Baby Einsteins

[mlerules]

Here's an article on why DVD refund/replacements are now available, as well as info on how to replace 'em. One of the lines I really like from the article: "[T]he most important thing is reminding parents that getting down on the floor to play with children is the most educational thing they can do.” I happen to think/feel that reading aloud to kids is pretty danged educational as well.

EDIT: Fascinating. I've never rec'd an anonymous comment before. Too bad the link's bad so I cannot get at what this person's trying to direct me.

Comments

Baby Einstein

[(Anonymous)]

Interestingly enough, current media has a strong voice on the subject, so if you would like to take a look, this here is a great article to consider: http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=QEWJ4SM7IV45&preview=article&linkid=b01cf461-7583-4163-867a-b02465dee49c&pdaffid=ZVFwBG5jk4Kvl9OaBJc5%2bg%3d%3d

sincerely,
MediaMentions

[jibb.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's a lik to this LA Times article at some newspaper-displaying site. It uses the refunds you're mentioning as a hook for an article about a concert series that also has Einstein in the name, but doesn't seem too related.

MediaMentions seems to be a press-release company, so perhaps the article is based on a press release that they did?

[mlerules.livejournal.com]

Hmm, could be - thx for the leg/brain-work/thoughts re: this. :-)

[hiddentass.livejournal.com]

The article in a really less annoying format. All this said, it appears to be a troll because I'm not sure a concert review really counts as "current media has a strong voice on the subject" (apologies to the copyright holders but make your damn products easier to use):

‘Einstein’ is a brilliant choice

The Jacaranda series begins its season with excerpts from the Philip Glass opera.

So maybe “Baby Einstein” won’t make your kids smarter after all. The Walt Disney Co. has offered to refund parents’ money, so it looks like plopping kids in front of the videos does not count as instant education. But the few enlightened parents who tried “Einstein on the Beach” instead may have a wiser tale to tell.
Gary Friedman
Los Angeles Times
‘ROTHKO CHAPEL’: Violist Alma Lisa Fernandez plays during the performance of the Morton Feldman piece.

Saturday night the Westside music series Jacaranda concluded its first concert of the season at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica with excerpts from Philip Glass’ groundbreaking opera he conceived with director Robert Wilson in 1976. Glass offers the option of replacing the women’s voices at the end with a children’s chorus, and that is what Jacaranda did.

Asking youngsters to show up late at night to sing the last eight minutes of a five-hour avant-garde work is, obviously, unreasonable. Then again, little about putting on “Einstein on the Beach” has ever been practical. Glass has presented the score in concert on several occasions and performed the “Spaceship” scene with his ensemble at the Hollywood Bowl last summer. But despite repeated attempts to find funding for a revival, the magnificent Wilson production has not been seen for a generation.

Four years ago, Jacaranda did its bit by turning the opera’s most modest segments, the five Knee Plays (Wilson’s term for short connecting scenes) into a 40-minute concert work. Saturday, a block from the beach, the Knee Plays were back, this time with three dozen angelic Einsteins, courtesy of Los Angeles Children’s Chorus.

(cont)

[hiddentass.livejournal.com]

For many of us who have found “Einstein on the Beach” in the theater a religious experience, “Einstein” in a church is not a stretch. Still, Jacaranda’s concert made a considerable spiritual statement.

The evening began with two works full of sacred connotations written just before “Einstein” in the early ’70s: Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” and Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 4 (“Amazing Grace”). Feldman’s score for chorus, viola, celesta and percussion was intended for Houston’s interfaith Rothko Chapel, built to house haunting late paintings by the American Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko.

This is music in which no notes touch ground, no downbeat is felt and pianissimo is the dynamic of choice. The chorus is asked to sing chords with a consistent “open hum.” The viola has the wisps of melody, slightly Hebraic at first and hinting at Ravel later.

Performing “Rothko Chapel” is like capturing wind. Feldman asks for a calm 30 minutes; this reading conducted by Mark Alan Hilt was an ever-soslightly nervous 24. Still, the choral singing was sensitive; Tamara Bevard handled the soprano solos smartly, and Alma Lisa Fernandez was a soulful violist.

Fernandez is a member of Jacaranda’s superb resident Denali Quartet, which has made Johnston’s “Amazing Grace” its calling card. Johnston pulls the 18th century hymn tune in directions it has never been and asks the players to use pure tunings. The result is the amazement of grace made palpable in sound. The Denalis made that evident in, to repeat the only word that describes the music and its rendition, an amazing performance.

Following all this, the “Einstein” Knee Plays, which Hilt conducted with evident affection, were in danger of too much churchliness. They began with a pipe organ intoning the bass line Glass played in more rock ’n’ roll fashion on an electric organ. The chorus’ “libretto” consists of either counted numbers of the changing meters or the solfege syllables of the pitches. The impressive Jacaranda Chamber Singers made even these sound more eloquent than spunky.

A solo violin — the Denali’s Joel Pargman — played Glass’ classic Minimalist etudes with style and two actresses (the familiar radio personalities Gail Eichenthal and Sandra Tsing Loh) alluringly read stream-ofconsciousness texts that included an incantation on the line “Oh these are the days my friends and these are the days my friends.” I would have liked more electronic punch from Eichenthal and Loh, who were amplified, but they were not displeasing as exquisite aural wallpaper.

“Einstein” ends with a final speech about lovers on a park bench that was delivered by an elderly actor in the original. Ken Page read it wonderfully for Jacaranda, accompanied by the solo violin, organ and the children singing their one-twothrees and do-re-me’s with marvelous clear voices lifted to heaven.

There are critics who once called “Einstein on the Beach” baby opera. But those were other days, my friends. Saturday, Jacaranda brought “Einstein” to the beach, and it was transcendent.

mark.swed@latimes.com

[mlerules.livejournal.com]

Thx very much, sweetie, for the article. Yeah, it does indeed seem like a troll. My 1st! Aw...