Today KUOW (a Seattle NPR affiliate station) will re-broadcast my 2007 segment about self-defense and Always. The interview airs as part of the Sound Focus program on Tuesday 5 August, 2 PM - 3 PM Pacific Time. You can listen live online or download a podcast after the show. The whole show sounds interesting, particularly the weightlifting judge, but if you're pressed for time you could just go listen to my segment on my website here. For those who do have time for the whole hour, here's how KUOW is billing the show: Musical Travels in Russia: Sarah Bassingthwaighte Living Self Defense Gavin Borchert Music Review You May Approach The Bench Press I don't know who wrote the copy for my segment but, well, that's not exactly how I regard what I said. Let me know if you agree.
A KGB detention cell is not the first place you'd associate with classical flute music. But if you walked by one of those old prisons a few years back you'd find Seattle flutist Sarah Bassingthwaighte practicing there with her students. Sarah went to the old Soviet Union in the year 2000, playing in venues ranging from verdant gardens to dank jail cells. Sarah is a composer, flutist and teacher who's released a new recording inspired by her travels. Among the places she visited in Russia was the summer estate of the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. She speaks with KUOW's Dave Beck.
Self-defense is not just a skill; it's a world view. When you put on a seatbelt, when you choose an outfit, when you speak your beliefs, you are defending the life you choose. Seattle-based novelist Nicola Griffith bases her life and those of her fictional characters in the new book, Always, on that philosophy. In an archive from May 10, 2007, she tells Megan Sukys about the personal experiences that led her to see life as an attack waiting to happen.
In the liner notes for this disc, composer Steven Stucky points out that both he and Esa-Pekka Salonen (the Los Angeles Philharmonic music director who considers himself "a composer who conducts"), see themselves as aesthetic descendants of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, who himself was influenced by the clarity and luminous textures of French music. It's especially apparent in his downright Ravellian 1937 Piano Sonata. Gloria Cheng, a passionate advocate of contemporary music, plays this and other sparkling virtuoso pieces by Stucky and Salonen.
A judges' robe pretty much erases the body of the person wearing it. And for years, that was fine with Faith Ireland. She was elected to the bench of the Washington state Supreme Court in 1999, after 16 years as a King County Superior Court Judge. She only thought about her body when her chronic back pain acted up. Then, during a routine jury screening, a potential juror introduced her to the idea of weight lifting to help with her back pain. That put her on a path to competitively lifting hundreds of pounds in national contests. It's called power lifting, and Faith Ireland is a national record holder in the sport.
