Bach and Webern - Jacaranda Music

My jaw dropped last evening when I heard and saw Tereza Lucia Stanislav's rendition of Bach's "Chaconne" from Partita for Violin No. 2, which he wrote sometime between 1717-1723.  It is arguably one of the hardest pieces that had been written for the violin at that time.  It is a very challenging piece to master and is divided into five movements, where the concluding movement Ciaconna (English Chaconne) enjoys a disproportionately larger chunk of time.  The audience were on their feet the moment Tereza Stanislav's violin hit its last note.  The applause was deafening!  My jaw was still wide open.  

I was at the Second Presbyterian Church on Second Street, Santa Monica, continuing my musical adventure from classical into modernism with the help of Jacaranda.  It is such a delight, and joy to have music of this quality and variety in Los Angeles.  For the last one year Jacaranda (Patrick Scott and Mark Alan Hilt) has been organizing a series of concerts based around Olivier Messiaen's works which they dub, "The OM Century."  Last night's program was a roller-coaster ride between classical music and modernism.  The evening both opened and closed with Bach.  In between we heard Anton Webern's quirky, atonal masterpieces.  The pieces were performed by the highly talented Denali Quartet lead by Timothy Loo who did a phenomenal job in Webern's Two Pieces for Cello and Piano (1899).  I also enjoyed a Webern piece that was performed by Sarah Thornblade on the violin accompanied by Gloria Cheng on the piano.  

The concert lasted for over two hours with an intermission in between.  During the intermission, while I was sipping on some coffee, I wondered what Bach would have thought of, had he been sitting in the audience and listening to Webern's pieces.  Would he have been able to trace his musical genes to Webern's atonal masterpieces?  

The second half opened up with Webern's Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 (1909).  The five movements alternate between slow and lively rhythms.  Some of them are quite dark and none of them are too long.  To appreciate Webern you have to understand that he packed so much in so little.  His power of distilling notes and ripping the notion of classical quartets into just a duet between a piano and a violin or into a string trio is what one must look for.  

I had been looking forward to this concert for two months and I came out of last evening's performance with a big smile, light-headed and brilliantly mesmerized.  I thank Jacaranda and the Denali Quartet for putting up such a deeply moving program.  

Jake Lee-High @ Fringe Exhibitions

After finishing up my quota of Saturday reading, I felt like socializing with friends and strangers and so I jumped into my car and headed toward Chung King Court in China Town, downtown Los Angeles.  While I love doing things on a whim, my excursion to China Town was a planned one. My friend Matt Harmon who is a student at SCIARC (Southern California Institute of Architecture) had sent me an invite to an art installation opening called "Rain Field" over at Fringe Exhibitions in China Town by Jake Lee-High.  

By the time I arrived at Chung King Court, I had inhaled a very healthy dose of ash and smoke that had been infesting the air in southern California due to the Sylmar and Yorba Linda wild fires.  The galleries are all lined next to each other, but if you wander a few feet away, you will run into restaurants, and stores selling Chinese junk jewelry and souvenirs - touristy, commercial stuff.  I entered gallery 504 and was immediately enveloped in darkness, humidity, and a very earthy, raw smell.  The room was completely empty, except for a 12 feet by 12 feet black platform on the floor which was lined by a foamy plastic material.  Underneath the foam the platform was lined with 117 piezoelectric metal points.  A piezoelectric material expands and contracts as you apply a voltage across it.  The platform was doused in suspended subdued lighting from the ceiling.  I felt as if I was in some Ray Bradbury sci-fi novel or on some alien technology in a distant part of our galaxy ready to be teleported back to Earth.   

The idea of this installation was to give the audience a feeling of the dynamics of a weather system.  There were UV cameras and fans installed high up in the corners of the various walls that detected the motion of a person while he/she would be walking on the platform.  This motion would cause the piezoelectronics to respond which would in turn create sounds of rain droplets, slight rumble of clouds and the humidity that I felt in the air when I walked in.  I talked to Jake Lee-High and he explained to me that the inspiration for this project was his childhood memory of watching rain storms in Virginia.  He wanted to recreate that experience, and I think he did a marvelous job. 

I think there were too many people standing on the platform, and too many people surrounding it to completely enjoy the experience of what Jake had created.  But then again it was opening night and you couldn't possibly ask people to go inside one at a time.  I think it will be a marvelous idea to go to the gallery on a weeknight when there is no one about and just walk slowly on the platform or sit and meditate and enjoy the idiosyncrasies of the simulated weather systems.  

Here are the details on the exhibition:

504 Chung King Ct, Los Angeles, CA 90012
phone number: 213.613.0160
Exhibition Dates: November 15 – December 20, 2008
Gallery Hours: Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 6 PM and by appointment

Breaking Quantum Encryption

My advisor, Todd Brun, and colleagues Jim Harrington, and Mark Wilde recently uploaded a paper on arXiv that shows how one can break quantum key-distribution using closed time-like curves.  Their method allows one to distinguish perfectly between non-orthogonal states which is the key (no pun intended) to break quantum key-distribution protocols.  An article in the recent Science News explains the result.   

The arXiv paper is here.

The Brewery Art Walk

Where will I be next weekend (Nov. 1 + 2) you ask? Why I will be sauntering, and immersing in some of the finest art that Los Angeles has to offer to folks on this side of globe. It will be a spectacular spectacle of artsy proportions. If you love watching people, then you surely don't want to miss this. I was at the Brewery couple of years ago and enjoyed the experience. The art walk is free along with parking and it starts at 11:00 am and ends at 6:00 on Nov. 1 and 2.

HELP! - Baby Bunnies Need a Home

My dear friend Lejla Hadzimuratovic has been involved with finding homes for baby bunnies. So far she has been able to save and find good and caring homes for 102 bunnies. She is an advocate for animal rights, and she at the risk of her own life, was able to get these bunnies out of deplorable and gut-wrenching conditions in Santee Alley, downtown, Los Angeles. You wouldn't want to be in or around that place, trust me! These vendors were selling these bunnies illegally.

When she found these baby bunnies they were only 8 to 21 days old. Right now she is left with 36 babies (8 WEEKS OLD) that DESPERATELY need a loving home TODAY. Please let her or myself know if you would like to adopt a couple or if you know of good soul who can. They are very cute, adorable and make great house pets. She wishes that she could keep them all, but she already has quite a few of her own. She can no longer keep them at her place as the folks who manage her residence have already issued her a warning that Animal Control will take these gorgeous baby bunnies away and they may end up back in Santee Alley yet again. Back to hell!

Please get in touch with me through this blog by leaving a comment or e-mailing me at bilalsha[at]usc[dot]edu. You can also get in touch directly with Lejla at 310 498-8600. Can it really be that hard to find a few homes that will take these remaining 36 bunnies? We need your help. Thank you!

Writer's Festival at Whittier College

I have been attending the writer's festival at Whittier College for the past two days. On Monday, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz read from his prize-winning play "Anna in the Tropics." He also read from his upcoming new play called "Interpreter of Desires." The latter is about an American man who is living in Cuba at the brink of the revolution and who hires an actress to play the part of a woman he loves but who has gone missing. Nilo talked about his life, things that inspire him, ideas on how to write plays and how he does not really think that there is such a thing as a writer's block. It was quite an evening.
Yesterday, I found myself yet again in Shannon Center at Whittier College listening to two extraordinary women of Persian and Palestinian descent talking about their lives, and afterward reading aloud their poetry. Sholeh Wolpe read a few poems from three different books "Rooftops of Tehran," "Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad," and "The Scar Saloon." Her poems are simple, honest, yet powerful and will shake you to your core. She makes you think about the politics of a nation through what the individual has suffered. Some of the poems she read were quite serious, heavy and laden with beautiful imagery and metaphor. She also read a couple that were more on the light-hearted side.
Nathalie Handal having been raised in Latin America, having lived in France and now New York is a treasure-trove of languages and cultures. This really comes across in her writing and in her reading style. The gesture of her fingers would remind me of an Arabic woman's gesture, while the sway of her hips and the intensity of her delivery made me think of someone from the Caribbean or Latin America.
I could identify parts of my life with both of these women. They are both first generation Americans, both of them poets, both of them have written extensively about political strife in their native lands, and both can bring this about through the human element. I am thankful to my friend Tony Barnstone who invited me to these readings and who himself happens to be an excellent poet.

Agamemnon at the Getty Villa

I was looking forward to last evening. Right after my research group meeting I made my way to the corner of Pardee Way and Exposition Blvd on the USC campus. Why was I walking toward the - dare I say - business part the campus? The Visions and Voices folks had set up shop there for students to collect tickets, have dinner, listen to a lecture on Greek theater [tragic] and then board a shuttle that would take us to the Getty Villa where we would sit under a starry night and be transported to ancient Greece.

Even though I live so close to the Getty Villa, I had not visited it until last night. It took us only forty-five minutes to get to the Villa. By the time we got there it was almost ten-to-seven. The evening air from the Pacific was cool and I felt as if I had been transported to ancient Rome. The Villa was modeled after an actual Roman one that was buried during the Mt. Vesuvius eruption. We were allowed to wander around the Villa before the start of the play and so I visited the museum for a while. The Getty Villa has an impressive collection of Greek and Roman artifacts. Unfortunately I had only forty-five minutes to check them out. I must go there again, just for the museum.

The amphitheater was doused in subdued lighting which was perfect because we could actually see a starry sky. We were surrounded by the Malibu hills and the mood was very festive and positive. Incidentally, I saw Laura Linney roaming around with her fiance and longtime boyfriend Eric Schauer, both of whom later joined the audience. I recently saw her in "The Squid and the Whale" and her performance was excellent.

Agamemnon was played by Delroy Lindo, while Tyne Daly played Agamemnon's wife Clytaemnestra. Each and everyone gave a strong performance. But I was shaken and stirred by Francesca Faridany's performance of Cassandra which was riveting and I was so completely drawn in, that it jolted and carried my mind to new heights. I was absolutely ecstatic and full of goosebumps on my arms and my spine. The play was written by Aeschylus who lived in Greece between 525 B.C. and 456 B.C. After more than a thousand years, it is still being performed and some of the values that the play touches upon are true to this day. I wonder if he ever realized while he was writing the play that he would be forever immortalized and one day become as famous and as well-known as the gods of his time.

The play ends this month and all the performances are sold-out! I thank the USC Visions and Voices initiative that allowed me to be part of something truly wonderful and awe-inspiring.