Comments on: kimura parker responds to review of symphony

By: R.R.Rieder

R.R.Rieder — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:20:31 +0000

“B” Music 19 October 2009
Watching the orchestra physically push themselves in unison as one body was not unlike watching the butterfly effect of wind surfers as they catch the wind while “playing” on the Columbia River. Each orchestral section had their turn and took their place in the fluid movements of the music…not only playing but caught up in the wind of the magnificent scores of Brahms, Bernstein and Beethoven. Bravo! Maestro Kalmar for stunning your audience with gentle breezes and gale storms. It was quite a ride! Bravo!!

By: LaValle

LaValle — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:21:20 +0000

One day all of us, David Stabler included, will remember these years with Carlos Kalmar as the golden years. We are blessed to have such a fine conductor. The members of the orchestra complete a team that will not be surpassed for many years. All of them have worked hard to achieve this level. I just left the October 19th performance of the three B’s and walked home from the street car stop. The night could not have been more magical.

By: Bob Hicks

Bob Hicks — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:18:45 +0000

What an extraordinary, graceful, generous posting! Thanks to Mr. Parker for taking the trouble to write it, and to Charles for alerting us to it. As a longtime critic (a term I fought like the blazes, but which I guess was apt; “guy who opens cultural conversations” doesn’t fit very well beneath a byline) I’m well aware of that feeling of being the only person in the room who doesn’t like something — and sometimes, of being the only person in the room who DOES like something. I worked with David Stabler for years and have always found him to be open, honest and well-informed. Gently funny, too. I know he doesn’t lower the boom without genuinely feeling it needs to be lowered. Newspaper reviewers are in a constant struggle between speaking for themselves, for their readers, for the institutions, and for the art form. You can’t balance all of those things in any single review. That’s why we read reviewers over the long haul: Each review is a chapter in a longer narrative, and you need that larger picture to understand the critic’s way of looking at things. No newspaper critic I know of, in any discipline, hasn’t pulled his or her punches on occasion to “protect” an important institution he or she believed was in a vulnerable situation. (A few will deny they’ve ever done it. I doubt their word.) I have. And every time, I’ve felt a little dirty afterwards, like being untrue to what I really thought was being untrue to every other part of the task as well. You can argue that a negative review says more about the reviewer than the performance; that the reviewer, in the words of “The Music Man,” simply didn’t know the territory. Sometimes that’s true. Not in David’s case, though: What happened here was a simple and honest difference of opinion. And what a good thing, if you stop to think about it, that so many people care enough to be upset about it.

By: curtis heikkinen

curtis heikkinen — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:03:34 +0000

Mr. Parker is not only a fine pianist but a fine and thoughtful writer as well. That was a nice endorsement of the orchestra’s progress. Thanks for posting that, Charles.