Music, in (very) brief -- Friday night to Jazz at Lincoln Center for the Miles tribute. Ryan Kisor very, very good. Terrence Blanchard maybe just even a bit moreso (hate to quibble about anything to do with this one, but will just note that Blanchard managed to sound more like Miles by virtue of not trying too hard to sound like Miles). Also submitted for your consideration -- an extended Blanchard solo on "My Man's Gone Now" that went off into a riff on "Amazing Grace."
Saturday to the Met for Il Trittico. Lots of things wrong (Broadway directors don't get opera -- film directors do, sometimes) but again, don't want to complain, because I've still got bits of Tabarro and more remarkably Suor Angelica (I don't much like Suor Angelica, so go figure) running around in my head. This leads me back to where I came out on The Tristan Project -- not all that eager to do a critical autopsy on it because I was grateful to be there at all. Which is sort of a state-of-life comment, now that I think about it. Experienced naivete? The naivete of experience? Return to the naive at a higher level?
Or maybe just fatigue...
Am still trying to assimilate last night's Sopranos but, keeping to our theme, liked this comment -- Paul Brownfield of the L.A. Times pushing back on criticism that the current season isn't plotted enough:
...How's this: You're right, except that you're wrong. Is this season better than all other seasons? No. It's nine more hours of a great television show that fashions itself as so many individual movies. It's kind of like saying to the Beatles, "Why do you keep repeating the refrain in 'Let It Be'? "Let it be, let it be — we get it, move on. Then what happens?"
"Let it be" might just be, you know, what I'm sayin...
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