantara Christopher

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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Things I Did for Love of Geordie John Wilson, 1: Watched Get Carter (British MGM 1971, Mike Hodges Director) and Sarah Millican; and Listened to, But Didn’t Watch, The Orville

This is all to do with my beloved John Wilson, Conductor being from Gateshead. Except for that Seth MacFarlane show.

Sarah Millican first. Tried listening to this fast-talking comedienne from nearby South Shields the middle of 2019 but could not keep up with her pace or her accent. Later I started watching old episodes of Auf Wiedersehn Pet, The Likely Lads, Byker Grove (which starred BGT presenters Ant & Dec when they were kids), and now one of my favorite shows ever on television, Our Friends In the North (all episodes here) etc etc but they’re just so…masculine, you know? Which I suspect probably pretty much characterizes Geordie culture anyway… So I started alternating watching that show with When the Boat Comes In, which was more successful for me, as the estimable Northumbria-born actress Jean Heywood provided a good model of what a feminine northeast accent sounds like. After her it was a snap to follow Millican.

Second, The Orville, Seth MacFarlane’s Star Trek-like TV series. Like the 70s folksinger says, “I’m a stoner, I’m a trekker, I’m a young sky walker…” So yeh, I’d be interested in watching this show just to see if it measures up to the standards of my youth. Unfortunately, none of MacFarlane’s (post-Family Guy) projects ever sound interesting enough for me to overcome my intense personal dislike for him. So…maybe later. I did, however, listen to the show’s theme music, which was written by Andrew Cottee, the same young man who wrote some arrangements for The John Wilson Orchestra over in England. The theme does everything expected of it.

Third, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine and the City of Newcastle. Made this movie last on my list because it deserves two paragraphs, being the British noir classic that it is…

Sidebar: As we all now know from film school, existentialism is the engine of noir, which means that petty details like Michael Caine speaking in a thick Cockney accent* when his character’s supposed to be from Newcastle-upon-Tyne oughtn’t to matter to the sophisticated auditor. But I had a problem. I’m sorry. Three years ago I wouldn’t have cared, one Brit being the same as any other. Then I fell in love with John Wilson, a Low Fell lad, and individuality suddenly became a very important thing to me.

The Movie Overall: Not quite sure why the filmmakers transplanted novelist Ted Lewis’s story from his original setting in Lincolnshire (Lewis’s birthplace), to Tyneside, but since it’s the classic story of the Anti-Hero’s Revenge, which works anytime, anyplace, it does fine here. Michael Caine’s a little podgy but quick with his reflexes and still a treat for the ladies. Lots of sex and violence, lots of local atmosphere, local faces, and landmarks like Tyne Bridge, the Newcastle Racecourse and, of course, the carpark across the Tyne River.

The Carpark in Gateshead Scene: By a stroke of luck Get Carter was just streamed on Criterion so I watched the entire movie, then to make sure, watched the carpark scene twice more in order to understand why it so sticks in the mind. Because it does, you know, even though I’m not a fan of movies like this. I guess it’s because there’s rather a high elegance to this scene that contrasts with all the mundaneness and phony poshness around it… Very arty, but a genuine statement. Or maybe it’s just because I like watching Michael Caine get all riled up.

Get-Carter-1971-Behind-The-Scenes-Michael-Caine-Brian-Mosely-Trinity-Square-Car-Park-Gateshead-2The now torn-down carpark at Trinity Square in Gateshead in this famous scene was a dreary piece of English Brutalist architecture that, according to its creator, was never meant to stand the test of time anyway. That’s the theme to The Orville above.

*I understand that a stage version of Get Carter was recently performed in Newcastle, with Carter’s accent spoken correctly.

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Alt.Spiritual Gateshead, UK and Five Easy Cooking Recipes for My Bonny Geordie, BBC Conductor John Wilson

Here are 5 easy cooking recipes I wrote down just for you, John my love, after remembering you mentioning cooking sausages for your best friend*. The dinners below, besides being tried and true and easy-peasy, are plain, nourishing, tasty, cheap, quick, satisfying, and don’t require fancy kitchen equipment or expensive ingredients:

Angel of the North Plus CraftFive elements make Gateshead a uniquely potent locus on the spiritual plane: 1) the Kolel in Bensham, the world’s most important center of esoteric Talmudic scholarship; 2) the Sage symphony concert hall on the River Tyne, which because of its particular physical manifestation is blessed by Sarasvati; 3) the underground cable hub; 4) the Angel of the North, a huge guardian structure overlooking Low Fell, the working class neighborhood where my beloved grew up (see above); 5) the city’s long history of UFO sightings and alien visitations. Above the Angel: “The Blaydon Races” (Geordie Ridley, 1862) sung by Jimmy Nail, Tim Healy and Kevin Whately for the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. “Ah me lads, ye shudda seen us gannin’ / We pass’d the foaks upon the road just as they wor stannin’ / Thor wes lots o’ lads an’ lasses there, all wi’ smiling faces / Gannin alang the Scotswood Road, to see the Blaydon Races…”

NEWCASTLE LAMB STEW

  • ½ lb boneless lamb, cut small
  • 1 large potato 8-12 oz, peeled and cut into small pieces
  • 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced (though carrots are not traditional)
  • 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp pepper
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 4 cups liquid, preferably beef, lamb or pork broth; otherwise, water or combination water+broth totaling 4 cups
  • 2 tbs cooking oil, margarine, butter or other desired fat

Saute lamb pieces and onion in fat until lamb starts to brown and onions begin to soften. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook for 30-45 minutes or until lamb and vegetables are tender. If desired, adjust seasonings. If desired, thicken consistency with a paste made from water+flour or water+cornstarch or other thickener. Add paste to pot and cook over high heat, stirring constantly until mixture is smooth and gravy is of desired thickness.

Serves 2, or 1 with leftovers.

GATESHEAD SAUSAGE STEW

  •  ½ lb good quality smoked sausage such as Polish or garlic, left whole or cut into 2 pieces or sliced
  • ½ lb potatoes, peeled and cut up
  • ½ lb cabbage, cored and sliced to cole slaw consistency
  • 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
  • 4 cups beef broth, fresh or tinned (no boullion cubes or powder, please!)
  • Salt and pepper to taste, depending on type of sausage used

Combine all ingredients to a large pot, bring to boil and cover and cook on medium heat for ½ hour or until all vegetables are tender.

Serves 2, or 1 with leftovers.

GEORDIE CHICKEN CURRY

  • 2 cups cooked diced chicken or tinned boneless chicken (note: leftover roast or boiled chicken may be used)
  • 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
  • 2 cups chicken broth, tinned or fresh (note: if you have boiled chicken for this recipe, use the broth in which it was boiled)
  • 1 cup tinned peas
  • 2 tsp curry powder
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Combine chicken broth and onion in saucepan and boil until onion is just tender. Then add chicken meat and peas. Add salt, pepper and the 2 tsp curry powder or more if spicier dish is desired. When mixture is heated through, add flour or cornstarch paste (note: see Newcastle Lamb Stew above) to mixture, stirring constantly until desired thickness. Serve on bed of plain boiled white rice with side of mushy peas and mango chutney if desired.

Serves 2, or 1 with leftovers.

TYNESIDE MINCE AND MASH

For the mince:

  • 4 oz ground beef, pork or lamb or 2 cups minced beef, pork or lamb (note: roast or boiled leftover meats may be used; if using fresh ground meat, saute with onions, adding a little oil if meat is quite lean, then add remaining ingredients)
  • 1 cup minced onion
  • 2 cups meat broth
  • 1 tbs Worcestershire sauce
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Bring all ingredients to a boil and when onion is soft and raw meat is cooked add thickening paste (see above).

For the mash:

  • 1 lb potatoes, peeled and cut up

Boil potatoes in separate pot in water until very soft. Drain potatoes thoroughly, add 2 tbs butter or margarine and mash thoroughly with masher or large fork. When mixture is thoroughly mashed whip it with a large spoon, adding more or margarine if desired until mash is very thick and smooth. Transfer mash to serving plate and top with mince. Serve with boiled Brussels sprouts if desired.

Serves 2, or 1 with leftovers.

WEE BONNY JOHN’S SIMPLE FISH AND CHIPS

For the fish:

  • ½ lb firm whitefish filet such as cod, snapper or perch

Cut filet into 4 2-oz pieces.

For the batter:

  • 1 cup flour, seasoned with salt, pepper and dried dill weed
  • ¼ tsp baking soda which has been dissolved
  • in 1 tbs vinegar

Stirring constantly, add sufficient water to make a thick batter.

For the chips:

  • ½ lb potatoes, peeled and sliced into chips of desired size

In a pot or deep skillet heat vegetable oil to high heat. Add chips and fry until golden brown. Remove chips from oil and drain on newspapers.

Dip fish in batter to coat and immediately fry in remaining hot oil for 2-3 minutes or until underside is brown; then turn fish with slotted spatula and fry for 1-2 minutes more. When fish coating is brown and firm remove fish from oil and drain on newspapers with chips. Serve with boiled carrots in parsley butter.

For the carrots:

  • 8 oz carrots, peeled and sliced

Boil in water until tender. Drain carrots and remove from pot. In drained pot add

  • 4 tbs butter or margarine
  • 1 tsp minced parsley
  • 1 tbs minced chives
  • 1tsp dried dill weed

Melt butter and stir until herbs and butter are evenly mixed, then add reserved cooked carrots and toss in parsley butter for about 5 minutes until carrot slices are evenly coated.

To serve, place fish, chips and carrots on serving plates and sprinkle fish and chips with salt and malt vinegar.

Serves 2. It doesn’t keep.

*If you mean bangers, the best way to cook them is to prick them so they won’t explode, then fry them gently in lard or bacon fat.

UPDATE 12/25/20 Just uploaded: Alan Robson’s Grisly Trail of Newcastle/Gateshead. Haven’t decided to keep it yet so if you want this grab it now. Robson’s walking tour spiel (a Night Owls feature) is incredibly crude, cruel and bloodthirsty, but it appeals to the 12-year old in me. If nothing else, this guy Robson’s accent is pure Geordie and he speaks slowly and distinctly, so I understand everything he’s saying except most local references. Oh! And he does mention The Dead Alien of Bensham!

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My First Music: Friday Night Is Music Night with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Conducted by the Oh-So-Kissable John Wilson, August 2005

At around the same time of life the oh-so-kissable John Wilson was a wee bairn in Gateshead falling out of his high chair in excitement over the brand-new BBC news theme, I was in my playpen in the living room of the old one-bedroom apartment in South Minneapolis jumping up and down in excitement to the theme of Captain Kangaroo on TV.

Now here we are with my darling 33-year-old (in 2005) lad on the podium in the first televised broadcast of this longtime radio fixture, and I get to find out the titles of all those excerpts and show themes I’ve heard on the Beeb for years. The sign-in music, incidentally, is Charles Williams‘s “High Adventure.”

A Little Light MusicI will never understand the English tradition of drag. Now, the American tradition of drag, like future husband Mister Grumble doing his Twiggy impersonation at a gay revue in Dallas back in 1964—THAT’s hot. Above John and his admirer: Audio of the entire Friday Night Is Music Night program, “A Little Light Music”.

The program: “The Devil’s Galop” (Dick Barton Special Agent, Monty Python) / Charles Williams; “Portrait of a Flirt” / Robert Farnon; “The Lion and Albert” (comic verse) / Marriott Edgar; March from “Little Suite” (Dr Finlay’s Casebook) / Trevor Duncan; “Barwick Green” (The Archers) / Arthur Wood; “The Typewriter” (The News Quiz) / Leroy Anderson; “Roses of Picardy” / Haydn Wood; “Calling All Workers” (Music While You Work) / Eric Coates; “By the Sleepy Lagoon” (Desert Island Discs) / Eric Coates; “A Canadian in Mayfair” / Angela Morley; “In a Party Mood” / Jack Strachey; “Sailing By” (The Shipping Forecast) / Ronald Binge; “Charmaine” (Monty Python) / Erno Rapee; “Puffin’ Billy” (Captain Kangaroo!!!) at 47:00 / Edward White; “Birdsongs at Eventide” / Eric Coates; “The Dam Busters” March (from the 1954 film) / Eric Coates. Janis Kelly, soprano. Roy Hudd, host.

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Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony (1910): Sakari Oramo Conducts the BBCSO+Chorus+Voices, BBC Proms 2013; Plus Tyne Dogger Northeast 3 and My Beloved John Wilson on This Valentine’s Day, 2021

I had a dream about you a few days ago, John. It was very short. You were maybe 17, 18… You were standing on Tyne Bridge looking down at the river… It was a cool glassy day and the river was cool and glassy… And you were standing there, thinking and pondering that this was the finest sight there ever was… Then you turned your gaze eastward, toward the North Sea… But all you could see was a shimmery horizon, and maybe it was the sea, but it was calm as well and it made you think about how infinite and endless it was (you were only 17, after all)… And then after a few more seconds of pondering you turned to look at me and you said, ‘And that’s when I decided to love Vaughan Williams.’

A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams at the 2013 BBC Proms is available on YT here

Happy Valentine’s Day, John of my heart.

Above the maestro and the sea, Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Chorus, the BBC Youth Choir, and soloists Sally Matthews and Roderick Williams in Vaughan Williams’s Symphony no 1.

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“We Can’t Let Those Hands Go Down a Pit”: Jean Heywood (1921 – 2019) in When the Boat Comes In, Episode 7, BBC 1976

Of course it’s not Bella Seaton (Jean Heywood) in When the Boat Comes In (all episodes here) speaking that line, it’s her daughter, schoolteacher Jessie, pleading the case of an artistic young pupil doomed to work down the coal pit in Gallowshields, a post-WWI fictional town—a composite of all the little towns along the River Tyne in the north near Newcastle (you know, that place in the phrase “Selling coals to Newcastle is like selling ice to Eskimos”) including the town where my beloved BBC conductor John Wilson was born and bred, Gateshead*.  Bella is the strong-willed matriarch, as we Yanks would say, of the Seaton family, so she gets a lot of scenes, which is great because I pick up the the Geordie accent from Northumberland-born Heywood more easily than from anyone else in the show.

As I might have mentioned a few postings ago I did three of my flicks speaking in a foreign accent: one in French, one in Cuban, and one in Malaysian, which I actually did in Filipino but no one could tell the difference. I like to practice the Geordie accent during off moments, you know, because it reminds me of John, and so it gives me pleasure.

Jean Heywood When the Boat Comes In.jpgAmerican audiences will probably better remember Jean Heywood, who died in September at the age of 98, as the grandmother in another classic story about artistic aspirations in the north, Billy Elliot (again, here’s Billy’s angry dance). Above Jean: Neighborhood lad Alex Glasgow singing the show’s theme song “When the Boat Comes In” with the backing of the (now Royal) Northern Sinfonia.

*Low Fell, to be precise.

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Conductor John Wilson and Rodgers & Hammerstein; Sting Sings His Newcastle United Football Anthem, “Bringing the Pride Back Home”

I started collecting these Moments after getting right annoyed, not when I first heard my beloved Geordie lad John Wilson cheerfully dismissing Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyrics as being “needless”, not after the 2010 BBC Proms (an R+H tribute) or even the 2017 BBC Proms (Oklahoma! for God’s sake), but later on when I read about John in Brighton trying to conduct a sing-along with his concert audience in “You’ll Never Walk Alone” the way Liverpool soccer club fans like to sing it when they’re winning—a song cue I HATE HATE HATE and would like to strangle the group responsible, Gerry and the Pacemakers, for.

John Wilson Crush SunderlandCrush Sunderland! Above John: Wallsend-born Sting sings his 1998 song for Newcastle United, “Bringing the Pride Back Home” Now tell me, why is the whole world staring? / Must be the shirt I’m wearing / Black and white army…

The rule for bringing up a Rodgers & Hammerstein song in a Moment is simple: You sing it spontaneously—knowing the words and understanding and conveying its sentimental message—at the right moment. You have to read the moment, John. In the Jack Benny scene the humor is clear because everybody knows the words to “Getting to Know You” and everybody knows about Jack’s musical vanity vs his excessive courtliness toward pretty talented women; in the Cheers scene, Diane’s song cue is truly meant to comfort and inspire, and so makes for a genuine moment for characters and audience together; in 3rd Rock, well, “Oklahoma!” is just the ultimate rouser. You don’t even have to sing it well. (So a much better sing-along song actually.)

So it kind of heartens me, John, that you won’t be going back to mangling The Great American Songbook for awhile. Here’s hoping you take a long vacation in Bermuda, my Tyneside darling. Get a tan, get laid. And when you come back, commit yourself to the orchestral repertoire you do best.

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Bradley Creswick, Leader of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Discusses Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending”

This is the group my beloved John Wilson wished a happy birthday to, and it’s a truly worthwhile one: The Royal Northern Sinfonia has an outstanding record in community outreach in the northeast of England. Plus they play from an exquisitely good repertoire. It’s pleasing to think of my John with musical memories like these. I hope he gets as much pleasure from them as I do remembering the Minnesota Orchestra when I was a teenager in Minneapolis during the Vietnam War era.

Royal Northern Sinfonia Leader Bradley CreswickBradley Creswick at the upstairs hall at The Sage, the Royal Northern Sinfonia’s permanent home in Gateshead, on the south side of the river from Newcastle. That’s the Tyne and the Tyne Bridge out the window.

Royal Northern Sinfonia is a British chamber orchestra, founded in Newcastle upon Tyne and currently based in Gateshead. For the first 46 years of its history, the orchestra gave the bulk of its concerts at the Newcastle City Hall. Since 2004, the orchestra has been resident at The Sage, Gateshead. In June 2013 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II bestowed the title “Royal” on the orchestra, formally naming it the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

The vid here (screenshot above) doesn’t have the entire Vaughan Williams, so here’s my Tyneside lad conducting this exquisite piece:

“The Lark Ascending”
Made in Britain, album
Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
John Wilson, conductor
Avie Records, 2011

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John Wilson, Conductor Wishes the Royal Northern Sinfonia a Happy 60th Birthday, 3 December 2018

Oh John honey. You’re a sweetheart to do this when you’ve barely unpacked.

John conducted Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 5 in D major with the Royal Northern Sinfonia at The Sage in his home town of Gateshead 1 March 2019.

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At the End of the Year 2018: While I Still Have Conductor John Wilson In My Head

I’m still finding it mighty strange that John was born on the same day as my father’s final birthday, in 1972—on the 25th of May, which would make them both Geminis—but somehow it starts to make sense: There’s John of the BBC and Eric Coates and Ralph Vaughan Williams and the tra-la-boomy-boom that makes up English music; and then there’s John of the big-shouldered swaggering sweating bombastic vibrant American tune book. One (when he plays it well) makes me want to cook him a nice lamb stew with pearl onions swimming in the rich gravy; the other (again, when he plays it well, which is almost always) makes me want to—well, I was in The Business, you know, use your imagination.

John Wilson Album
Low Fell Lad Makes Good. Above: the Arlen-Kohler standard “Get Happy” was written for Ruth Etting but popularized by Judy Garland in the film, Summer Stock (MGM, 1951).

Only don’t be too sure which is which. Like I said, John almost always plays the music of his own country and heritage well, with a deep feeling that’s irresistible; whereas when he works out the great American tunes it turns out more often to be hit-and-miss, with many many many more misses than hits.

But oh! When he does hit!

When bonny John and his orchestra play “Get Happy” or “The Trolley Song” or “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” or the MGM Jubilee Overture—or the absolute best of the lot, “Slaughter On Tenth Avenue“—it’s total heaven, and I’m not the only one to say this. Subtlety is not this lad’s forte when it comes to the American popular repertoire. But when John goes big, bright, busy and loud when the number actually calls for it, screams out for it, it’s so damn satisfying when he does it and does it brilliantly that I want to—how can I put this?—do something for my darling in gratitude…make him a nice meal…fatten him up a little… (Ess, kind, ess!)

For right now, though, I’ll settle for a natter on a quiet afternoon with you John, rather not in London, maybe when you get up to Gateshead again, mi vida, back to The Angel of the North…

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The Police Perform Ghost In the Machine at the International Stadium, Gateshead, 31 July 1982

If I hadn’t fallen so hard for Geordie-born-and-bred John Wilson, Conductor I’d never have been delving into All Things Gateshead and I never would have stumbled onto a bootleg recording of this show by English progressive rock group The Police, which was the very show Mister Grumble and I missed in New York when we were just setting up household in the East Village and I was heavily pregnant. Great music, great energy, and the sound is impeccable.

The Police, Gateshead, England, 31 July 1982Touching to catch a (private?) glance at Sting—another Geordie, by the way—crossing himself before taking the stage. Above Sting: The entire audio of the concert.

For more on The Police’s drummer, go to my posting below, “The Equalizer Theme by Stewart Copeland“.

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