A BOY NAMED MAX - A NIGHT AT THE STEINWAY PIANO GALLERY

Max Lai - Steinway Piano Gallery

After discovering the Steinway Piano Gallery in Hinsdale and speaking with Diane Duncan and Andree Marie Hancock, it was a pleasure to attend the recent holiday recital of Steinway Artist Jue He’s students on December 8th. It was a two-concert evening series with a couple dozen performers ranging in age from 4 to 15. The place was bursting with pride and admiration with a healthy amount of encouragement and goodwill to go around.

And, it is important to mention that these students get to perform their selections on an exquisite 9 foot Steinway concert grand piano. It all takes place in the bright, well-appointed 50-seat performance area that the Gallery provides to piano instructors free of charge. There is no doubt that it is the thrill of a lifetime for these budding musical artists to perform here. It just may be the catalyst that Steinway was hoping for all along to keep these students on a path to bigger and better things. As the old saying goes: “Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?” *

Something I did not count on was the amazing talent of every young person I heard at the recital. They are all immortalized on my personal digital recorder and Jue has a You-Tube channel dedicated to her student performances that you can visit to hear more.  

Our conversation with Diane Duncan includes an overview of what Steinway is doing to support young artists and families. We also talk about teaching techniques with Jue. The highlight, however, is the performance and discussion with a 12 year-old boy named Max Lai who has given me reason to believe that the next generation of performing artists is a very talented lot indeed.

* Practice.

Performances on this episode of Conversations with Ed Tracy include:

Snowflake Rag by Nancy Faber performed by Abigail Wong

Rhapsody in G Sharp Minor by Johannes Brahms performed by Max Lai

Special Thanks to Diane Duncan and Andree Marie Hancock.

BUILDING CHICAGO - LIVE AT THE CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

Expert Panel Discusses John Zukowsky's Book at the
Chicago History Museum

A new and extraordinary addition to the great body of work about architectural history in Chicago is now available and should have a prominent place in every public and private collection. At just over 300 pages, John Zukowsky’s Building Chicago: The Architectural Masterworks, published by Rizzoli, covers the sweeping history of Chicago with fresh scholarly commentary and hundreds of images – many from the Chicago History Museum’s vast collection.
 
John Zukowsky, Lee Bey and Rolf Achilles joined the conversation on Thursday, October 20th, 2016 at the national launch of Building Chicago to discuss the evolving landscape of Chicago architecture in the 20th century. 

Rolf Achilles on what has influenced Chicago architecture …
“… Chicago was this amazing vacuum that just sucked everything up … It was also the fastest growing city in 1833. There were 350 people here and by 1900 it was 1.5 million. Well, that 1.5 million needed stuff that the 350 did not. So you have 70 mad years, and that’s what you can see … how architecture affects culture but culture affects architecture too.”
 
Lee Bey on his favorite architect …
“I like modernism … I like the work of Mies van der Rohe … obviously Crown Hall. I like late Mies … Hotel Langham now, the former IBM building … but I like the clarity … how rational the design is.”

John Zukowsky on Chicago and American Modernism …
“What’s interesting to me about Chicago modernism, and it’s true with American modernism … you always think of modernism as being just one solution … in reality it’s about 20 to 30 individual solutions. Every modern building has a different feel and a different look to it … and that’s the same when you look at buildings in Chicago … what I like about that is not just the discipline and rationalism but the variety of expressions that everybody else had around the country.”
 
Bey on growing the city …
“There are two Chicagos. There’s a central area … Cermak to North Avenue, the lake to Halsted and outside that there’s another Chicago where population loss is happening that we need to fix. We have to grow the city …. the central area is going to be taken care of … but we have to figure out the south and west sides of the city … how to get people there, how to grow the population…  put houses, buildings, factories, office buildings, the whole mix in this area.”

Achilles on why other cities have surpassed Chicago …
 “They are all using the Chicago tradition to get in to the future, and we’re not in the same way … it’s not the architecture that’s the problem. It’s the socio-economic state. It’s the politicians … those with a semblance of authority that can make the rules, and they’re not making very interesting rules … It’s like in the 1910’s and 1920’s, Chicago imposed a height limit on its buildings because they were scared you couldn’t get out of a building in a fire. Well, New York wasn’t afraid of that and surpassed Chicago. New York becomes ‘skyscraperville’ and Chicago is this ‘little stubby town in the prairies.’”
 
Zukowsky on who we will be talking about in 100 years …
“I’d include the classics [Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright] … I’d put in pioneers of the 70’s and 80’s Bruce Gray … Stanley Tigerman … Richard Nickel … Harry Weese … Jeanne Gang … I think you’ll also be talking about other architects who built here …  We tend to forget about that especially in the 90's. Foreign architects and New York architects were building here … We’ll be talking about Norman Foster [and] the Apple store ... I think he’s a great architect … so it’s great to have something of his work here, no doubt about it.”

Our thanks to the generous sponsors Bulley & Andrews, Eli's Cheesecake, Rizzoli and the Chicago History Museum.

Listen to Entire Podcast HERE
Purchase Building Chicago HERE

DOREEN SAYEGH - SHAKESPEARE 400 CHICAGO

"I think that Shakespeare really does live in this city, and it’s so clear to see in this year that you have the spirit of Chicago, the grittiness, the strength, the poetry of it really does meet this playwright in an incredible way. It’s why the largest celebration of Shakespeare’s 400-year legacy is happening in Chicago … because the city wants it." – Doreen Sayegh, Festival Producer, Shakespeare 400 Chicago  Listen to entire podcast HERE

In 1616, William Shakespeare shuffled off (his) mortal coil, reason enough 400 years later for an international celebration fit for a King!

In 2016, culminating years of preparation, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater has launched Shakespeare 400 Chicago, an ambitious program series that has brought together cultural and educational institutions, national and intentional theater companies, performing artists and scholars to present their own impressive contribution to the celebration.

Festival Producer, Doreen Sayegh, joined the conversation on August 26, 2016 to discuss everything that has been happening twixt wake and sleep, including what's coming up this fall and a treasury of everlasting “scholarly” joy called City Desk 400.

Doreen on the collective nature of the the festival:
“What has been amazing is that Chicago Shakespeare Theater has worked with 60 different institutions across the city to program 850 events in 2016 ... we have artists and institutions from all disciplines that are pulling together and reflecting on what Shakespeare means to Chicago … bringing in international perspectives, trying to show Shakespeare across the genres and forms … we even have a culinary strand where 38 different restaurants - 38 of Chicago’s greatest chefs- are interpreting Shakespeare’s titles.”

What she loves about her job:
“I feel very lucky to be working on this festival …. to have incredible partners like Barbara [Gaines] and Criss [Henderson] who are inspiring and really daring …  who also took the chance on someone who’s young in their career to help them pull this together.  For me I’ve loved how much the city has come around this. I don’t think any of us imagined it. I think we hoped for it, and we weren’t sure what was going to happen, but you see all of these institutions and all of these audience members really excited about the idea that their city is uniting around a theme … that the theme has been universally celebrated for 400 years and still resonates in all of these different ways.”

On the diversity within the festival:
“Some theaters that we brought in are full of classically trained actors who have done Shakespeare all their life and do these beautiful interpretations. And some of them have conflicted relationships with Shakespeare but have taken a work of his and have used their own cultural lens and experience to produce something that matters to them and their community … to have both of those things under the same festival umbrella is incredibly exciting to me and sort of a gift to be able to see that.”

What Chicago audiences will take away from the festival:
“Audiences will have felt that their city is full of incredible cultural and creative organizations. I think that Shakespeare really does live in this city, and it’s so clear to see in this year that you have the spirit of Chicago, the grittiness, the strength, the poetry of it really does meet this playwright in an incredible way. It’s why the largest celebration of Shakespeare’s 400-year legacy is happening in Chicago … because the city wants it. My goal for the year has really been that everybody feels this festival in some way …. that something has reached them. I hope that people feel the spirit of Shakespeare in the city and excited about exploring the city.”

Listen to the podcast HERE
City Desk 400: HERE
More information on Shakespeare 400 HERE