2011 National Cherry Blossom Festival

A YouTube for the National Cherry Blossom Festival Week (or Two) at Washington DC:

Emile Pandolfi, piano (2005)
Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni
Click here to view this L'Envoi YouTube.

The Month of March 2011

"Winter is long in this climate
and spring—a matter of a few days
only,—a flower or two picked
from mud or from among wet leaves
or at best against treacherous
bitterness of wind, and sky shining
teasingly, then closing in black
and sudden, with fierce jaws.
...
March,
you are like a band of
young poets that have not learned
the blessedness of warmth
(or have forgotten it)."

-- William Carlos Williams
Excerpts from the poem, 'March' (1921)

Google Eyes

"What in the world you doin, Google Eyes?
He sang, very slowly, while he and the child looked at each other...
What in the world you doin, Google Eyes?...
His eyes slowly closed, sprang, open, almost in alarm, closed again.
Where did you get them great big Google eyes?
You're the best there is and I need you in my biz,
Where in the world did you get them Google Eyes?"

-- James Agee, "A Death in the Family" (1938)

With the completion of two major landscaping projects, the lawn and garden are ready to welcome spring. The only thing left to do now is acquiring new lawn and patio furniture. That could wait. In the meantime, I have my google eyes on some books.

In-progress (possible book review candidates):

1. Elvi Rhodes - A House by the Sea
2. John C. Wright - The Golden Age
3. James Agee - A Death in the Family
4. Dorothy Dunnett - Queen's Play

Bolero at Tiffany's

Joseph Maurice Ravel
French Neo-classical composer
(7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937)
"Bolero," Ravel once said, "is seventeeen minutes of orchestra without music." After all, he further qualified, this piece was "an experiment in a very special and limited direction." To the contrary, the musical society and public have deemed it a great favorite piece of all time.

Tomorrow, 7 March, is Ravel's 136 birthday anniversary. For this occasion, I thought you might enjoy listening to a three-minute jazz version of "Bolero" interlaced with Henry Mancini "Moon River".

The MP3 below expired on 04-11-2011.
Click here to play the current selection.

The Opera Swing Quartet and the Philharmonie Merck (2008)
- Bolero at Tiffany's (after Ravel and Mancini)