A Rifftides reader recently confessed to never having heard Slim Gaillard’s “Poppity Pop,”a 1945 recording with Charlie Parker as a sideman. The record might be dismissed as a period piece, a novelty, if it did not also include a ineup of mid-1940s Los Angeles all-stars. – Doug Ramsey
Tag: 03.21.19
Seattle Opera Gets A New General Director
Christina Scheppelmann, who’s currently the artistic head of one of the top opera houses in Europe, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, will become general director of Seattle Opera in August, succeeding Aidan Lang, who announced last fall that he would be leaving at the end of this season to become general director of the Welsh National Opera. – Seattle Times
It’s Official: André Aciman’s Sequel To ‘Call Me By Your Name’ Will Hit Shelves This Fall
Says a statement from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father Samuel, now divorced, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train leads to a relationship that changes Sami’s life definitively. Elio soon moves to Paris where he too has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a professor in northern New England with sons who are nearly grown, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return visit to Europe.” – Vulture
Egyptian Military Sues One Of Country’s Most Popular Novelists For Insulting President
Alaa Al-Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) is accused in the suit of “insulting the president, the Armed Forces, and judicial institutions” in a set of articles he wrote for the Arabic service of Deutsche Welle, Germany’s equivalent of the BBC World Service. Al-Aswany, who currently lives in New York, responded that the lawsuit is “a clear violation of article 65 of the Egyptian constitution, which states, ‘Freedom of thought and opinion is guaranteed.'” – Melville House
Wole Soyinka Tells Henry Louis Gates What’s What
The Nobel laureate talks about politics, law, race/ethnic relations, and corruption in both his erstwhile adopted country (the U.S.) and his native land (Nigeria); about what went wrong in South Africa and which sub-Saharan countries are doing well; and about the time he personally desegregated a hotel pool in Atlanta. – New York Review of Books