Book Review

The King's Gold
by Arturo Perez-Reverte

This is the fourth book in the Captain Alatriste series, and it was every bit as enjoyable as the first three. This novel finds Alatriste and Inigo back from fighting the Dutch. Upon their return, they are thrust back into intrigue and swashbuckling action, this time in Seville. There, Alatriste is recruited to take part in the re-appropriation of some illegally smuggled treasure from the New World. This book is very action-packed and thoroughly entertaining. It also has the following wonderful exchange of dialogue when Alatriste is first hired for the aforementioned job by his friend Francisco de Quevedo:
"There'll be some killing involved," warned don Francisco de Quevedo. "possibly a lot."
"I only have two hands," responded Alatriste.

This Week's concert roundup

Being unemployed gave me time to go to more concerts than usual - it's one of the things I'll miss a little bit now that I'm starting work again.

Thursday, Oct. 30: Gamelan Galak Tika & Ensemble Robot
Gamelan Galak Tika is a community Balinese ensemble based out of MIT, and Ensemble Robot is the project of a bunch of engineers who build musical robots. Only one of their robots appeared in this concert, the Heliphon, a double-helix shaped robotic metallophone. At first, it was a little hard to tell which sounds were coming from the Heliphon, but that was mostly because it's timbre meshed seamlessly with that of the gamelan.

Belenganjur - Traditional
This piece led off the program - it was lovely and a little bit on the subtle side. It was especially interesting because it used hand-held chime/cymbal instruments instead of the more typical gangsa (small metallophones).

Mars Rover/Snow White - Christine Southworth
This piece was very much a melding of gamelan and indie rock, adding a drum set, bass guitar, processed vocals, and keyboards to the ensemble. Unfortunately, I found it to be a very uneasy and thus unsuccessful combination.

Rice Combo - Po-Chun Wang
This was the first piece to use the Heliphon. I liked it a lot - the Heliphon fit in perfectly, and the use of an electronic track of processed spoken word worked perfectly with the instrumental part. I especially liked the way Wang artfully timed the moments of clarity on the electronic track.

SSSS - Midori Matsuo
This piece had a lot of wonderful moments, and a few slow, duller moments. There was a lot of rhythmic contrast between the sections, and good use of different combinations of instruments.

Agak-Agak - Ramon Castillo
This was possibly my favorite piece on the concert. It was very rich, almost to the point of being chaotic. It included just about everything but the kitchen sink - gamelan, Heliphon, double bass, and electronic wind instrument, and an accordion - and yet it all worked. There were some really great moments where the piece fell into a good groove and just really let go.


Saturday, Nov. 1: Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra
The Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra is a community based professional orchestra in Milford, MA. They are pretty good, and my destinysfuture plays with them.

Verklartes Leben - Robert Blake, Jr.
Robert was one of my classmates in the masters program at Boston Conservatory, and remains a good friend; hearing this piece was the reason I went to this concert. Verklartes Leben was absolutely beautiful. Robert writes in a tonal style reminiscent of early 20th century German music, and he does it really well. This piece was lush and rich, and featured gorgeous motifs.

Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola - Mozart
This piece is extremely familiar, and it was pretty enjoyable to hear again. However, it's hard for me to get terribly excited about Mozart, except for the operas.

The Planets - Holst
I really like this piece, and it was a treat to hear it live. The power of "Mars, Bringer of War" is so much more impressive live. There were a few small moments here and there that sounded a bit shaky, but overall, the performance was good. I thought the choice to have the local high school choir sing the choral part in "Neptune, The Mystic", was rather daring and ambitious, if unfortunately not entirely sucessful.