The Magic Orange Tree CD reviewed in School Library Journal
Diane’s new CD of stories from The Magic Orange Tree has been getting wonderful reviews in the press — the latest of which is in the November 2010 issue of the School Library Journal: Diane Wolkstein, award–winning author/storyteller, relates five tales from the collection of 27 stories in her book, The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales (Schocken, 1997), originally published in 1978, first prefacing them with information about the teller and often her own...
Read MoreWinter Light Festival: Officium Novum
In the pre–concert discussion, the Hilliard Ensemble advised us that there would be six players that evening. The four members of the Hilliard Ensemble, Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek, and one more. The sixth would be St. Ignatius Loyola. The church itself. They informed us that, when possible, they carefully choose the hall in which they perform because the reverberations make a great difference to the success of the performance. Indeed! St. Ignatius Loyola definitely came...
Read MoreA gesture
Just the smallest gestures make such a difference. And of course, who would better know this than Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat? Paul Holdengraber, Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library, interviewed her tonight at Live at the NYPL. She spoke about wanting to write about the complexity of the Haitian people, who are somewhere between resilient and wretched. She said she wasn’t hopeful about the situation in Haiti because the one and half million people who are...
Read MoreWhite Light Festival: Judith
“Judith’s glory shall endure,” sings Katarina Livljanić in her New York premiere of a recrafting of the Biblical story of Judith from Renaissance Croatia. What an unexpected and gorgeous blending of music and theatre. Katarina, musicologist and singer (and director of the group Ensemble Dialogos), creates, using Gregorian and Glagolitic sources to accompany the sixteenth century text of of Judita by Marko Marulić. The repetition of notes, the simplicity of the...
Read MoreWhite Light Festival: Sutra is Play
I can’t tell you how the title Sutra relates to the piece choreographed by Flemish/Moroccan choreographer/director Sidi Larbi Cjerkaoui. I can say that the piece is Fun. It’s Play. It reminded me of my three years old (and six months, he insists) grandson, Judah. When we play together, he will suddenly jump up, cry “Grrr…” and do three or four swift karate moves and then return to Lego or the book we’re reading. And the piece has sixteen moveable very large wood Lego...
Read MoreWhite Light Festival: Splendor Rising
Warum ist das Licht gegeben, Op. 74 by Johannes Brahms, the first piece of an evening called Splendor Rising, was sung by the Flemish baroque ensemble Collegium Vocale Gent and the Accademia Chigiana Siena, and played by the Belgian Wind ensemble I Solisti del Vento, at Alice Tully Hall last night. Part of the White Light Festival, Warum ist das Licht gegeben was beauty transcendent. It still fills my heart and senses the morning after. The blending of the pure clear voices of the Flemish vocal...
Read MoreWhite Light Festival: Silence
The Conversation on Silence by four eloquent intellectuals was produced by the White Light Festival of Lincoln Center. My guess is that it was Jane Moss, the producer and conceiver of this remarkable festival, who chose these apt experts. Jane cares for Silence. The conversation was scintillating, engaging, exhilarating. Karen Armstrong, historian of religion, spoke about how the ancients built silence into their rituals. Silence moves toward finding Being itself, she said. She spoke about...
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