@joshgroban fathom event 2/4/16

I attended this event at the City Center movie theater in White Plains, NY. Not more than about 10 people there-- at least 4 of whom I knew

There were some inauspicious events linked with this venue.

Two weeks before there was a big article in the local newspaper about how this venue had bed bugs, lice, and mice.  A citation was issued by the City of White Plains against the venue, which was later lifted when an independent inspection failed to reveal the alleged vermin.

Still, I think many people in the area were nervous about going there, and may have chosen to go to the event in New Rochelle instead.

Then this afternoon a severe weather alert was issued for the area, with forecasts of 2-4 inches of snow -- sometimes heavy enough to impede visibility -- for the time of the event.  This may have discouraged others from going.

So far the snow has not materialized.

But it was an odd event.  I guess it was timed to celebrate the issuance of the DVD tomorrow -- but, for those of us who were enough clued in to know that the fathom event was even happening, that DVD had been already readily available for order from PBS for several months.  I certainly already had it.

I had understood that there were going to be some extra songs not on the DVD -- if there were they were played before the start time of the event as printed on my ticket.  It was distressing to walk in, thinking I was on time, to see that material was already airing, though it seemed to be taking, not music.

So far as I could tell, the musical part of the show was the same as my DVD -- tho clearly my home theater setup is rather modest compared with a movie theater.  I did splurge on good, BOSE speakers, tho, so I do hear fairly well at home.

His singing was near flawless. We just have to keep thanking Kristin Blodgett for her good work in  retraining his singing style.  It's just so much better, not that it was bad before, of course, but it's definitely much better.

I really liked the stage setup for this concert.  It had a feeling like an elegant living room, rather than a stage.

I find bizarre that they pump fog over the stage during music concerts.  In this case, I don't think it had the desired effect, because some of the cameras were too far away from the stage, so it just looked like there was smoke on stage.  I kept fearing that the singers would start coughing.  If the camera angles were better, i.e. all closer, it might create a better illusion that the singers were actually singing in the fog -- but I wonder why the powers that be think that it would be a good idea for the singers to be surrounded by fog.

Josh introduced the British pianist/producer Bernie Herms several times -- but never introduced the Native American pianist, Mark Stevens -- why?  Herms is very sexy.

They did have a Q&A with Josh, which went fairly well.  One of my friends, was thrilled to hear her question answered.  I think I got my question in too late, not that he would have answered it anyway, necessarily. I'll have to tweet it to him.

After the Q&A was over, they did not turn on the lights, and we got a Tom Jones concert that said "test material." I waited after everyone else had left, because I thought I understood there was going to be more Josh music, but I guess not.

There were some technical difficulties during the transmission.  The signal was interrupted once during the concert and 4 times during the live Q&A.

During the Q&A, Josh apparently believed that his mike was not working.  I'm not sure why he thought so, as I could hear him fine, but maybe the mike he was using was just not connected to the speakers in the same theater where he was sitting.  Maybe that was intended to prevent feedback??

He kept asking whether we could hear him.  We shouted back "yes," but that was not transmitted to him.  He borrowed the other fellow's mike.  I tweeted to Josh that both mikes were live, as that's the only way I have to reach him directly -- though I know that he couldn't be reading twitter at the moment of being interviewed.  I hoped there might be some assistant reading it, who could forward anything important.

I notice that Josh seemed to be making an effort to use a lower speaking voice.  This seemed make him get hoarse, so far as I can tell. Unfortunately, his past tendency to speak in a high, nervous voice, during interviews probably led at least one fan to become obsessed with the idea that he's gay.  I hope that this type of bizarre obsession is not leading him to strain his speaking voice lower.

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Addenda

One fan pointed out that this fathom event was held exactly 3 years after the Allen Room Fathom event with respect to the release of the All that Echoes album.  There was a critical difference between that event and this one, though. That was an actual live concert announcing a new album, that was broadcast live into theaters.  This was a concert that had already been broadcast on PBS and the DVD had already been sold through PBS.  It seems to me that this situation makes less sense for a Fathom event than the prior situation.

Also there was this bizarre incident where someone was talking back stage during the Q&A, which made it hard to hear. Josh fortunately noticed and called it out and it stopped -- but, really, during an event broadcast like this you would think they would be a bit more professional.

@nyphil Concert 1/15/16

I first subscribed to the New York Philharmonic last season, because Josh Groban was featured at the opening gala.

I haven't really considered myself a classical music fan.  In fact, classical music often gives me narcolepsy.

Still, I do feel like the New York Philharmonic is special.  They're amongst the best at what they do -- orchestral music.  When I was a kid, growing up in Wisconsin, I used to watch them on TV, with Leonard Bernstein.  We had an orchestra in Madison, Wisconsin as well, but somehow I never even considered that it could be as important as the New York Philharmonic.

So I resubscribed.  I went for matinee performances, because I hoped that I would be less likely to get narcolepsy earlier in the day.

So far this strategy seems to be going well. I haven't fallen asleep.  On the other hand, I've been to two concerts that might have been atypical.  One was Handel's Messiah, which I know very well, and the other was last Friday.

This last concert was

Respighi

Church Windows

Magnus Lindberg

Violin Concerto No. 2 (U.S. Premiere—New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra)

Stravinsky

The Rite of Spring

The program notes for the Stravinsky piece were fascinating. Apparently, the first time it was played in invoked a riot amongst the audience with proponents and opponents of the music going at each other.  That made me particularly curious about it.  

It was definitely an interesting piece with lots of unexpected musical twists, including quite a few chords that were jarring.  Still, we're used to this stuff now, and the largely elderly audience at the matinee listened quite peacefully.

The part I liked best was the Lindberg.  This was part of a series of 3 performances of the world premiere of this concerto, by the living composer Magnus Lindberg.  I tried looking for him on twitter.  Apparently this is a very common name on twitter, so I didn't succeed in finding him.

Still, the style reminded me of the parts of Josh Groban's music that I like best. I included some links in this blog about that sort of music: quiet, beautiful, but with unexpected chords and chord progressions.   I have often felt that calling Josh Groban classical/pop crossover is misleading.  I would rather hear him called new music/pop crossover.  I think that's more accurate.

http://straightarrow372.blogspot.com/2015/12/so-this-happened-joshgroban-nominated.html

I have to conclude that my preference is for what's called "modern classical." 

Anyway, I'm sort of hoping now that Josh will write a song, collaborating with Magnust Lindberg.

I finally got to see Lucia Micarelli @theloosh live

I finally got to see Lucia Micarelli live -- twice actually.  I first found her on YouTube performing with Josh Groban -- but then she never played with him since 2010, when I became a Grobanite.

This made me sad. I really liked the Awake DVD with Josh, Tariqh, and Lucia.  Not only did the music please me, but i loved their diversity.  You don't see too many diverse bands in popular music.

She's been touring with Chris Botti in 2015.  She also a stint with Barbara Streisand with him recently.  I looked at the tour schedule occasionally, but the gigs all seemed to be far from the NYC metro area, where I live.  I tweeted her, asking her to tell me when she got to the NYC metro area, but that never happened.

Then, on FB, I saw a photo of Chris and Lucia with Cicely Tyson.  Now I happen to know that Cicely is playing on Broadway with James Earl Jones in "Gin Game," right now, so I knew Lucia and Chris were in NYC.

I went and searched on the Internet, and found that Chris was doing a residency at the Blue Note Jazz Club -- 28 days, 56 shows -- an insane schedule.  Lucia was listed there with him on the Blue Note Jazz Club website.

I immediately bought a ticket and went on December 21.  Then I went again on New Year's Eve.

She played the 2 opening numbers with him.  Then she came back to do Emmanuel and Aurora/Kashmir.  Then I think she came back for at least two more, one of which was "Time to Say Goodbye," which was not actually the closing number, but was perhaps her last number.

She was just excellent.  That beautiful tone that I've always so admired was very evident.  On New Year's Eve, I took a date.  He fond her tone so unusual that he was convinced that it had been electronically altered.  I told him that I was quite sure that that was not the case, that it was just her extraordinary bowing style that we were hearing.

She wasn't there for the whole residency.  Starting January 2, they brought back Caroline Campbell, who was playing with Chris the last time I saw him prior blog about seeing Chris Botti Caroline is a fine violinist, but just not as extraordinary as Lucia, at least to my ear.

I had seen the videos of Lucia playing in Emmanuel and Aurora/Kashmir many times.  There's something magical about seeing something on the screen that makes it seem especially elusive.  The idea that I might hear these pieces live, just seemed incredible to me -- but there they were doing them -- and they were stellar -- just stellar.

I know she occasionally has done solo shows.  I hope that she does one again soon here in the NYC metro area.  The last one was in Utah, if I understand correctly.

She's still just as slender and beautiful as the photos I've seen of her from before.  She still plays barefoot.  She still has an evening gown that shows a lot of back and leg.

I also found out that she smokes -- and went out for frequent cigarette breaks.  I guess that's not as bad for an instrumentalist as for a vocalist; however I do happen to have seen YouTube videos where Lucia was definitely singing.  She didn't attempt that at this concert; actually they had a couple of other singers with spectacular belts.  The singers did not come on for as many pieces as Lucia. Lucia's singing is low, quiet and bluesy -- not one of those spectacular belts.  It's a sweet voice, but not to the level of her violin.  In any case, she didn't sing at this concert.

I was just absolutely spellbound by Aurora/Kashmir and Emmanuel.  I've seen them so often in video format.  Seeing them live, and just as good as the videos was just astounding, breathtaking, incredible.  Her other performances were equally extraordinary, but did not rivet me quite as much, because I had not been watching them as often.

Now I'm not as consistently overwhelmed with Chris.  Sometimes his pieces are quite loud and agitating, which I don't do well with.  Sometimes he did play other songs with that quiet sweet tone that he used in Emmanuel.  I like that aspect of his playing and find his trumpet tone almost as spell-binding as Lucia's violin. Still, I don't find him as riveting as she -- yet he's the one with a tour that bears his name.

I firmly believe that the fact that he has had a 12 year tour is due to his being self-confident and out there promoting himself.  I suspect that Lucia not having her own tour is a Mars/Venus issue.  Women tend not to have the same self-confidence and bluster as men.  We are sometimes our own worst enemies.

The Blue Note does produce its own records.  I don't think they had the intention of doing a record for this concert, but I wish they would.

I also hope that Lucia will have a solo show in NYC soon.  As I understand it, she's originally from Queens, so I would think NYC would be a logical destination for her.

I also wish she would keep fans better updated with her performance plans.  I don't even see a place on her website where I could add my e-mail address to be kept informed of her tour dates.

So this happened -- @joshgroban nominated for grammy

Josh is finally nominated for a grammy -- after a long hiatus.

In the past, Josh often spoke of his frustration at not fitting into a grammy category.  Though he normally presents as a humble fellow, his desire for a grammy has been thinly veiled at best.  I remember one tweet about the grammy nomination of Ruslan Sirota, his pianist on the All that Echoes tour, where Josh tweeted that he was "grammy adjacent."

For me, though, it's bittersweet.

What I liked best about Josh was his music that was pop crossed over with modern classical.  People called it pop/classical crossover, but to me that description is more evocative of Il Divo.  Josh was bringing in more elements of experimental music.  That's what I really liked.

Here are some examples:

Sometimes it was just unusual note or chord progressions

sometimes a bit more exotic

often international and exotic

sometimes electronic

Modern classical/pop crossover: not a grammy category, not accessible to the masses, intellectually complex -- but to me this has been his genius.

Don't ge me wrong. "Stages" is beautiful.  He has a new voice coach and his voice is sounding better than it ever has, albeit a bit more conventional than it did.  

But the background music sounds like Muzak to me...  not as interesting.  

There have been articles written about how successful popular music is all similar musically.   Here are some examples:

http://www.dailydot.com/lol/pop-country-6-song-mashup/

http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/i-analyzed-the-chords-of-1300-popular-songs-for-patterns-this-is-what-i-found/

Uggh, like we're just sheep -- baaaah-baaaah -- always going after the same stuff; but Josh wasn't.  Josh was different -- refreshingly different.

To get a "grammy" nomination, he had to become more similar to others.  Ick, ick, ick.  I don't like that. It bothers me.  Not that I hate this album.  I don't.  But I hate that in order to get recognition he had to give up the way he was different.

Still, hopefully, the fact that "Stages" has done so well will give him some flexibility in creating a different sort of album next time.

RIP @elllizibeth

I just got my Josh Groban Stages DVD. It’s damaged. At least the first song doesn’t play properly.  

I also just learned that Elizabeth Hershoff died.  https://www.gofundme.com/elizabethhershoff  Somehow the timing of these two events seems significant to me.

I met Lizzie on twitter, if I recall correctly. We were both fans of Josh Groban. 

At that time, twitter was very new and Josh on twitter was very new.  Josh was in California.  He tended to get on twitter and tweet at about midnight California time.  A bunch of us would sit around by our computers waiting for him to tweet, even tho we were in other time zones and it was very late for us.  We were tweeting about him.

After a while, I think it occurred to us that he was actually reading what we were saying.  I_balls, who was later Violet, started this thing of asking him to tweet.  Curiously, he seemed to tweet just when she asked him to, as if he had been waiting for us to ask.

Then sometimes he would interact with us.  We liked to be on when he started tweeting, because we figured that, if we could respond to his tweet within a few minutes, he would be likely to see it — and even possibly answer.  We tried to get good at making speedy, witty comments on his tweets, because he seemed to enjoy that.

Lizzie was particularly good at this. She also wrote a very funny blog that Josh seemed to like.  He tweeted her over 30 times.  At one point, she was the fan he had tweeted to most of anyone.

Lizzie had interesting opinions.  

She was a public school teacher. Her district in Boulder Colorado had, if I recall correctly, eliminated grading students.  Their students tended to do exceptionally well on national standardized tests.  She cited that as evidence that how students do in school has little to do with pedagogy or grading or any of the standard things that are attempted — and everything to do with their families.  The families in her area were economically comfortable, and well-educated, so their kids would always do well in school, no matter what the school did.

She was an atheist.  She was inspired by Josh’s friend, Cara Santa Maria, to become more publicly atheist. Cara Santa Maria is a very in-your-face atheist — and very smart.  

She also was not a big fan of capitalism. I remember her telling me about a book she read that had as its thesis that our economic system rewards sociopaths — certainly a thought-provoking topic.

Her writing was excellent and biting.  I finally met her in person on Jul 2, 2013 at a Josh concert at the Hollywood Bowl.  In person she sounded quite different from the way she sounded in her writing.  She  was humble and spoke in a small, high voice.  I think she was not aware how different her writing was from how she was in person.

Lizzie was very smart.  She started a thread on FOJG for intellectual discussions.  I used to participate on that thread.  

The thread got deleted at one point. We think it got deleted because I was complaining about how much I missed Lucia in Josh’s concerts.  That was a hint that perhaps someone — probably Josh himself — was sensitive to that topic.

Lizzie was very upset about the deletion.

Other fans became jealous of the attention Josh paid to her.  They started criticizing her. Also, I think some of them did not get her sense of humor, while Josh did.  No one should ever mistake Josh for just a singer or just a musician.  He's a very sharp cookie and voracious speed reader.

It turned out that Lizzie was very sensitive and could not tolerate to be criticized publicly on the Internet.  She asked people to stop, but they only criticized her more and sent especially cruel DMs to her on Josh’s website.  

She began accusing them of bullying.  Then they would assert that they were only arguing or trying to  convince her that she was wrong.  

One of the mods, Backwards1, wrote her privately and told her that her posts were fine and that nastiness between fans had always been a problem on the website — and encouraged her to keep posting.  Some fans suspected that this particular mod was Josh himself.

Lizzie particularly did not like being discussed on other blogs — some of which were very nasty to her indeed.

From my perspective, the idea that you could talk someone out of being very sensitive by mass public criticism over the Internet was utterly absurd.  It also seems to me that, if someone tells you that they can’t tolerate such criticism and you keep doing it after being requested to stop, then you are a bully, even if you think that the person shouldn’t be so sensitive or you think you should be able to talk them out of it.

Jspot was particularly vicious. Several of us complained to Wordpress, but they wouldn’t do anything, which still infuriates me.  Also, Josh, who was probably the only person with enough clout to do anything about that blog, apparently chose to ignore it, rather than try to protect friends and fans who were being attacked.

Louise Miller was also often nasty to her. Louise will deny this, because she deletes this stuff, but it was definitely so.

There were twitter accounts that were registered just for the purpose of attacking Lizzie.  I think I still have some screen images of that somewhere on my computer.  Bullies go after blood.  When they knew she was sensitive and that they could get a rise out of her, they just got worse.

Eventually, she disabled comments on her blog.  Curiously, probably because she was being criticized on widely read websites, her blog was very popular and she typically got at least 500 hits on each post.

She never could get used to being criticized on the Internet.  

Stress damages the immune system. I wonder to what extent the stress she felt over this could have contributed to her getting cancer.

Earlier this year, rumors started flying on various social media about Josh’s personal life. There had always been rumors, but these got nastier than usual, especially from disgruntled ex girlfriends.

Lizzie got obsessed with those rumors and began behaving in a way that was distressing even to those who liked her -- even encouraging one of these ex girlfriends to expose Josh.  Now it appears that her behavior may have been due to the brain cancer that was diagnosed towards the end of the summer.

I do wonder, too, whether the stress of seeing these salacious rumors about Josh, who she loved so very much, could have damaged her health.

When she realized she was dying, she deleted all her social media accounts.  I feel very sad about that, because her blog had some funny/brilliant posts.  

She sent me some messages not to tell anyone she was dying.  She was concerned about all the people who were hostile towards her — and she did not want them to know.

Later, her friend in Boulder created the public gofundme page, so Grobies found out and contributed.  I hope, somehow, she realized before the end that not everyone in Grobania was really hostile towards her.

****

Addendum: 11/19/15 

For those of you who may have joined us recently, Josh's style on twitter changed substantially recently, possibly as a result of the incidents with the rumors.  He's much more professional & less interactive than he used to be -- also less funny, alas.

Also, given that people can delete their social media accounts with no notice, if there's something you really like on there, despite copyright, it would be nice to make copies.

*****

Addendum: 12/5/15

Josh may have read this, because his tweets have suddenly gotten more fun recently.  

A lot of the cyber-bullying attacks against Lizzie were fans, rather self-righteously, "defending" Josh against perceived "attacks."  

This is what Josh himself has been saying on this topic recently

I should also add that I_balls, who was later Violet, left twitter, in part because she did not like the way she was treated by other fans, particularly when Josh tweeted her.

People attacked me, too, quite often, but I was fortunately able to get past it.

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Addendum 1/4/16 I was just trying to go back and find all of Josh's tweets to Lizzie.  It turns out that the option to find "all" tweets is gone.  They'll just do "top" tweets.  Still there are quite a few

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addendum 5/14/16

I saw this piece about a promising trial for treatment of glioblastoma.  It made me think of Lizzie.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/promising-duke-university-polio-brain-cancer-trial-given-breakthrough-status-60-minutes/

Too late for her, alas :'(  but interesting -- using polio virus.

*********

addendum 5/19/16

This article asserts that rates incidence of brain cancer have been flat over the last 20 years, and, therefore concludes, that cell phones do not cause brain cancer.

It's hard to believe that brain cancer rates have been flat, when one has a personal friend who died of brain cancer.

*******

Addendum 10/27/16

Reading articles about brain cancer research and thinking of Lizzie 

http://www.barrons.com/articles/PR-CO-20161026-909438

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Addendum 4/14/17

Another article about brain cancer, especially glioblastoma research

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2017/04/14/Brain-cancer-vaccine-appears-safe-in-small-trial/2231492176375/

Loretta Lynn concert 11/15/15

I went to see Loretta Lynn perform 11/15/15 -- so not everything on this blog is about Josh Groban

I never really was a country music fan, though I’ve started to like “Home Free,” but I did see the movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” so when I saw she was coming to my local music hall I figured I’d better find out what she was about.

I ended up being late to the concert, because I had another thing to do before, but I only missed the opening act, which was a relief.

They really had 2 opening acts.  They had her son sing for a while with her band as well, and then her daughter, before they brought her on, and even when she was on stage, they spelled her by interspersing singing by others — and she sang abbreviated versions of some of the songs. She was visibly out of breath after singing & sat most of the time when singing.  They had someone walk her on and off stage.

Still, for a woman in her 80’s she did very well.  Her voice was clear and strong.  Also there was something about her timing.  I think that’s one of the characteristics that distinguish great musicians — very precise timing, so that they’re not just performing, they seem to be part of the music, like the music is including them rather than being forced out of them.

It was interesting comparing the singing styles between her, her daughter, and her grand daughter.  She had a much clearer sound, while the granddaughter was breathier — and the daughter was singing lower.  That’s an odd trend, recently, it seems like we want men to sing high and women to sing low — like a generation of people who aren’t satisfied with natural sounding voices.  Of the three, I thought Loretta was the best.

She’s apparently been touring all year, despite apparently being somewhat weak.  That’s pretty amazing — IMHO.

I've never thought of these women country singers, with their heavily styled hair and sparkles, as feminists, but I'm realizing, watching this video that they were.  

Still, though, when I saw Loretta Lynn play, the entire band was male.  That seems to be typical: a female singer with a male backup band.  I've talked about this on this blog before.  Celtic "Women"

comparing Stages and ATE/Illuminations

LIstening to the iheart radio concert

I know Stages is winning in the court of public opinion, but I sure liked this stuff from ATE -- especially I really thought Ruslan added a lot.  I find it ironic that because we liked Ruslan so much we funded him to do his own album, so he's not touring with Josh.  Groan. 

Ruslan's album that was funded by the kickstarter is now done.  I don't know if it's available to the public or just to those who funded the kickstarter as yet -- but it's a very fine thing, indeed.  Andre Manga and Mark Stevens came out with their own albums in the past, but I didn't like them as much.

I can't help but wonder, tho, whether Ruslan was particularly attracted to the music from ATE because it was innovative in character -- and whether he wasn't bored by the muzacky stuff on Stages.  He wouldn't tell us, I don't think.  He's said he can't talk about anything about Josh due to non-disclosure agreements.

Of course, I liked Lucia better than Christian as well, but it appears that there's no featured violinist on the current tour at all.  I wonder what that's about. I guess it's about just emphasizing Josh's singing.  

He's also moving around less on the stage than he did in past concerts.  I wonder what that's about as well.  Is he getting older and less energetic?  Has he been advised to stand more still because that will position him better for theater? In my acting classes, they often talk about the power of stillness and avoiding unnecessary gestures and pacing.  The Awake DVD that showed him running full out while singing was pretty impressive -- singing as an athletic activity; but that definitely wouldn't fly on Broadway.

For me, though, when they talk about Josh being classical/pop crossover, what always attracted me was that he was modern classical/pop crossover -- that his stuff was influenced by experimental music, like electronic music.  A piece like Voce Existe em Mim was musically interesting -- unlike anything else out there.  I miss that.

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addendum Oh, and remember how Josh used to play the piano at concerts?