Category Archives: Philosophy

fiction, Republic of Letters

At the Stratford Festival: Saturday, Sunday, Monday

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Think about it. Almost all unpleasant things happen on Sundays. We wait all week for that special day, to relax, to live those twenty-four hours blissfully and without commitments. But when it comes, it’s never what we hoped for, we feel so lost doing nothing that we go looking for worries and troubles.

The beginning of Eduardo de Philippo’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday seems to set up an extended Italian family as little more than bickering figures of fun. Matriarch Rosa Priore (Rose Napoli) is already cooking Sunday dinner on the day before, sparing no one in her attention to her famous ragu; her husband, clothing shop owner Peppino (Graham Abbey) looks on frustrated and bemused as his retired father-in-law Antonio (Rod Beattie) eggs on son Rocco (Emilio Vieira) to open his own hat shop and his independent sister Meme (Seana McKenna) encourages daughter Giulianella (Katarina Fiallos) to carve out a life for herself, against the wishes of her fiance Federico (Maher Sinno). Then there are Peppino’s melodramatic brother Raffaele (Geraint Wyn Davies), intent on his weekend foray into commedia dell’arte; Meme’s sickly son and Raffaele’s biggest fan Attilio (Josue Laboucane); and neighbors the Ianniellos – Luigi (Gordon S. Miller) praising Rosa to the skies and showering her with gifts, his wife Elena (Michelle Giroux) patiently bearing with Luigi’s copious enthusiasm. With all these personalities passing through Rosa’s kitchen, colliding as they make contact, sparks fly non-stop throughout Act One – to the point that, when my wife and I compared notes at the first intermission, we thought that, entertaining though the tangled web of tussling might be, more passive-aggressive behavior might be in order!

But like Shakespeare in his “problem plays” – comedies like Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well that have happy endings, but whose characters and plots may be as disturbing as they are funny – de Filippo is after something deeper than cheap laughs. It’s not just that Peppino feels his authority over his grown children ebbing; distance and estrangement from Rosa combined with jealous imaginings about her and Luigi have taken hold. When his farcical futility early in Act Two gives way to an accusatory outburst at the dinner table, it’s a genuine shock that stops the assembled family in their tracks and utterly derails audience expectations. The crisis that follows casts a shadow over every character – but also reveals the depths of loyalty and sympathy that have bound them all together, whatever their conflicts. Still, on Act Three’s Monday morning, no matter how much warm-hearted support others might give, it’s up to a thoroughly devastated Rosa and a heartbreakingly repentant Peppino to dig deep for the roots of their mutual misunderstanding. Beyond making amends, they face the ordeal of recovering what brought and kept them together, no matter the pain such an uphill climb entails.

Under Antoni Cimolino’s committed, passionate direction, the cast is more than up to the task of bringing diFilippo’s bustling yet intimate morality play to life. Coming off the similar male lead Leontes in last year’s Stratford production of The Winter’s Tale, Abbey thoroughly inhabits and embodies Peppino’s inner turbulence; while Napoli may be a Stratford rookie, her solid background in Canadian theater and television has given her the technical chops and emotional muscle to easily go toe to toe with him and the rest of the cast. The cross-generational character pairings of Beattie & Vieira, McKenna & Fiallos and Davies & Laboucane, as well as the couples Fiallo & Sinno, Miller & Giroux and Jakob Ehman & Celia Aloma (as oldest son Roberto and his wife Maria Carolina) all do stellar supporting work; beyond the lively dialogue (from a translation developed with the cast in the process of rehearsal), you can see richly grounded relationships playing out in facial expressions, body language, pauses to listen. Even the comic characters that pass through the Priore house on various errands – Jenna-Lee Hyde’s longsuffering maid Virginia, Liam Tobin as her tortured brother Michele, David Collins’ exasperated tailor Catiello, Michael Wamara’s doctor Cefercola – bring an open-heartedness to their roles; they know and value this family, and whatever their personal preoccupations or the surprises they encounter in the course of the weekend, they desire the best for them.

A decade beyond his authorship of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Eduardo di Filippo offered this interpretive key:

At the end of the comedy there is no one who does not understand that only love can hold two beings together.

Kudos are unquestionably due to Antoni Cimilino for driving home diFilippo’s unique blend of effervescent humor, penetrating psychological insight and hope for the human condition in this, his final production as Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival, as well as to a superb cast of Festival veterans and newcomers for their collaboration in bringing diFilippo’s vision to life onstage.

— Rick Krueger

Saturday, Sunday, Monday premieres at the Stratford Festival on August 22 and runs through October 24. For information, schedule and ticket links, click here.

Republic of Letters

At the Stratford Festival: Guys and Dolls

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[For maximum effect, read the next paragraph aloud with a New York accent:]

So this gentleman Damon Runyon, a progeny of Kansas grown to manhood in Colorado, comes to the big city of Manhattan to pursue his vocation as a journalist in the early 1900s. His greatest success, though, turns out to be his fictional “fables of Broadway”, where a motley cast of “guys” pursue their vocations: penny ante gambling; recounting their tall tales in verbose orotund sentences couched in the historical present and spiced with a smattering of Yiddish; staying one step ahead of the law, the “big boys” of their chosen profession, and the “dolls” that seem to lurk around every corner to knock them off their desired courses. These fables prove to be so popular that, in 1950, they become a Broadway musical . . .

And what a musical it is! Though Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma pioneered the full integration of tunes with story on Broadway, Guys and Dolls elevated the genre to the sparkling heights of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus or Mozart’s The Magic Flute, while hitting the bullseye of pop culture at the Great American Songbook’s height. Production roadblocks meant that Frank Loesser’s jazzy songs came first, laying out the characters and plot twists of Runyon’s “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown” all by themselves; his lyrics teem with wit and warmth, his music stuffs soaring melodic earworms into compellingly clever forms. All book writer Abe Burrows had to do was sharpen the setting and exposition (and set up as many opportunities for ensemble dance numbers as possible) and voila! – an affectionate, rough-edged romp that sets petty crooks, burlesque dancers and revivalist missionaries at odds, then lets romance complicate the whole meshuggah situation.

Over the decades, this kind of big musical has become catnip for the Stratford Festival, sitting comfortably alongside Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Beckett, Arthur Miller and world premieres in the current season’s repertory. And mounted on the Festival Theatre’s unique thrust stage for the fourth time, Guys and Dolls plays every bit as spectacularly as when my wife and I saw it on our first trip here back in 2004. Veteran Donna Feore’s direction is ceaselessly vivid and lively, flowing into organic, breathtaking choreography from the “Runyonland” overture and the opening vocal canon “Fugue for Tinhorns” onward, backed by a live 20-piece orchestra. Onstage Manhattan street life feels as bustling and busy as when you’re there in person; the characters populating Nathan Detroit’s “oldest established floating crap game in New York”, Sister Sarah Brown’s Save-A-Soul Mission and Miss Adelaide’s Hot Box all bubble over with anticipation and zest for whatever may come their way. Even wandering roustabout Sky Masterson brings his own atmosphere with him: smitten by Sarah, crashing her mission and (based on a bet with Nathan) sweeping her away to Havana, where neither can find the words to express their feelings without breaking into song . . .

Whatever the overall impression, it’s the principal actors who make or break a show like this, and every one of them delivers here. Best known for screwball comedy, Dan Chameroy delivers a bluff, charismatic male lead in Sky, whether letting down his guard on “My Time of Day” or stepping up for the gamble of his life on “Luck Be A Lady”. Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane proves a top-notch ingenue, a bit strident in her high vocal range, but wonderfully steely on “I’ll Know” and comedically tipsy on “If I Were A Bell” (one of Miles Davis’ standby tunes). When sparks fly between the two on “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”, the effect is genuine and magical. Then there’s Mark Uhre’s Nathan and Jessica Rider Shaw’s Adelaide as a delightfully neurotic second couple, longtime lovers each afraid in their own way of commitment (“Adelaide’s Lament” and the duet “Sue Me” are both smartly, squirmingly hilarious). Meanwhile, sideline observers like Steve Patterson as mission colleague Arvide Abernathy (who nails the fatherly “More I Cannot Wish You”) and Steve Ross as Nathan’s comic colleague Nicely-Nicely Johnson (who steals the show on the title song and the uproarious “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat”) look on in bemusement, knowing from experience how these crazy kids’ tangles will work themselves out.

It’s a tribute to this cast’s talent and commitment that most of them – including Uhre, Chameroy and Sinclair-Brisbane in principal roles – are also in Feore’s remount of the nutty Shakespeare send-up Something Rotten (sometimes playing both productions on the same day). But the Stratford Festival is consistently good at theatrical miracles like this. And in its warmly humanist view of life out of the mainstream, Guys and Dolls itself is kind of miraculous: underneath its postwar, American-as-apple- pie optimism, this is a schmaltzy, mischievously naughty yet emotionally true take on how the love of your life can ambush you on any corner as you wait for something to happen – whether you’re singing your song, dancing your dance, pounding your big bass drum or just hanging out.

Guys and Dolls plays at the Stratford Festival Theatre until November 1st. For information, more sneak previews, schedules and ticket sales, click here.

— Rick Krueger

Music, Republic of Letters

In Concert: Listening In on Bruce Hornsby

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Most artists wouldn’t start their live set with an obscure song from an now-obscure 20-year-old album (arguably a major label’s desperate attempt to justify their investment by breaking said artist back into the mainstream, via celebrity duets with Sting and Eric Clapton). Most artists definitely wouldn’t follow that up with another obscure song from his follow-up collaboration with a generational bluegrass talent.

But then, this is Bruce Hornsby we’re talking about. Seated at the grand piano stage left, facing his Noisemakers – J.T. Thomas on keyboards, Gibb Droll on guitar, J.V. Collier on bass, John Mailander on mandolin and fiddle, and Chad Wright on drums – grouped in a half circle, Hornsby launched into an extended, exploratory take on Halcyon Days’ “Circus on the Moon“, followed by “Gulf of Mexico Fishing Blues” from his duet album with Ricky Skaggs.

While a familiar track from Hornsby’s Top 40 years, “Look Out Any Window“, was up next, only the chords and the lyrics recalled the original recording. Instead of facing the audience, intent on making maximum impact, Hornsby and the Noisemakers seemed to invite us into a space where, though grateful for our company, their focus would be on the music. And the near-capacity crowd went there, leaning in to listen as Hornsby worried at the melody and the band took the tune’s structure new places, scaling heights of delicate interplay and spanning depths of ensemble groove.

The next stretch of songs, from the new album Indigo Park, confirmed that impression; “Ecstatic”, “Memory Palace”, and the title track continually blazed unexpected trails, individual Noisemakers stepping forward and pulling back, Hornsby choreographing with eye contact and hand gestures. And the hits were forthcoming – but only on Hornsby‘s terms. A wildly atonal piano prelude spanning the length and breadth of the keyboard gave away to a decorous, romantic waltz, eventually teasing Hornsby’s breakthrough song “The Way It Is”. At which point he turned to the audience and said, “You want the pretty version or the jammin’ version?“ The whoop of recognition and the crowd’s spontaneous rise to its feet decided the question in favor of a jam; and with Hornsby again scatting around the melody and extending the jazz piano breaks, the result bore only faint resemblance to that long-ago hit single.

By that point, Hornsby was in his comfort zone and ready to take multiple chances. The minor hit “Across the River”, his first recorded collaboration with the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, drew a warm ovation from the crowd. They also ooh’d and ah’d when the band unplugged and came forward, Hornsby picked up a dulcimer, and Wright donned a washboard vest for two more deep tracks, followed by an appealing, muted take on “Mandolin Rain”.

Appropriately, the high point of the night was the climax of the set: “Rainbow’s Cadillac“, jazzed up and stretched out; “The Show Goes On”, where a passionate piano/vocal solo morphed into a full on, full-band power ballad; and a tribute to Hornsby‘s Grand Rapids debut 40 years ago, Bruce strapping on his accordion to rock out the first track from his debut album, “On the Western Skyline “.

Throughout the night, Hornsby and his Noisemakers welcomed you into their world – but very much on their terms. If the instrumental jamming went on a bit too long, you could focus on how each person on stage was listening hard, adding their bit or laying out as required. Or you could focus on how Hornsby – whose voice now lacks the power of his youthful salad days, but brings to bear all kinds of canny tricks as he sings – constantly played with the tunes, twisting and turning them, familiar words perceived from fresh melodic angles. And whether any given moment moved toward stasis, languor or excitement, you could tell that, flashing and flickering, Music was there on this serene summer evening, leaning over, taking Hornsby, the Noisemakers, and all of us into its confidence.

— Rick Krueger

  • Circus on the Moon
  • Gulf of Mexico Fishing Blues
  • Look Out Any Window
  • Ecstatic
  • Memory Palace
  • Indigo Park
  • Piano Solo/The Way It Is
  • Across the River
  • M.I.A. in M.I.A.M.I
  • North Dakota Slate Roof
  • Mandolin Rain
  • Rainbow’s Cadillac
  • The Show Goes On
  • On the Western Skyline

Republic of Letters

Feast of Cecilia Rose

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Dear Spirit of Cecilia readers,

I presume every once in a while you wonder where we got our name.

Well, two sources. First, St. Cecilia is the traditional patron saint of music and art. She’s often depicted playing a keyboard with angels dropping roses on her.

Second, though, and much more personally, I (Brad) had a daughter, Cecilia Rose, who passed away today, 19 year ago.

If you’re interested in learning more about my daughter, please go here.

https://bradleyjbirzer.substack.com/p/remembering-my-cecilia-rose-august

Blessings to you all, Brad

Republic of Letters

Onsegen Ensemble: Sheer Northern Beauty

I’m sure like many of us who love progressive rock, we’re always looking for music that actually progresses.  Of course, we love and adore The Yes Album and Trick of the Tail and Songs from the Wood, but we also want something rooted in that music that goes beyond it as well.

Well, my search, at least for 2026, has ended.  It ended when I discovered the Finnish band, Onsegen Ensemble.  I knew absolutely nothing about them until the great Karisma Records sent Spirit of Cecilia a review copy.

Here’s what the band says about itself:

“ONSÉGEN ENSEMBLE IS A GROUP OF MUSICIANS FROM NORTHERN FINLAND. BEING FAITHFUL TO ITS OWN PURPOSE, THE SPIRITUAL HOME OF ONSÉGEN KEEPS ITS DOORS OPEN FOR EVERYONE TO ENTER. THE MUSIC TAKES YOU TO A MYSTICAL TRIP WITH EXCURSIONS INTO WONDERFULLY CINEMATIC AND FLAMBOYANT LANDSCAPES.”

From the very opening few seconds of the latest album, A Tale, I was hooked.  I’ve remained hooked for all 42 minutes of A Tale now too many times to count.  For what it’s worth, I always buy a personal copy of an album sent to me for review if I love it.  That is, I very much want to support the artists, especially when they trust me with a review copy.  It’s an honor to be on the receiving end of such beauty, and I never want to break that trust.  Just so you know, I bought three copies of A Tale—one for me, and two to give to friends.  That’s how much I love this band and album.

As to specifics. . . the instruments, the vocals, the lyrics are all astounding.  The production is outstanding, a true aural delight.  Truly, I felt like I was being drawn into the musical equivalent of Tolkien’s profound essay “On Fairy Stories.”  Yes, I was entering fairy by listening to this band.

The lyrics are pretty minimal, but they’re excellent nonetheless.  I’m especially taken by the lyrics of track no. three, “A thought”:

“Peace is a thought

Followed by the word. . . . 

Peace is a flame

Lit by devastation

Dependent on shelter

Never meant to fade.”

I have no idea if the word is a Word in the Stoic or Christian or just hippie sense, but I like it nonetheless.  It’s evocative of truth, beauty, and goodness.

As to the music?  Well, it’s original, to be sure.  I hear bits of Traffic, bits of Jethro Tull, bits of Talk Talk, bits of Kate Bush (especially side 2 of Hounds of Love), and bits of David Gilmour.  But, in the end, this is original music. Something straight from the northern most parts of the world.

If you’re looking for something beautiful and original, look no further.  You have reached your destination.

If you’re in the U.S., make sure to patronize our best prog rock store, Band Wagon USA. Elsewhere in the world, get it from Bandcamp.

Philosophy, Politics

The Rider’s Model of Reality

For the past few months, I have been working on a hobby project —reworking all my posts at SpiritOfCecilia. Took each one of them and did an AI editorial review for internal consistency and structure. The Machine pointed out the flaws, and I addressed them. Inputs related to flow, bridging sentences, and tone. Essentially, the logic, ideas, and structure are still a human creation. In fact, there were instances where I had to correct the Machine’s understanding of Friedrich Hayek.

As always, the whole exercise of writing brought additional structure to my own thinking. I also realized that the posts can be organized into three larger essays, each dealing with different aspects of reality. Once completed, I provided this content layout, along with motorcycling photos, to the Machine, and it generated HTML pages. Uploaded those pages to my personal WordPress blog with a custom domain name.

www.ridersmodel.com

Music, Republic of Letters

Some Jazz Quick Takes

It’s a glorious Memorial Day afternoon – and, on this American holiday weekend, I’m looking back on five months of hearing and reflecting on America’s greatest musical invention. As always, there are plenty of worthwhile jazz albums (whether new or archival) easily in your reach; these are notable selections from what’s come to my attention so far this year. I’ve included listening links within album titles where available, along with a purchase link after my review where necessary.

The album I’ve turned to the most (despite being released only this past month) is the Jeff Parker ETA IVTet’s Happy Today. Recorded live at a congenial Los Angeles haunt, guitarist Parker, saxophonist Jeff Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose conjure two generous portions of sheer music from silence. Guitar riffs circle and morph; sax lines are looped into shimmering chords and textures; hovering above capacious, confident rhythm work, all four players constantly listening and reacting, moving together through gradual builds and sudden tempo shifts. Whether weaving around each other’s contributions in a supple dance (“Like Swimming”) or ascending a rainbow of tone colors to a light, sweet shuffle (the title track), there’s no hurry, no contention – just a collaborative climb to lofty, inspired heights. It’s a measure of how rich this album is that every time I listen, I want to hear it again!

Parker, Johnson and Buttress also lay down understated foundations on Flea’s solo album Honora. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist returns to his heritage as a jazz trumpeter here, and while he’s boned up in recent years, he knows he’s running with thoroughbred players. Flea’s vocal features on the album’s noisier bookends “A Plea” and “Free as I Want to Be” push straight to hot emotional extremes, but his trumpet work is cool and controlled (reflecting the influence of Chet Baker); his original compositions combine understated tension with winning introspection; and his choices of cover tunes (Funkadelic to Glen Campbell to Franks Ocean & Sinatra) and guest vocalists (Thom Yorke backed by a horn section! Nick Cave singing “Wichita Lineman”!) are uniformly surprising and superb. Not what you might have expected, and all the better for it.

Four years ago, I thought Immanuel Wilkins might be part of jazz saxophone’s future; after hearing his quartet’s breathtaking Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 1, I’m convinced he’s now the present, in every sense of the term. Taking one of NYC’s most famous clubs by storm, Wilkins and his quartet (endlessly inventive pianist Micah Thomas, rock-solid bassist Ryoma Takenaga, masterful drummer Kweku Sumbury) are all in their 20s and 30s, but they’ve already lit out beyond previously explored territory to map their own exuberant course; through the modernistic postbop of “Warriors”, the Bachian interplay of “Composition XII”, the deep-rooted, ecstatic gospel of Alice Coltrane’s “Charnam” and the two-part “Eternal” (a time-bending workout that collapses into hypnotic sub-toned minimalism), there’s elegance and earthiness, mind and heart in constant dialogue. The applause after each track is unforced, the audience reacting to the Quartet’s potential unfolding into assured maturity before their ears. (Vol. 2 & Vol. 3 are equally fine, but only available via downloads or streaming. Buy Vol. 1 at Blue Note Records, — or lobby ’em for a complete box set!)

In case you hadn’t heard, Miles Davis’ centennial is this year – this week in fact. There are plenty of reissues already out and still to come, with tributes aplenty following in their wake. The best of the latter I’ve heard so far is Gregory Hutchinson’s Kind of Now: The Pulse of Miles Davis. Drummer Hutchinson’s style as a Young Lion has blossomed into a strong yet tempered sense of groove, thoroughly assimilating the work of the amazing drummers who backed up Davis; here, he leads an all-star group on a wild ride from early bebop (“Ah-Leu-Cha”) through cool school (“Fran Dance”, “Seven Steps to Heaven”) and a quartet of enigmatic Wayne Shorter tunes (including “Orbits” and “Water Babies”) to the pioneering days of jazz-rock fusion (“Bitches’ Brew” and “Circle in the Round”). Ambrose Akinmusere’s thick, liquid trumpet, Ron Blake’s consummately attentive sax work, and Gerald Clayton’s versatile, tasty piano delight throughout; it’s impossible to know what they’ll do at any given moment, but always satisfying in the aftermath. Around and through it all, there’s Hutchinson’s drive, color and sense of space. This is a thoughtful take on the breadth of Miles’ achievement that’s consistently focused and gracious, but marvelously abstract and unpredictable as well. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)

And as always, Record Store Day has brought a clutch of archival releases courtesy of jazz detective Zev Feldman. On Feldman’s 15th production of Bill Evans, At the BBC, the music is exquisite as always, despite severe sonic limitations inherent in the original 1960s television broadcast. Evans and his current trio with Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker shift moods on a dime, using dynamics as a key component in their mutual ebb and flow. Even when they take an uptempo tune like “Nardis” or turn “Waltz for Debby” into a 4/4 swinger, the rapt contemplation at the core of ballads like “My Foolish Heart” and “Who Can I Turn To?” are still winningly present. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)

Pursuing an idiom 180 degrees away from Evans, Cecil Taylor demanded the same level of attentive listening via radically different means – a sidelong take on the jazz piano tradition that reveled in fractured time and tonality, extended compositional statements and improvisations, a nigh-incessant, athletic tsunami of notes too fast to separate. On Fragments, recorded live at a French festival in 1969, Taylor prowls the keyboard like a roaring lion, endlessly pouring out riffs, chords, clusters; saxophonists Jimmy Lyons and Sam Rivers dialogue with and echo Taylor and each other, overblowing and piling up hyperspeed motifs at a frenetic pace; drummer Andrew Cyrille miraculously cooks up a flow in the absence of any downbeat – turning, shifting, reacting, leaping ahead. The two takes of Taylor’s “Fragments of a Dedication to Duke Ellington” are 50 and 90 minutes long, and you’ll feel like you’ve run a marathon after you’ve listened. This isn’t for the faint of heart or the squeamish, but trust me: Taylor’s pioneering free jazz will open up your ears and brain even as they wear them down and possibly out. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)

— Rick Krueger