Magnolia Blossoms_2011

My annual collection of magnolia blossoms appear below. Clicking on each picture will enlarge it.

I am a little slow in posting these pictures. All of the magnolia blossoms where I live are gone now. There was only one good day to get pictures because of the high winds and the cold front that moved in that evening and destroyed many of the blossoms. Even getting pictures on this particular day was difficult because of the wind. I was only able to salvage about forty pictures from the two hundred or so that I took that day. Enjoy!

Jazz Releases & 2011

I have found the first four months of 2011 to be relatively quiet ones in terms of jazz releases. I regularly check the reviews available online and haven’t been finding too much of note. I am looking forward to hearing Wolfert Brederode Quartet's Post Scriptum and Francois Couturier's Tarkovsky Quartet, both of which will be released later in the summer.

My attention of late has been given toward a few older recordings of current piano trios, some of which have been rotated in my alarm clock and serve as what I hear when first waking up. Maria Kannegaard's Camel Walk, which features Thomas Stronen on percussion and Ole Morten Vagan on bass, received only one or two reviews in this country when it was released in 2008. It is what I have been listening to most often. Initially drawn to that recording because of Thomas Stronen's percussion work, I have since been attracted by Maria Kannegaard's piano, particularly the rhythms maintained by what is presumably her left hand, and the somewhat less prominent bass work by Ole Morten Vagan.

Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal

Lately, I have been finding a lot of pleasure in Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal's Chamber Music, an album in which they combine African and European culture, with Ballake Sissoko playing the kora and Vincent Segal playing the cello. Go to YouTube if you want to hear samples of the music. I found myself often returning to those clips on YouTube and eventually downloaded the album from Amazon.



The kora, or African harp, is a new discovery for me. My first exposure occurred when I was introduced to the music of Rachael Gladwin, who plays kora on Nat Birchall's Guiding Spirit.

Chamber Music is fascinating because of the interplay between the musicians. One instrument often maintains the rhythm initially while the other one plays the lead before the instrument creating the rhythm then takes the lead. Each musician is a virtuoso. This mastery shows. Vincent Segal surprised his audience in the NPR studio when he started plucking the strings of his cello as if he were playing a lute. Although classified as international, aka world music, Chamber Music contains improvisational elements and has been reviewed by some of the jazz websites. The music here is truly beautiful and worth seeking out.

Phil Miller, RIP

Phil Miller, a poet long associated with the Kansas City area until he retired from a local community college and left to live in Pennsylvania, died on February 14 at the age of 67. 

Phil was kind enough to include one of my poems in his online journal The Any Key Review and arranged for my first reading in the area at Prospero's Books. 

He visited my creative writing class at UMKC on one occasion. On another occasion, he was willing to drive to Leavenworth on a Saturday morning to read his poems in a composition class of mine. 

As I mentioned in a previous entry, Phil overcame any difficulties in writing regularly by returning to his obsessions. For that reason, many of his poems address things like cats, martial discord, alcohol abuse, and ghosts. His productivity was something I always admired. 

I was lucky to have him submit poems to Cimarron Review when I was on the masthead as a poetry editor. Those poems he submitted were later included in The Casablanca Fan and Branches Snapping, his most accomplished collection. 

Kansas City has lost one of its most active poets. He will be missed by those of us who admired him and respected his work. 

The following poem appeared in his obituary: 

Life after Death 

It isn't so bad, you know, 

now that I've packed my bags. 

I get along on my own, 

pay my rent, hold down 

a small job, have a friend 

or two, at a distance, of course. 

Look, there are my shoes 

beside my bed, ready for action, 

ready to walk whichever direction. 

Who knows, this may be it. 

(Philip Miller, The Ghost of Every Day and Other Poems, Spartan Press, Kansas City, MO., 2011, page 34.)