Pianogate

 

Pianogate

"It is self-evident that I have acted stupidly, dishonestly and unlawfully," William Barrington-Coupe wrote in a letter acknowledging the fraudulent recordings, which he said he produced without his wife's knowledge while she was dying of ovarian cancer.

"I was desperate to finish her life, which had been disappointing in so many ways, on a high note," Barrington-Coupe wrote.

Hatto ceased to play in public in 1975, achieving only a modest reputation and collecting mixed reviews. But after she died last year at age 77, obituaries hailed her as a keyboard prodigy who left a brilliant legacy in more than 100 CDs produced by her husband on his Concert Artists label.

"A singular artist of superlative technique and interpretation," said The Times. "One of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced," wrote The Guardian.

That reputation collapsed after Gramophone, a British music magazine, reported earlier this month that at least one Hatto CD recording, Franz Liszt's "Transcendental Etudes," was actually a release by pianist Laszlo Simon.

The deception was uncovered when a classical music fan's iTunes computer library identified the Hatto recording as Simon's. The fan contacted one of Gramophone's critics, who listened to both recordings and discovered they were identical, the magazine said.

In a letter to Robert von Bahr, chief executive officer of Sweden's BIS Records, which released Simon's recording, Barrington-Coupe acknowledged the theft.

"Of course I deeply regret it. The damage has been enormous, and frightful things have been resurrected and insinuated in the press," Barrington-Coupe wrote.

"The sad thing about all this is that my wife was a fine musician and probably the most finished pianist I had ever heard."

In the letter, Barrington-Coupe said his wife was suffering from advanced ovarian cancer by the time he was able to produce CDs, and her grunts of pain marred recording sessions.

So, he said, he searched for pianists of a similar sound and style to patch over his wife's recordings.

Over time, the letter said, he took bigger and bigger pieces of other recordings, and learned how to manipulate speed to disguise the source.

The deception unraveled when the Gramophone reader put the "Hatto" recording of "Transcendental Etudes" on his computer, and the iTunes software, which catalogues about 4 million albums based on the tracks' lengths, identified the recording as Simon's.

Then a "Hatto" recording of Rachmaninoff piano concertos was identified as one by Yefim Bronfman on Sony, Gramophone said.

After that, Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio found that a "Hatto" recording of music by Leopold Godowsky was actually one of Carlo Grante on Altarus, but slowed down by 15 percent.

The Associated Press could not immediately reach Barrington-Coupe, whose telephone number is unlisted. However, Bahr, speaking in Stockholm, said Barrington-Coupe had acknowledged the deception, "because I was the only one that confronted him in a respectful way."

"We've had a letter correspondence because he has also stolen music from me," Bahr said, adding that Barrington-Coupe asked him not to release the entire letter, though he read portions to a reporter.

Gramophone reported Barrington-Coupe's letter to BIS on Monday, saying on its Web site that it had confirmed the contents with him.

Irish pianist John O'Conor, whose recording of Beethoven's Sonata in E allegedly reappeared with Hatto's name in 1999, said he was flattered that anyone remembered his version. But he was puzzled by the late flowering of Hatto's reputation.

"You had the media calling her the `greatest' this and `most prolific' that - and people in the industry kept on saying: 'Who?' She hadn't been heard of for 30 years," O'Conor said.

BPI, the British recording trade organization, said it was investigating.

"If the stories flying around these recordings proved to be true, this would be one of the most extraordinary cases of piracy the record industry had ever seen," BPI said in a statement.

Bahr, however, said he had no intention of pursuing Barrington-Coupe.

"The guy is 76, he has a heart condition - well, he says he has a heart condition - and I can't see what, apart from revenge, it would give anyone," he said.

Gramophone appealed for Barrington-Coupe to provide a full accounting of which recordings, if any, were actually by his wife.

Husband Says He Faked Wife's Recordings

Used Studio Trickery to Pirate Other Pianists Works

By ROBERT BARR, AP

LONDON (Feb. 27) - British pianist Joyce Hatto, hailed after her death as a neglected genius, owed her reputation to performances stolen from other artists, her husband has admitted, saying he was desperate to have her life end "on a high note."

Fred Ramage, Hulton Archive / Getty Images

The husband of Joyce Hatto, center, says he began attributing other people's recordings to his wife after she became sick, so she could end her life "on a high note."

However, it quoted Barrington-Coupe as saying: "I'm tired, I'm not very well. I've closed the operation down, I've had the stock completely destroyed, and I'm not producing any more. Now I just want a little bit of peace."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Gerard Mortier will join the New York City Opera in 2009.

 

 

Mehdi Fedouach/Agence France-Presse

Gerard Mortier will join the New York City Opera in 2009.

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

Published: February 28, 2007

Gerard Mortier, an iconoclastic impresario and one of the opera world’s premier provocateurs, will become general manager and artistic director of the New York City Opera in 2009.

 

 

Mr. Mortier, now the director of the much larger and more complex Paris National Opera, has made his mark over a quarter century with sometimes shocking up-to-the-minute productions. He will succeed Paul Kellogg, who leaves in May.

The appointment of such a major international figure is a coup for the No. 2 house in Lincoln Center. It represents a challenge to the behemoth across the plaza, the Metropolitan Opera, where a new general manager, Peter Gelb, has shaken up its hidebound ways.

In a telephone interview from Paris on Tuesday, Mr. Mortier said he would halt the company’s intense effort to find a new home, which included failed attempts to move to ground zero and to a nearby site on Amsterdam Avenue. Instead, the company will stay in the New York State Theater, whose stage was built for ballet, but will travel elsewhere in the city. He said he had recently visited the Apollo Theater, the Hammerstein Ballroom and the Armory.

“I like to work with the things I have,” Mr. Mortier said. But he left open the possibility of a future move.

Susan L. Baker, the opera’s chairman, said Mr. Mortier and his technical advisers had convinced the board that the theater could undergo physical alterations to make it more congenial to opera. “He’s pretty compelling,” she said.

Mr. Mortier also said he would seek collaborations with the New York City Ballet, which also performs at the State Theater and has historically had a tense relationship with the opera; reduce the number of productions; and move toward a “stagione” system, the more typically European arrangement in which one opera is presented at a time.

Most of all, he said he would import his rigorously contemporary sensibility. “The most dangerous thing for opera is to make it something in a museum,” he said. “Even an old piece by Mozart has to tell us something about today. To be modern is to be sensitive to everything that happens around you.”

Mr. Mortier has relentlessly pushed to reconceive opera’s standard works for modern times. His influence, through the directors he has nurtured, has spread throughout Europe, helping make the current age of opera director-centric rather than diva-dominated.

“The New York City Opera has to go into a new direction,” he said. “If you don’t renovate, you disappear.”

He said he would not seek to compete with the Met but would create productions to complement its offerings. “Certainly it’s a challenge for me to work next door to him,” he said of Mr. Gelb, “and for him too.”

Mr. Mortier, 63, will not start in his job full time until September 2009, after his term in Paris ends. He turns 65, the mandatory retirement age there, in November 2008, but was given permission to finish out the season.

For the two seasons before he officially begins at the City Opera, he said, he will spend at least a week every month in New York. The 2007-8 program is already in place, and the following season is partially complete.

Nevertheless, the arrangement leaves the City Opera formally leaderless for two years. Ms. Baker, the company’s chairman, said she would take on a greater administrative role.

And questions remain about Mr. Mortier’s ability to raise money, one of an opera manager’s main jobs in the United States. The Paris opera receives about two-thirds of its funds from the government; the City Opera, barely 3 percent.

Mr. Mortier, who is Belgian and spoke in a rapid, Flemish- and French-accented English, said he would actively pursue donors. He acknowledged a lack of experience in the kind of fund-raising typical here but said he was no novice.

“Raising money with the government is something, too,” he said, and he pointed out that he had modestly increased giving in previous posts. “I believe there is new money in New York that wants to be part of a new vision in opera,” he said. “Maybe I dream.”

The courtship of Mr. Mortier began last spring, Ms. Baker said, when she was seated next to him at a dinner at the French consulate. “We made a real connection,” she said. Talks began in earnest in September.

Mr. Mortier was born in 1943 in Ghent and, despite his French name, is Flemish. He made his mark at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, transforming it from an operatic hinterland into a postmodernist temple during his tenure there through the 1980s, although he left large debts behind.

The Salzburg Festival stunned the musical world by hiring him to succeed the hallowed Herbert von Karajan, and Mr. Mortier spent the 1990s there scandalizing many of its tradition-minded, well-heeled opera patrons, the most notorious provocation being a production of Johann Strauss’s “Fledermaus” laced with cocaine and fornication and aimed at Austria’s far-right political forces.

After a stint as founding director of the RuhrTriennale arts festival in Germany, he went to the Paris Opera. A recent production of Mozart’s “Zauberflöte” there caused an uproar with its air-mattress décor, video projections and costumes, including glittering, neon-lit silver jumpsuits and long black wigs adorning the Queen of the Night and her Three Ladies.

Mr. Mortier has been given to incendiary statements: There was no reason for another Wagner “Ring” after Patrice Chéreau’s cycle at Bayreuth. Art is anything but entertainment and unrelated to box office receipts. (In contrast, Mr. Gelb receives daily reports of ticket sales.) In the interview, Mr. Mortier moderated some of those views.

“I do opera not only for entertainment,” he said. “With music you can bring back to the people emotions.” Mr. Mortier is also a master of the artistic bon mot: “If talking is expression of the mind, singing is expression of the soul,” he said in the interview.

He said he was committed to using American singers and promoting American opera, traditionally a part of the City Opera’s mission. He noted that he had taken many American singers to Europe.

The contrast between the Paris and the New York City operas is great. The Paris Opera, which dates to 1669, encompasses two large theaters, a chorus, a 170-member orchestra, a world-class ballet company and 1,600 union-hardened employees. It has a $200 million budget. City Opera’s budget is less than a quarter of that. It has 893 employees and an orchestra of 69 members.

Mr. Mortier said he was drawn by the challenge of renewing the City Opera, the lure of New York and the opportunity to return to an intimate, less bureaucratically encumbered house. He said he had turned down an inquiry from the Vienna State Opera to be considered for the top job there.

“I am very seduced by being with an ensemble where I can get to know everyone,” he said.

Rappers Find That a Small Label Can Have Its Uses

Rappers Find That a Small Label Can Have Its Uses

Koch Records is becoming increasingly popular as a second home — or even a first home — for hip-hop artists, including Jim Jones.

By KELEFA SANNEH  Published: February 27, 2007

B. G., the New Orleans rapper whose hit “Bling Bling” popularized the term, has a new album out today. Sort of. So does Slim Thug, the Houston rapper who helped Beyoncé top the pop charts last year. (He rapped on her No. 1 hit “Check on It.”) Again, sort of. Because neither of these new albums is really a new album.

Marko Djurica/Reuters

Cam’ron, the rapper and current feuder-with-50 Cent.

B. G.’s new CD is “B. G. and the Chopper City Boyz: We Got This,” a mixtape-style compilation that gives him a chance to show off his protégés. Slim Thug’s new CD is “Slim Thug Presents Boss Hogg Outlawz: Serve and Collect”; it’s also a mixtape-style compilation. And though both B. G. and Slim Thug have major-label deals, these CDs are being released by Koch Records, the independent label that was once a hip-hop laughingstock. Now rappers are learning to consider Koch a second home, or even a first one.

Two years and a dozen feuds ago, 50 Cent gave an interview to Vibe magazine in which he attacked one of his foes, Fat Joe, by saying, “He’ll be on Koch when I’m done.” Later in the interview he famously said Koch was “the artist’s graveyard.” At the time, the insult seemed mean and funny, like most of 50 Cent’s insults. True, Koch was a successful and healthy corporation, but it wasn’t exactly a prestige brand.

Koch Entertainment, based in New York, began as a music distributor and became known for building lucrative relationships with small CD shops. In the 1990s Koch established itself as a scrappy and unpretentious record label with an unhip but steady-selling roster that ranged from budget-price reissues to children’s music. The label made a mint from Wiggles CDs and “Pokémon” soundtracks — more proof that in the music industry, the shameless shall inheritthe earth.

When it came to hip-hop, Koch wasknown for signing up major-label leftovers. For example, Koch rereleased “Rock City,” the doomed major-label debut by the once-promising Detroit rapper — and former Eminem friend — Royce da 5’9”. And in 2004, when the members of Goodie Mob tried to persevere without their de facto frontman, Koch Records released their uneagerly anticipated fourth album, “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show.”

As 50 Cent surely knew, Koch Records was also the home of two of his friends-turned-foes from Queens, Bang ’Em & Domination, who made their much-ignored Koch debut in 2005. That same year, 50 Cent’s label, G Unit, which is distributed by Interscope, was reliably selling millions of copies of every release. No wonder he was sneering at Koch, with its scant promotional budgets and small-scale aspirations.

Earlier this month, 50 Cent repeated his claim while being interviewed by Angie Martinez on the New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97. “Koch is the graveyard,” he said, adding, “That’s where you go when the majors don’t want you any more.”

But it has grown much harder to laugh at Koch, and even 50 Cent has to acknowledge it. In the last few months, the Harlem rapper Jim Jones, a member of Cam’ron’s crew, the Diplomats (also called DipSet), has sold more than 400,000 copies of “Hustler’s P.O.M.E.,” his third solo album for Koch. Sales have been driven by the hit “We Fly High.” As 50 Cent told Ms. Martinez on the air, a few breaths after insulting Koch, “Jimmy did something that’s phenomenal.”

Then things got strange on the show. Koch’s general manager, Alan Grunblatt, foolishly got on the phone, then wisely passed it to Cam’ron, who pointed out something that 50 Cent already knew: that the new Jim Jones CD had outsold two recent G Unit releases, Mobb Deep’s “Blood Money” and Lloyd Banks’s “Rotten Apple.” (50 Cent tried to change the subject: “But Lloyd Banks has more money than Jim Jones.”)

Cam’ron also pointed out that Prodigy from Mobb Deep had just signed a side deal with Koch — a deal that required 50 Cent’s approval. Needless to say, this discussion of sales figures and contract clauses was the beginning of something bigger: 50 Cent and Cam’ron were officially feuding within a week.

The feud began in earnest with the release of 50 Cent’s song and video “Funeral Music,” which quickly became a YouTube favorite. 50 Cent snarled, “Cam, are you clear what you facin’?”, but the song was generally devoid of boasts about record sales, which were once a big part of 50 Cent’s insult arsenal. In fact, the cleverest taunt was a twisted salute to Jim Jones’s success: near the end, 50 Cent says, “From now on, Jimmy’s the boss of DipSet.”

Rappers Find That a Small Label Can Have Its Uses

Published: February 27, 2007

Cam’ron’s reply to 50 Cent, “Curtis,” also available on YouTube, is denser and funnier, full of tricky rhymes and silly allusions. (The winning couplet: “Have a seat, this gon’ be a masterpiece/I have to beef — he look like a gorilla with rabbit teeth.”)

Oddly enough, Cam’ron — whose only million-selling album was released in 2002 — is the one who wants to talk numbers: “Juelz 800, Jim 400.” (That’s Juelz Santana, who records for Def Jam.) And he gleefully rehashes G Unit’s recent sales history: “Banks bricked, Mobb bricked, Buck” — Young Buck — “ain’t been out for three years.”

During a spoken interlude at the end, he dredges up that famous phrase once again: “Talkin’ bout Koch a graveyard? You just signed off for Prodigy to go there.”

As record sales keep sliding, the rise of Koch coincides with the lowering of rappers’ expectations. Five years ago, no self-respecting rapper — certainly no self-respecting New York rapper — would ever have bragged about selling 400,000 records. But if you’re not going to sell a million CDs with a major label, you may well be better off at Koch, accepting a lower recording and promotional budget in exchange for a higher royalty rate. That’s why rappers are so ambivalent about Koch: signing there means giving up the dream of pop stardom, or, at any rate, deferring it.

Discussing a possible move to Koch (during 50 Cent’s recent Hot 97 interview with Ms. Martinez), the streetwise Yonkers veteran Styles P said he knew he couldn’t expect to sell 5 or 10 million CDs. “So long as I’m decent and I’m making a little something,” he said, “I don’t need to have the six cars in my lot.”

Koch clearly isn’t a hip-hop “graveyard” any more, if it ever was. The undercelebrated veterans in Bone Thugs-n-Harmony released a pretty dull Koch CD last year, “Thug Stories,” but it was only a warm-up for “Strength & Loyalty,” their Interscope debut, due in April. (The marvelous first single is “I Tried,” a sweet and melancholy collaboration with Akon.) And after three solid Koch CDs, B. G. earned himself a new contract with Atlantic Records; here’s hoping they know what to do with him.

Of course some rappers, like Prodigy, are realizing that they don’t have to choose; major labels sometimes allow rappers to release their mixtape-style side projects on Koch, on the assumption that these CDs won’t detract from proper album sales. (For example, Prodigy plans to release a Koch mixtape, with the producer Alchemist, followed by “H.N.I.C. 2,” his proper second solo album, also on Koch.) And now that the major labels are cracking down on illegal mixtapes, Koch’s lawyer-approved approach may seem more attractive than ever.

If the industry were healthier, people might be wondering whether Koch might start acting like a real major label; in the current climate, people are wondering whether the major labels will find themselves emulating Koch’s business model. No doubt rappers, and major-label executives, will be watching closely, to see whether Koch’s bare-bones, low-overhead, niche-friendly approach can stay profitable. And what would scare them more: watching Koch stumble or watching it succeed?

Bobby Brown Arrested Over Child Support

Bobby Brown Arrested Over Child Support

Singer Jailed Until He Pays $19,000 in Late Child Support

AP

CANTON, Mass. (Feb. ) - Bobby Brown was ordered on Monday to remain in a county jail until he pays $19,000 in late child support and court fees, his lawyer said. "We're diligently working on getting those funds available from outside sources," said Phaedra Parks, an attorney in Atlanta where Brown currently lives. Parks doubted Brown would get out of jail before Tuesday morning.
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 Parks said the rhythm-and-blues singer has been struggling to meet monthly payments to Kim Ward, of Stoughton, the mother of his two teenage children.

"Although this agreement was put in place when he was Bobby Brown the star, this agreement is being enforced when he is not always able to find work," Parks told The Associated Press. "He hasn't made an album in quite some years."

Brown is in the midst of a divorce from pop diva Whitney Houston , after 14 years of marriage.

A judge in Norfolk Probate and Family Court ordered Brown held in the county jail in Dedham on Monday, one day after the singer was arrested while he was watching his daughter's cheerleading competition at Attleboro High School.

Adam Loomis of All State Constables in Weymouth said he served an arrest warrant against Brown for failing to appear at a child support hearing in October.

In October, Brown paid $11,000 in delinquent child support after being threatened with arrest if he stepped back into Massachusetts. He owed more than two months' worth of payments to Ward.

Brown currently owes child support payments from January, plus late penalties, Ward's attorney fees and constable fees, Parks said.

Brown, a Boston native best known for a solo hit "Don't Be Cruel," has a history of legal troubles. In June 2004, he was sentenced to 90 days in prison for missing three months of payments. That sentence was immediately suspended after Brown paid about $15,000.

Last March, when also in Massachusetts to watch his daughter at a cheering competition, Brown was nabbed for minor motor-vehicle violations dating back 14 years.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Hey… What’s the Big Idea?!

Hey… What’s the Big Idea?!

Question for you. What do you remember about your church service this past weekend? What was the message about? (For those of you senior pastors, hopefully you remember!) What songs did you sing? What is your biggest thing you took away from your service? Quickly now... what was it? Truth is... if you have a hard time remembering much about last weekend's services, just think how hard a time one of your attenders has. How do you communicate truths that remain on people's minds throughout the week? That's the whole subject of the new book: "The Big Idea" by Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, and Eric Bramlett...

Here’s the premise of the book:  Most churches try to communicate too many mini-messages during the course of a service.  Each Sunday, most families get multiple mini-messages communicated to them; and guess what… they remember VERY LITTLE. 

Here’s a short segment of the book to prove this point:

Let’s start with a typical Sunday as a family returns home from church. ‘The question posed to the children is the same every week: “So what did you learn today?” And the response is too often the same: (Silence.) “Ummm ...” (More silence.) “Ummm ...” (Still more silence.) “Ummm..:”

Parents have tried to think of different ways to word the question for their kids, but it always comes out the same. “So what did you learn today?” It’s not the most enticing question, but it’s the question that gets asked millions of times every week during the car ride home from church. And the truth is, if our kids asked us, we might give them the same response.

How is it possible that so many people, young and old, can respond with nothing but silence to such a simple question after spending an entire Sunday morning in church? Is it too little teaching? Is it too little Scripture? Is it too little application of Scripture in the teaching? What’s the problem?

Well, let’s review a typical experience at church. Is it too little or maybe too much? The average churchgoer is overloaded every week with scores of competing little ideas during just one trip to church.

Let’s try to keep track.

1. Little idea from the clever message on the church sign as you pull into the churchparking lot
2. Little idea from all the announcements in the church bulletin you are handed at the door
3. Little idea from the prelude music that is playing in the back¬ground as you take your seat
4. Little idea from the welcome by the worship leader
5. Little idea from the opening prayer
6. Little idea from song 1 in the worship service
7. Little idea from the Scripture reading by the worship leader
8. Little idea from song 2 in the worship service
9. Little idea from the special music
10. Little idea from the offering meditation
11. Little idea from the announcements
12. Little idea from the first point of the sermon
13. Little idea from the second point of the sermon
14. Little idea from the third point of the sermon
15. Little idea from song 3 in the worship service
16. Little idea from the closing prayer
17. Little idea from the Sunday school lesson
18. Little idea from (at least one) tangent off of the Sunday school lesson
19. Little idea from the prayer requests taken during Sunday school
20. Little idea from the newsletter handed out during Sunday school

Twenty and counting. Twenty different competing little ideas in just one trip to church. Easily! If a family has a couple of children in junior church and everyone attends his or her own Sunday school class, we could quadruple the number of little ideas. So this one family could leave with more than eighty competing little ideas from one morning at church! And if we begin to add in youth group, small group, and a midweek service, the number easily doubles again. If family members read the Bible and have quiet times with any regularity, it might double yet again. And if they listen to Christian radio in the car or watch Christian television at home, the number might double once more. It’s possible that this one family is bombarded with more than one thousand little ideas every week explaining what it means to be a Christian. No wonder when the parents ask their kids, “So what did you learn?” the answer goes something like this: (Silence.) “Ummm. . .” (More silence.) “Ummm ... “

(Still more silence.) “Ummm...”

We have bombarded our people with too many competing little ideas, and the result is a church with more information and less clarity than perhaps ever before. But the church is not alone in its predicament. Businesses also get distracted with lots of little ideas and forget the Big Idea. Many marketplace leaders are relearning the importance of the Big Idea in regard to advertising. It was a multimillion-dollar sock-puppet ad during Super Bowl XXXIV that epitomized the absurdity of the advertising during the dot-com bubble.

Don’t misunderstand - this is not a rant against entertainment or churches that are entertaining. I actually think churches should be more entertaining. But that’s a rant for another book. This is a rant against churches (and businesses) that don’t discipline themselves to create experiences that convey and challenge people with one Big Idea at a time. Why? Because the lack of clarity that we give our people impedes the church’s ability to accomplish the mission of Jesus. “More” results in less clarity.

Dr. Haddon Robinson, in his classic book Biblical Preaching, recognizes the simple truth that more is less and challenges teaching pastors to communicate with crystal clarity “a single idea.” He says, “People in the pew complain almost unanimously that the ser¬mons often contain too many ideas.”’ Robinson is right on. And it is good news that people are complaining. Their complaints about too many ideas tell us that people in the pew want clarity, direction, and guidance in how to live out the mission of Jesus Christ. We can no longer afford to waste another Sunday allowing people to leave confused about what to do next. So let the change begin! But this change can’t be relegated only to the preaching. It also must happen in the teaching of children, students, adults, and families and in the overall experience of church life. How? The Big Idea.

And it is one Big Idea at a time that brings clarity to the confusion that comes from too many little ideas.

How is your church doing in communicating “Big Ideas”.  You could be, without even thinking about it, be sending way too many ideas to your congregation… you may be bombarding them with so much good stuff that absolutely nothing sticks.

If you find your church in this situation, then this book is a must-read.  You’ll find practical ways that you can focus your message into something that people can apply and remember.  You’re in the life-changing business, and you just can’t change as many lives when the people you’re trying to reach forget what you told them before they eat dinner.

SYNOPSIS:

“Nothing is more dangerous than a single compelling idea that is lived out and nothing is more harmless than lots of little ideas never applied. By creatively communicating one BIG IDEA every week, your church will transform people into genuine Christ followers who live out the mission of Jesus. Less is more! Community Christian Church embraced the BIG IDEA and everything changed. They decided to avoid the common mistake of bombarding people with so many “little ideas” that they suffered overload. They also recognized that leaders often don’t insist that the truth be lived out to accomplish Jesus’ mission. Why? Because people’s heads are swimming with too many little ideas, far more than they can ever apply.”

BENEFITS:

•  The BIG IDEA can help you creatively present one laser-focused theme each week to be discussed in families and small groups.
•  The BIG IDEA shows how to engage in a process of creative collaboration that brings people together and maximizes missional impact.
•  The BIG IDEA can energize a church staff and bring alignment and focus to many diverse church ministries.
•  This book shows how the BIG IDEA has helped Community Christian Church better accomplish the Jesus mission and reach thousands of people at nine locations and launch a church planting network with partner churches across the country.
•  It is part of the Leadership Network Innovation Series published by Zondervan.

At CCC, we've experienced a number of benefits from using The Big Idea in our small groups.  Here are three reasons why the Big Idea is a huge "win" for small groups:

# 1 The BIG IDEA Increases Application and Transformation

Without a doubt life change is most likely to occur within the context of community. Giving people a chance to sit in a circle with others on a similar spiritual journey to interact on the content of our weekend celebration services significantly increases the likelihood of people actually applying the topic to their life. Even the most dynamic and interactive celebration services tend to be primarily a didactic experience; we talk, we sing, we dance, they listen, they watch. Small groups by nature are experiential and discussion-oriented and as a result, more likely to foster life change. In addition, because the topic of the discussion guide is directly tied to the topic for our weekend celebration services, every weekend our campus pastors and teaching team have a great opportunity to invite people to explore the topic further in a small group.

 

 

# 2 The BIG IDEA Diminishes Peoples Fears of Leading a Small Group

One of the greatest challenges in launching new groups and keeping existing groups healthy and growing is identifying and recruiting potential small group leaders.  We have found that the most common fears among potential small group leaders are the following:

- “I don’t know enough about the Bible.”

- “I don’t have enough time to be a good leader.”

- “I’ve never thought of myself as a leader.”

The weekend prior to the launch of every BIG IDEA series we publish a small group discussion guide with a small group lesson that parallels each topic (or week) in that BIG IDEA series. Developing these discussion guides and making them available to our leaders significantly reduces their insecurities regarding leading. The Bible verses for discussion are included in the discussion guide, and the lessons require minimal preparation with helpful insights and directions for the leaders.

 

 

# 3 The BIG IDEAEliminates the Problem of “What Do We Study Next?” 

Small groups tend to get overly focused on the topics or subject matter for their discussions, often at the expense of developing relationships and experiencing genuine biblical community. The relational small group experience can easily slip into more of a classroom teacher/student context. Anyone who has ever been part of a small group has spent way too much time trying to answer the question, “What do we study next?”  Following The BIG IDEA minimizes this challenge and offers small groups an easy plan to follow when it comes to topics or subject matter.

 

Order your copy of The Big Idea here.

Click here: The BIG IDEA Online

Finding Your Mission in Life

Finding Your Mission in Life

Kevin & Kay Marie Brennfleck

“I want to find my mission in life,” is a desire we hear expressed often in our career counseling sessions with Christians. (Others describe it as wanting to find their “calling,” “passion” or “niche.”) At the heart of this longing is a desire to find work that uses their gifts, brings a sense of meaning and purpose, and is a part of doing God’s work on earth. Do you share this desire? Then this article is for you!

The following are some key elements in discovering your career niche, or mission within work. We have worked individually with hundreds of clients, and have found that if any of these are missing, a person will be hindered in discovering the work he or she was created to do. Foundational steps in finding your mission in life are to:

1. Develop an accurate, comprehensive “map” of your God-given design. A thorough understanding of your design is vital for determining an appropriate career path. We help our clients to create a “career map” by assessing their skills, interests, motivational pattern, values, temperament, etc. and then organize that information in a meaningful way. Then, they are able to identify both the key “puzzle pieces” of their design and the significant themes that run through their design, as well. The more you know about yourself and your design, the more effectively you can offer yourself to God to be used.

2. Gain a broad-based, accurate understanding of career options. Once you have a thorough understanding of your design, the next task is to determine work options that utilize your design. You can only choose from the options you are aware of; therefore, gaining a broad and comprehensive picture of options within the work world (“secular” and/or “Christian” career options) that utilize your gifts and interests is critical. This phase of career planning is called “career exploration.”

3. Maintain and deepen your relationship with the Lord. Jesus spoke sobering words in John 15. He instructs His followers to stay as connected to Him as a branch is to its vine, because “apart from me you can do NOTHING.” Jesus reminds us that anything we do that has merit in His eyes will flow out of our relationship with Him. We must make time to nurture that relationship through the spiritual disciplines so that we are able to discern His voice. As Thomas Kelly, the Quaker author of "A Testament of Devotion" writes, “... too many well-intentioned people are so preoccupied with the clatter of effort to do something for God that they don’t hear Him asking that He might do something through them.”

4. Focus on the needs of others instead of on yourself. The majority of people --Christians included -- tend to think primarily of what they want out of work. They focus on how much money they want to make, what kind of “security” they want to gain, the status they want to achieve, the free time they want to have, etc. (While these issues are important to examine, they should not be our primary focus.) To find your mission in life, you must instead develop “need-focused thinking.” What needs in this world were YOU created to meet? In other words, in what ways does God want you to be His hands, feet and voice in this world? I Peter 4:10 tells us that “Each one, as a good manager of God’s different gifts, must use for the good of others the special gift he has received from God.” Our gifts are not given to us just so we can earn money, gain security and achieve status -- they were given to us so we could serve others. Finding your mission is about finding your place of service!

At its best, career planning is a very spiritual process. As career counselors working with Christians, we have the privilege of helping others to discover their God-given design and find work that gives them an opportunity to serve joyfully. We pray that you will use the resources within the Christian Career Center to find your mission so that we, as the body of Christ, may impact the world as He wills.

 

Kevin & Kay Marie Brennfleck, National Certified Career Counselors, are the directors of the Christian Career Center and Church Jobs Online.  (Through these sites you can search hundreds of current job listings from churches, ministries and Christian employers, post your free or featured resume and obtain career counseling and testing to discover work that fits your God-given design.)

Farrakhan Says 'My Time Is Up'

Farrakhan Says 'My Time Is Up'

By JEFF KAROUB

AP

DETROIT (Feb. 26) - Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was greeted by cheers, tears and chants from tens of thousands as he returned to the public eye just long enough to say he would be leaving it soon.

Farrakhan, who ceded leadership duties last year because of illness, spoke for nearly two hours Sunday. Looking healthy and fit, he credited the prayers of millions from all walks of life for allowing him to take the stage at Detroit's Ford Field.

His vitality seemed at odds with his message, that his time left in the spotlight was short.

"My time is up," the 73-year-old Farrakhan said, describing his exit from leadership. "I believe ... that my time to be with my spiritual father and his sender has come. And your time to go through serious trial has come."

The topic of the speech was "One Nation Under God." But Farrakhan said the world is at war because Christians, Muslims and people of other faiths are divided.

Farrakhan said Jesus Christ and the Prophet Muhammad would embrace each other with love if they were on the stage behind him.

"Our lips are full of praise, but our hearts are far removed from the prophets we all claim," he said. "That's why the world is in the shape that it's in."

The leader of 1995's Million Man March said he is leaving at a time of great conflict, citing the war in Iraq  specifically, and he believes God is angry with leaders who are putting politics and greed above service to others. He predicted "the fall of the great Babylon, the United States of America."

He said President Bush  should be impeached or at least censured for his "wicked policies," and urged young people to avoid joining a military that will have them "leave one way and come back another."

The speech at the home of the National Football League's Detroit Lions capped the Nation's three-day convention in the city where it was founded in 1930.

The downtown venue was not filledto capacity, but seats on the field and in the lower levels of the 65,000-seat stadium were packed.

Anita Baker performed two songs before Farrakhan took the stage and speakers from various religious and ethnic groups welcomed him. Among those on the stage behind him were U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.; Russell Simmons, hip-hop pioneer and entrepreneur; and Joe Shirley Jr., Navajo Nation president.

The annual convention, usually held in Chicago, honors Nation founder Wallace D. Fard, who attracted black Detroiters on the margins of society with a message of self-improvement and separation from whites. Fard said whites were inherently evil because of their enslavement of blacks.

The Nation of Islam, which promotes black empowerment and nationalism, was rebuilt by Farrakhan in the late 1970s after W.D. Mohammed, the son of longtime leader Elijah Mohammed, moved his followers toward mainstream Islam.

Farrakhan became notorious for calling Judaism a "gutter religion" and suggesting crack cocaine might have been a CIA plot to enslave blacks. He met with foreign leaders at odds with the United States - Moammar Gadhafi, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein  - prompting the State Department in 1996 to accuse him of "cavorting with dictators."

Farrakhan, who embraced W.D. Mohammed on stage in 2000 after years of discord, has credited his steps toward reconciliation to what he called a "near death" experience related to prostate cancer, which he began battling in 1991.

Detroiter Che-Lin Aldridge, who described herself as spiritual but not a member of the Nation, welcomed Farrakhan and what he had to say.

"This message is something everybody needs to hear - a message that's universal," Aldridge said. "What he said was critical for our lives today."

Farrakhan recalled the story of the final message delivered by the Prophet Muhammad, who was dying at the time. "Within 80 days ... he expired," Farrakhan said.

"I don't see expiration for me," he said, "but I do see exaltation."

America Faces a Popeye Moment

 

 

 

 

America Faces a Popeye Moment
By Janice Shaw Crouse
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Send an email to Janice Shaw Crouse

 

Popeye the Sailor is a 1930s comic strip character who is still popular through home video productions of the television cartoon series. What stands out in the old Popeye series are the "Popeye Moments." That's when Popeye has had all he can take. At that point Popeye says, "I've had all I can stand! I can't stands no more!" He flexes his biceps and off he goes to straighten things out.

Those of us who work on America's cultural and domestic issues know exactly how Popeye felt. There are moments when we can't stand any more; we've had all we can stand, and we "can't stands no more!"

America stands at a Popeye Moment regarding children living in fatherless families, and we need to do everything we can to "straighten things out."

We've had plenty of warning about illegitimacy and the very real dangers of "father absence." Somehow, though, the ever increasing trends have not really set off an alarm in the public square.

In the mid-60s, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned us about the dangers of fatherless families, yet while the statistics have steadily increased, it has been politically incorrect to warn against "illegitimacy." Little attention has been given when researchers and social analysts have cited the predictable negative outcomes of an absent father in the family or when they have spread the news that illegitimacy feeds on itself –– the daughters of unwed mothers are more likely to have children out of wedlock. For years, nobody really noticed or cared when conservative lobbyists and activists provided strong evidence that sex should be reserved for marriage and that the married mother and father provide the best place for raising children.

Yet in recent years, our work has produced widespread promotion of increasingly more sophisticated and effective abstinence-until-marriage programs. As a result, teen childbearing has dropped dramatically since the early 1990s. This decrease shows the positive impact of abstinence programs on the teen birth rate as well as the teen abortion rate – which has dropped even more than the teen birth rates.

Even so, the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reveal that well over one-third (36.8 percent) of all American children (2 out of 5) are born out of wedlock. Illegitimate births total over 1.5 million a year. Unbelievably, it is not teenage hormones that are driving this disastrous increase. Instead, single adult women are the ones who are having the babies without marrying the father. The upward trend of unwed births to mothers over age 20 has steadily increased since 1975; this, in spite of the fact that birth control is readily available and that these women are old enough to know better.

 

 

 

 

Thursday, August 11, 2005 Willow Creek Leadership Summit - Day 1

Well, day 1 of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit is history.  This is my first summit (and my first time at Willow Creek); so it was a jam-packed day for me.  Let me give you a brief rundown of things that stood out to me...

The day started off with Bill Hybels talking on "The Leader's State of Mind".  His whole discussion was what happens before you get a 'vision' for something?  What causes a leader to have and develop the vision he/she has?  Using Exodus 2 as a text, Bill stated that many times vision comes out of a state of "Holy Discontent".  He mentioned Popeye (the sailor man) and how he would take as much as he could (when people gave Olive Oil a hard time) until he got to the point where he would say "That's all I can stands... I can't stands no more."  In our lives, he asked us "What can't you stand"?  That's your area of "holy discontent". Many times your vision comes out of finding your area of "holy discontent" and doing something about it.  It's when your heart is in agreement with God's heart on things that matter to him.  Some examples of this he gave were David (when fighting Goliath); Nehemiah (and the re-building of the wall); Martin Luther King (and his fight against racial injustice; and the founder of World Vision (who started the organization after seeing dying children who had no food).  All of these people got their vision when they had their 'Popeye' moment of "Holy Discontent".   Of course, Bill Hybels expressed this whole idea much better than I did (in one paragraph).  It was a very interesting and thought-provoking start to the day.

Then came Rick Warren's turn... Rick also spoke out of Exodus on topic of "Leadership Is Stewardship".  Rick talked about giving up your Identitiy, your Income, and your influence so that God can use you.  If anyone has had to do this recently, it's been Rick with all the fame, fortune and influence that has come his way the past couple of years.  For example, on the topic of income, he said "What you think you own is on loan".  And he has taken some large steps in this area (giving back his salary to the church; being a 'reverse tither'; not changing his lifestyle, etc.).  It was a great message... and he even wore a suit! (Go figure!)

Those were the two big key-notes for the day... the sessions in the afternoon were good as well; and the worship was awesome.

Anyone else have any other observations (if you attended)?

Sorry if this is a little disconnected... it's been a long day; and I'm about ready to crash!  :)

Until tomorrow...

Leadership Summit 2005 Day 1.1Published by Jeff August 15th, 2005 in Front Page.

For the past few days, my wife and I have been attending the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek Community Church, one of the largest churches in North America.

I’ve been to four of these conferences now, and each time I go, I end up getting motivated to be a better leader, to try harder, to rely on God more, and all that good stuff.

This time has been no different in that respect. So, for my own benefit, and hopefully for yours, I thought I would record my notes from each of the sessions here.

The Leader’s State of Mind — Bill Hybels

Each year, Bill Hybels starts the summit off by talking about how much he loves the summit. The one phrase I have heard him say more than once is that he loves the summit because it’s filled with leaders and “Leaders get it”—leaders understand each other.

He took us all the way back to the first conference message he ever gave on the issue of leadership, long before the Leadership Summit was even thought of, and his points from that message are still just as relevant today. It was a message on the five things he believed about leadership.

• The church is the most leadership intensive organization in the world.
• There is a spiritual gift of leadership.
• Most churches undermine the expression of leadership by creating systems to restrict the freedom of leaders.
• Most people love to be led
• The church is the hope of the world and its future rests largely in the hands of its leaders.

Bill said that he still believed all those things.

Bill moved on to the next point of his message when he talked very briefly about the tings leaders do. He simply listed and described that leaders cast vision, build teams, and build other leaders.

However, the key question for the morning was, “What gives birth to vision?”

Where does vision come from?

When Bill said that, my ears opened a little wider because that is one of the questions that I have been thinking about quite a bit recently. I myself have been wrestling with the issue of how to determine when a vision is from God and when it is simply a result of one’s own desires.

Of course, when we think about great visionaries, we often expect to hear that their vision was birthed out of some kind of firestorm spiritual experience. Should we assume that is always the case?

Bill drew our attention to the story of Moses to consider how his vision was born.

The Source of Moses’s Vision

We first went to Exodus chapter 2. Once, when Moses was younger and still living in the land of Egypt, he came across an Egyptian soldier who was beating a Hebrew slave. Moses was outraged at the sight of the fight and the injustice of how his fellow Hebrew was being treated, and he stepped in to intervene. In the resulting struggle, Moses ended up killing the Egyptian.

A few days later, Moses saw two Hebrews engaged in a fight, and once again, he was outraged. This time, though, the fight was between two Hebrews—brothers

Finally, Bill Hybels took us to Exodus 3 which is really where we all were expecting him to go in the first place. In fact, I was wondering why he took us on the little detour through chapter 2. It’s obvious that Moses’ defining moment and the moment when he really got the vision happened with bare feet in front of a bush that flamed but did not burn.

But Bill asked the question that made us all stop and think, “Was Exodus 3 really the defining moment for Moses’s vision?”

Exodus 3:7 says this:

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.”

The motivation for God’s redemptive work in the book of Exodus is found in that little phrase, “I have seen the oppression of my people.”

Amazingly enough, that is exactly what Moses had experienced himself back in chapter 2!

In Bill’s words, Moses had been “wrecked” by something that also “wrecked” the heart of God!

Moses’s God-given vision was essentially God saying, “What you can’t stand, I can’t stand, and I’m ready to use you to do something about it.”

In the old cartoon Popeye the Sailor Man, there would come a point in time during each episode when Popeye, a normally mild-mannered fellow, would get pushed to the limit and would declare, “That’s all I can stands; I can’t stands no more.” Then, he would eat his spinach, receive amazing physical strength, and put right whatever was wrong in the situation.

Bill asked us, “What is it that you can’t stand?” That is what propels us into leadership!

Holy Discontent

Bill claimed that God gives each leader a “holy discontent” that will not stand for a situation to continue. * David had it with Goliath * Nehemiah had it with the wall of Jerusalem * Martin Luther King, Jr. had it with civil injustice.

In each case, the thing that wrecked the heart of the individual was also something that wrecked the heart of God.

Here’s the point, vision is essential, but discerning the vision can be difficult. That’s why every leader needs to find his or her “holy discontent”—the passion that something must be changed.

What’s yours?

Other Observations

To conclude the message, Bill gave a few quick practical observations that I simply list here:

• Not everything that bugs you is to be your mission.
• Don’t give up too soon if you don’t know it yet.
• When you find it, feed it. It’s often easy to be discouraged by reality and choose to escape or avoid rather than attack. A leader must feed the discontent to feed the vision.
• Quinn says that when a person gets gripped by a passion, that person enters a new state of mind he calls The Fundamental State of Leadership.
• Discontent can wreck you with pessimism if you let it. Instead, the leader must not let hope die.

My Conclusion

This was one of the most profound, challenging, and encouraging messages on vision that I have heard in a long time. So many times, I have heard Christian leaders talk about how a leader needs to basically become a hermit for a period of time until God reveals the vision for his or her leadership. They often look to Moses’ 40 years in the wilderness between Exodus 2 and Exodus 3 and claim that we all need to go through something similar.

However, I am by nature a person who is very aware of the rapid passing of time. In my weaker moments, that leads to impatience, but in my stronger moments, it is a fire that makes me say, “Something must be done!”

I can totally relate to what Bill was teaching, and I also find more examples of it in Scripture than of many other teachings on the same topic.

I have allowed my discontent to die out of disillusionment. I have allowed my idealism to fade to a great degree. But I have been renewed. There are things I hate, and I know from the pages of the Bible that they are things God hates as well. What wrecks my heart also wrecks his, and I have just been given the freedom to claim that as my God-given vision!

As one of my life verses says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” Psalm 37:4. If my heart is in the pursuit of God above all other things, then I am free to likewise pursue the other desires he will give me!

Want to know my passion? I have two right off the top of my head:

• I can’t stand the disunity and divisions plaguing North American Churches. Denominations, parachurch ministries, publishing companies, church associations, independent congregations, warring congregations—It’s time we all started working together for the same goals.
• I can’t stand the false teachings that have caused people (myself included) to be weak in the exercise of their faith. Gender issues, church politics, spiritual gifts, moral standards, and God’s grace—It’s time we return to the truth of God’s Word and allow the truth to set us free.

'Miracle' ends hiatus for gospel singer Armstrong

'Miracle' ends hiatus for gospel singer Armstrong

By Deborah Evans Price

Reuters

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - With the Feb. 20 release of "Walking Miracle," Vanessa Bell Armstrong, one of gospel music's most acclaimed voices, once again takes center stage.

Armstrong teams with noted producer Rodney Jerkins on the title track of her new EMI Gospel set and also enlists Smokie Norful and J. Moss' production expertise. The result is a collection that is contemporary and classic Armstrong.

"I'm where God wants me to be at the moment," she said. "I just wanted to regroup again -- to get back out here."

She made her bow in the gospel community with 1983's "Peace Be Still" and followed with another chart-topping album, 1984's "Chosen." Her career gained momentum with her 1991 appearance on Broadway in "Don't Get God Started" and in Oprah Winfrey's "The Women of Brewster Place." She also could be heard performing the theme song for the popular TV show "Amen."

But for the past five years, she has been out of the limelight, spending time with her family. "I have four girls and one boy. They are all grown. I have eight grandkids and two more on the way. My life is full," Armstrong said. "My son was stricken with (multiple sclerosis). There comes a time when you have to minister to your own family, and that's what I was doing. I have ministered to thousands of people in my lifetime. I've been out here for 35 years."

When she decided to record again, she found her recent life experiences informing her new music. "'It's Over Now' is a song that I wrote about my son and daughter," she says. "It's real special to me and my family, but everybody has something that they want to be over. I thank God for such a powerful song -- a real personal song that has ministered to my family and then grabbed other people."

Armstrong says working with Jerkins, Norful and such young talents as J. Moss eased the stress of returning to the studio.

"He has something that I haven't heard in a long time, which is kind of jazzy, but kind of hip-hop, and it's beautiful," she says of J. Moss. "And getting to work with Smokie was such a pleasure. I had such a wonderful team, and they all worked together. What I loved about it was the collaboration."

Same Stooges. Different World. Finer Wine.

Same Stooges. Different World. Finer Wine.

 

Steve Forrest/Insight-Visual, for The New York Times

Iggy Pop at the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival in Minehead, England.

THERE are the Stooges, from Ann Arbor, Mich., accidental inventors of punk, in the summer of 1970, on nationwide television. And there’s Iggy Pop, their singer: bare torso and sausage-casing jeans, silver gloves, dog collar, chipped front tooth.

 

The song is “TV Eye,” and they have gotten wickedly good at their primitive groove — as good as they will ever get. Iggy weaves in and out of the beat: one second borne by the music, one second abstracted from it. Suddenly he does a violent knock-kneed dance and slips into the audience, gone except for his wounded-animal noises.

“There goes Iggy, right into the crowd,” says the host of the special NBC program “Midsummer Rock.” It’s Jack Lescoulie, an announcer on the “Today” show, the Al Roker of his day. In his late 50s he looks like the anti-Stooge: professional, good-natured, well fed, well insured.

After a commercial break we see Iggy crawling on the stage. “Since we broke away for our message, Iggy has been in the crowd and out again three different times,” Mr. Lescoulie says. “They seem to be enjoying it, and so does he.” The camera centers on a scrum of teenagers looking downward. Iggy surfaces, hoists himself up so he’s standing on shoulders, and remains aloft, pointing forward like the prow of a ship. Next he’s scooping something out of a jar, wiping it on himself, flinging it around. “That’s peanut butter,” Mr. Lescoulie says, incredulous.

I’M going to be straight,” Iggy Pop said recently, talking about that film, which circulated for years in certain circles and is now of course available on YouTube. “I was more than a little high.”

He was often more than a little high. But these days Iggy Pop, a k a Jim Osterberg, is ferociously grounded. He swims and practices a form of tai chi, and his only vice, he says, is a few glasses of Bordeaux. Coming up on his 60th birthday, he bears signs of age: creased and ropy, he limps from cartilage lost in his right hip, and can’t hear well over ambient noise.

For the first time in 34 years, however, he and the members of his onetime band are putting out a new record: “The Weirdness,” which will be released by Virgin on March 6. (Careful historians will say 37 years: this is the version of the Stooges that made “Fun House,” around the time of the peanut butter concert — the brothers Ron and Scott Asheton on guitar and drums and Steve Mackay on tenor saxophone.)

In the intervening years they too have changed. As has the world around them.

Once upon a time Iggy and the Stooges defined themselves against the Lescoulies of the world: they were outrageous, truculent, elemental. But these days it seems there are more Iggys than Lescoulies. Everyone’s subversive, everyone’s perverse. What can the Stooges be, if not a band that defines itself against the rest of the world? What happens when they’re old and experienced, and punk attitudes, already in their third generation, have infiltrated so many corners of the culture? How do they climb back into that frame of mind?

BREAKING up” doesn’t exist anymore. A band only has extended periods of downtime.

The Stooges’ downtime was a little more down than others. Ron Asheton used to say that Iggy had become too self-involved for the Stooges to play together again. Scott Asheton pursued Iggy at various points over the last 10 years, and the answer was always no. “I wasn’t going to go backwards,” Iggy explains now. “And I wasn’t going to do anything to what I thought was a great band.”

At some point, however, the incentives just became too powerful: prime gigs at the best rock festivals in the world, both the best-paid and the most creatively run.

Plus, what else was there to do? Scott Asheton, who lives in Florida, had been working in construction. His brother, Ron, had been in a series of bands that hadn’t made a stir, still living in his boyhood home on the west side of Ann Arbor, where the band had its first rehearsals. (All three went to Ann Arbor High together.)

Iggy needed the Ashetons just as much. “We managed to stay in a band together during a protracted period of failure,” he said of those early days, gigging and making records and living in a filthy house. “No rewards. No approval. No money. These are really the only guys I know. That doesn’t mean, ‘Oh, shucks, I like them so much.’ I mean, we lived together.”

Besides, “I’d hit a wall playing alone, in my solo music,” he said. “I was just at wit’s end about what to do — bands, songwriting, everything.”

He invited the Ashetons to work on a few songs with him for his album “Skull Ring” in 2003. A week after they convened, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival floated the idea of a Stooges reunion show. (They did the show; Iggy wouldn’t say how much they were offered, though he does say that the Stooges now get paid much better than he did for concerts during his solo career.) And the bassist Mike Watt came on board, once of the Minutemen, to take the place of Dave Alexander, who died in 1975.

Before they all headed into the studio, Mr. Watt flew to Florida to go over the new songs, and Iggy gave him a lesson about finding his “inner stupidity.”

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Peggy Gilbert, 102, Dies; Led Female Jazz Ensembles

Peggy Gilbert, 102, Dies; Led Female Jazz Ensembles

By

MARGALIT FOX

Published: February 25, 2007

Peggy Gilbert, a noted jazz saxophonist and bandleader who for decades led all-female ensembles in hot jazz, a daring venture when she began her career more than 80 years ago, died on Feb. 12 in Los Angeles. She was 102 and had lived there for many years.

The cause was complications of hip surgery, said Jeannie Pool, a friend. A musicologist and filmmaker, Dr. Pool made a documentary about Ms. Gilbert, “Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band,” narrated by Lily Tomlin and completed last year.

Long before the proliferation of women’s bands in the World War II era, and long afterward, Ms. Gilbert presided over a series of jazz groups, performing widely and appearing in Hollywood films like “The Wet Parade” (1932), “Melody for Two” (1937) and “The Great Waltz” (1938). She was also known as an advocate for women trying to make their way in jazz, a culture long hostile to female instrumentalists.

To contemporary audiences, Ms. Gilbert was best known for the Dixie Belles, a Dixieland band of older women she formed in 1974, when she was 69. (Reviewers said Ms. Gilbert blew a mean tenor sax until she was well into her 90s.) The Dixie Belles, who performed together until 1998, were featured on the “Tonight” show and on several sitcoms, among them “The Golden Girls,” “Dharma & Greg,” “The Ellen Show” and “Married With Children.”

For most of the 20th century, Ms. Gilbert toured the country by station wagon, plane, ship and even dogsled. She played on vaudeville stages and in glittering nightclubs; on military bases and in millionaires’ mansions; and once, to her dismay, in what turned out to be a circus. Along the way, she encountered incredulity, outright rejection and auditions at which band members were asked to lift their skirts to prove they had good legs.

All this Ms. Gilbert endured, because from the time she was a schoolgirl in Iowa, all she really wanted to do was play the saxophone.

When Margaret Fern Knechtges was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on Jan. 17, 1905, her parents had a piano waiting. Her father, John Darwin Knechtges, was a violinist and the conductor of the Hawkeye Symphony Orchestra, which accompanied silent films. Her mother, the former Edith Gilbert, was an opera chorister. Young Peggy dutifully learned the piano and the violin. At 7, she toured the Midwest in a Highland dance troupe with the Scottish music hall star Harry Lauder.

But by the time she was in high school, Peggy was yearning to play the jazz she heard on the radio. After the school refused her request to learn the saxophone — large wind instruments, she was told, were not suitable for young ladies — she simply taught herself.

“The first time I picked up a sax, I said, ‘This is it!’, ” Ms. Gilbert told The Los Angeles Times last year. “I loved the feel of it —free and loose.”

In 1924, the year after she graduated from high school, Ms. Gilbert started her first women’s band, the Melody Girls, which played at a Sioux City hotel and on the radio. In 1928 she moved to California, where she took her mother’s maiden name. No one could pronounce Knechtges anyway. (It was pronounced kuh-NET-chiz.)

In Los Angeles she started a band that over the years performed under various names, including Peggy Gilbert and Her Metro Goldwyn Orchestra, Peggy Gilbert and Her Symphonics and Peggy Gilbert and Her Coeds. The band toured the vaudeville circuit with stars like George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny and Jimmy Durante. It also played in popular Los Angeles nightclubs, sometimes sharing the bill with jazz titans like Benny Goodman and Louis Prima.

In addition, Ms. Gilbert served as an unofficial employment agency for female musicians, securing on-screen work for them in films. After the United States entered World War II, she helped find places in military bands for male musicians who had been drafted, sparing them combat.

“She just got on the phone and called every bandleader she knew who’d enlisted and said, ‘I’ve got a 19-year-old trumpet player here — can you take him?’ ” Dr. Pool, who is also writing a book about Ms. Gilbert, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

During the war, the heyday of women’s bands, Ms. Gilbert toured Alaska with a U.S.O. show starring the actress Thelma White. After the war, when men returned to the bandstand, and the demand for women’s bands dried up, she worked as a secretary for the Los Angeles local of the American Federation of Musicians, continuing to perform at night and on weekends.

Ms. Gilbert, who was divorced after an early marriage, is survived by her companion of more than 60 years, Kay Boley, a former vaudeville performer and contortionist whom she met when they appeared at the same nightclub.

With her Dixieland band, she recorded a CD, “Peggy Gilbert and the Dixie Belles,” produced by Dr. Pool for the Cambria label.

One of the very few obstacles it seemed Ms. Gilbert could not surmount was the scarcity, early on, of women (or, in fact, anyone) skilled enough to play jazz at the level she required.

“Sometimes, in a pinch, she’d have to hire a man, because she didn’t have enough women players,” Dr. Pool said. “In the ’30s, she was doing four, five and six jobs a day. The women would make fun of the guys, because they couldn’t read music. And they’d say: ‘Don’t ever hire that guy again. He’s not really a musician.’ ”

Amid the Gravestones, a Final Love Song

Amid the Gravestones, a Final Love Song

Ángel Franco/The New York Times, 1998

Celia Cruz and her husband, Pedro Knight.

By EMILY BRADY

Published: February 25, 2007

In the summer of 2003, as his beloved wife was dying of brain cancer, Pedro Knight set out to find her a final resting place. His wife of 41 years, the legendary salsa singer Celia Cruz, needed a space that was accessible to the legions of fans whose lives she had touched through her music.

He chose a plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where, on Myosotis Avenue, a granite mausoleum was built with four windows so fans could peer in and pay their respects to their beloved Guarachera de Cuba, whose nickname came from the guaracha songs that made her famous. The mausoleum’s neighbors were gravestones and larger monuments built in tribute to famous New Yorkers of all stripes, including seven former mayors, and musical giants like Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

As thousands of fans from around the world made pilgrimages to Ms. Cruz’s grave after her death in July 2003, those who work at the cemetery noticed that whenever Mr. Knight visited, he shared his time with people who had come to pay respects to his wife. “The poor guy,” said Susan Olsen, the executive director of Friends of the Woodlawn Cemetery. “He never really had a chance to be alone with her.”

Earlier this month, the two were reunited.

Mr. Knight, who died in California on Feb. 3 at age 85, was entombed next to his wife on Feb. 13. His burial, on the day before Valentine’s Day, was the final chapter of a love story that had taken the couple from Fidel Castro’s Cuba to the heights of fame during a life in exile in the United States.

Her nickname, which followed her into death, is engraved on her tombstone. Mr. Knight was her “cabecita de algondón,” her little cotton head, a nod to the fact that age turned his fuzzy curls and mutton-chop sideburns milky white.

The couple met in Havana in 1950, when Ms. Cruz joined the popular Sonora Matancera orchestra, in which Mr. Knight played the trumpet. After defecting with the orchestra in 1960 in Mexico, they made their way to the United States, and they were married in 1962.

Under her husband’s guidance, Ms. Cruz went on to become a global salsa star. She was bathed in the limelight, and that was the way Mr. Knight liked it.

“He always wanted all of the attention to be on her,” said Omer Pardillo-Cid, Ms. Cruz’s former manager, on a recent visit to the tomb. “She was the flamboyant one; Pedro was always very simple.”

Today, sunlight slanting into the couple’s shared chamber is colored by a stained-glass window depicting Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba. Three photographs of Ms. Cruz in silver frames are displayed on her tomb, along with a rosary and a small Cuban flag, given to her during the only visit she was able to make to Cuba — to the Guantánamo military base — during her decades in exile.

As yet, nothing adorns Mr. Knight’s tomb. Mr. Pardillo-Cid plans to display photos of him, too, but solo shots have proved difficult to come by. “It’s been hard finding a picture of just him,” Mr. Pardillo-Cid said. “They were always together.”

 

About John W. Peterson . . .

About John W. Peterson . . .John W. Peterson (1921-2006) was born in Lindsborg, Kansas, and began his musical career while he was still in his teens.  During World War II, he served as an Army Air Force pilot flying the famed "China Hump."  Later, he attended Moody Bible Institute and served on the radio staff there for a number of years.  In 1953, he graduated from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago and shortly thereafter settled in Pennsylvania to continue his songwriting career.  He then moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where for over ten years he was President and Editor-in-Chief of Singspiration, a sacred music publishing company.  He also served on the board of Gospel Films, Inc. of Muskegon, Michigan for several years.  Later he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona where he continued his writing and and co-founded Good Life Productions.  A few years later, the John W. Peterson Music Company was established.  During this time, he also served on the board of Family Life Radio Network in Tucson, Arizona.  He had wide experience as a choral director, and throughout his career was in great demand as a guest conductor of his own works.

His music is loved and sung around the world.  Mr. Peterson has composed well over 1000 individual songs, including titles such as:  "It Took a Miracle," "Over the Sunset Mountains," "So Send I You," "Springs of Living Water," "Heaven Came Down," "Jesus Is Coming Again" and "Surely Goodness and Mercy."  In addition, he has written 35 cantatas and musicals.  Among these are "Night of Miracles," "Born a King," "No Greater Love," "Carol of Christmas," "Jesus Is Coming," "King of Kings," "Down from His Glory" and "The Last Week."  Approximately 10,000,000 copies of these cantatas and musicals have been published and sold.

In 1967, the National Evangelical Film Foundation presented Mr. Peterson with the Sacred Music Award in recognition of his accomplishments in the field of sacred music.  In the same year, he received the honorary degree, Doctor of Sacred Music, from John Brown University.  In 1971, he received the honorary degree, Doctor of Divinity, from Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon; and in 1979, he received the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.  In 1977, his autobiography, "The Miracle Goes On," was published by Zondervan Publishing House, and a film by the same title was released by Gospel Films.  In 1986, Mr. Peterson was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and in 1996 at MusiCalifornia, he received the prestigious Ray DeVries Church Music Award.  He's listed in "Who's Who in America" and "Who's Who in the World."

Fortifi@ Recent Entries 2007 02/24/07

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