This blogger, Richard Gehr, is not an employee of AARP. The opinions expressed in the blog are not necessarily the opinions of AARP and AARP assumes no liability for the content posted by Mr. Gehr or any other participant
Richard Gehr | August 21, 2007
"Gypsy Biker," "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," "I'll Work for Your Love," "Long Walk Home," "Devil's Arcade"—hmm, sounds like a new Bruce Springsteen album. Magic, Springsteen's first album with the E Street Band since 2002's The Rising, arrives October 2. Until then, Springsteen pops up on wife Patty Scialfa's solo album, Play It As It Lays, due September 24, and duets with old-school folkie Pete Seeger on upcoming anthologies Feels Like Home and Sowing the Seeds: The 10th Anniversary. And rumors of the inevitable epic tour begin here.
Tony Bennett stepped up and delivered at Los Angeles's Greek Theater last week says this review.
Doping in the opera world? Uh-oh. The physical and emotional demands of singing Wagner flawlessly are compelling performers to consume both performance-enhancing as well as anxiety-reducing drugs, according to England's Observer:
Endrik Wottrich, a popular fixture at the annual Bayreuth festival in Germany, has revealed opera singers are turning to drugs and other stimulants to cope with the pressure from the increasing commercial demands on them. 'No one talks about it, but doping has long been the norm in the music world,' he said in an interview with music critic Axel Bruggemann in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 'Soloists are taking betablockers in an attempt to control their angst, some tenors take cortisone to ensure their voices reach a high pitch, and alcohol is standard practice.'
[via Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog]
When Igor met Coco: Jessica Duchen also points to a London Times interview with actor Marina Hands, who will play Chanel in Coco & Igor, a biopic about designer Coco Chanel's patronage of composer Igor Stravinsky to be directed by William "The Exorcist" Friedkin.
The great mandolin and fiddle player Sam Bush talks to CMT about his old band New Grass Revival and his new DVD On the Road. "You might as well call it I'm Schizophrenic—and So Am I," says Bush.
