In today’s Orange County Register online, I put on my reporter’s hat and write about the Pacific Symphony’s opera initiative, “Symphonic Voices”.
Click here to read the article, or pick up a copy of Sunday’s newspaper.
I thought by this point in my life I’d know how to write. I thought it would come easy by now, that I’d know the ropes and the tricks of the trade.
“A man’s got to know his limitations,” Dirty Harry once said. I do know those. I have plenty.
I know that I can’t count on my muse (for want of a better word) showing up at the appointed time. Sometimes she’s there, sometimes not. When you’re on deadline, though, it doesn’t really matter. When you’re on deadline, you can’t afford to have writer’s block. You have to crank out the words anyway. The deadline is often your friend. It forces you to write, no matter what. Without the deadline I might not ever write.
You can optimize the chances for the arrival of your muse (sleep, a good breakfast, coffee, etc.) but you can’t make her show. Sometimes the material you’re working with doesn’t inspire the words to flow, but even when it does that doesn’t mean they will.
I know that it isn’t over until it’s over. You can be writing an article that wouldn’t fly in a junior high school essay contest, you can be wondering why you ever thought you could be a writer, you can be wondering what it is, exactly, that you’re trying to say, but if you keep chipping away at it, fixing small things, finding a better word here or there, or work on the punctuation, the article can turn around at the very last second and become something you’re proud of.
I’m often proudest of articles that to the average reader couldn’t possibly seem special in any way. That’s because as the writer, I know what went into it and what the odds were of it coming off at all. You’ve made lemonade, maybe not even very good lemonade, out of lemons.
I also know that most readers can’t tell the difference between my good and bad stuff. I guess that’s kind of cynical, but it’s true. It can also be a relief of sorts knowing that no one, or few, will notice when you’re not on your game. It takes the pressure off the writing, allows you to relax and then, presto — what do you know? — you’re writing well.
In today’s Orange County Register online, I review last night’s concert of British music performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Keith Lockhart.
Click here to read my review, or pick up a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper.
From my review of Itzhak Perlman in today’s Orange County Register online:
“Itzhak Perlman, who played his first violin recital in Orange County in a long while on Sunday afternoon, is a smooth entertainer. The description is not meant to slight. Classical music has but four or five names these days that can sell-out a hall on the basis of their names alone, Perlman among them. We could use a few more Perlmans.”
Click here to read the whole thing, or pick up a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper.
photo: Fritz Kreisler, Library of Congress
In the Orange County Register, I review the Pacific Symphony in a conceptual concert on late Mozart, scripted by Joseph Horowitz and Carl St. Clair.
For last Sunday’s print edition of the Orange County Register, my fellow arts writers and I got together to create a package for the A section of the newspaper on ‘The Rite of Spring,’ which turns 100 in May. A number of local events celebrate the occasion. My job, of course, was to write about the music — for a general audience — in 850 words or less.
Click here to read my article on ‘The Rite of Spring’.
Links to some of the other contributions are at the bottom of my article.
Hooray, a professional orchestra played a piece of new music by a living composer in Orange County, by my estimation for the first time this season!
Photo: Cigar in hand, I phone my editor at intermission, telling him to stop the presses because a piece of new orchestral music was spotted within county borders.
My review is in today’s Orange County Register.
In today’s Orange County Register online, I review pianist Louis Lortie performing a program of Wagner transcriptions.
Click here to read my review, or pick up a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper.
