pimblr.com

ANTHONY AREND (SFS ’80), FLIES ACROSS THE GASTON HALL STAGE, ARMS FLAILING IN MID-AIR, VOICE BOOMING THROUGH THE MAJESTIC AUDITORIUM. HE HAS HIS AUDIENCE CAPTIVATED.
Donning a light pink Oxford shirt with a French collar and gentlemanly suspenders, Arend, a professor in the government department and the director of the Institute for International Law and Politics, simultaneously gives off the appearance that he is one of Georgetown’s most well-regarded scholars and that he has something of a personality. When he begins to leap across the stage (Arend does not do podiums) and pace about the packed auditorium’s center aisle, gesturing loudly with his hands and eschewing a microphone, he confirms just that for the GAAP Convocation crowd.
As Arend makes his 10-minute speech that includes, among other things, references to KC & The Sunshine Band, Usher and Fergie, as well as an emboldening call to service and a lesson in the Jesuit motto “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam,” spectators nudge forward in their seats. Their postures become just a bit more upright. Weary frowns are turned into fixated smiles. After Arend leaves the stage, Christie Fraser (MSB ’08), a student speaker, charms the crowd with a funny story about the film “Georgetown Forever” (they don’t know any better than to be impressed), and tells the audience, “Once you’re a Hoya, you’re connected to every single country all over the planet.”
Next, Fr. Christopher Steck, S.J., shows everyone that priests aren’t so bad, setting them at ease with the tried-and-true one-liner, “I’ve been asked if my parents were Jesuits.”
Then, GAAP board member Hailey Morton (SFS ’08) reflects poignantly, “Georgetown always and forever will be our home.”
And to cap it all off, the Chimes literally run into the auditorium and regale the crowd with the fight song.
Outside, after everyone has filed into Healy Circle, guests are greeted by a cool, late March afternoon. The sky is blue, the sun is still shining on the horizon and Georgetown’s postcard-perfect front lawn is looking every bit the selling point it is meant to be. The accepted students, almost every single one, exit the building beaming. If they’ve been worn out by a whirlwind series of events that began 10 hours earlier at 8 a.m., you wouldn’t know it.

thehoya.com

Apr 11 2008 by Gavin Allen, South Wales Echo
WHEN Frank Sinatra requested the words The Best Is Yet To Come as his epitaph, this probably wasn’t what he had in mind. David Leveaux, the man who has helped resurrect an icon, tells Gavin Allen why… and how.
NEW technological advances bring the next generation of entertainment to South Wales next week – and the future is Frank Sinatra.
Ol’ Blue Eyes has been resurrected via “live” film footage in a show called Sinatra, and will perform across a series of 20ft video screens at Cardiff International Arena backed by a troupe of live dancers and a live 20-piece orchestra.
Doctoring film footage to create a “new” show by a dead performer raises some ethical questions and after the show’s debut at the London Palladium last year The Guardian’s Michael Billington called it “glitzy necrophilia”.
The show’s director, David Leveaux, is clearly annoyed when that criticism is raised.
“That is just ridiculous,” hissed the respected 50-year-old. “If that’s the case then he shouldn’t ever watch a Laurence Olivier film again, or listen to music by Elvis.”
If Leveaux was more cavalier about the production I’d be more likely to agree with Billington’s criticism, but Leveaux is a five-time Tony Award-nominated veteran and he has clearly thought about his involvement.
Significantly Sinatra’s family are behind the production, which came about when a previously unreleased 35mm film of Sinatra – one he had commissioned of himself – was discovered in the family vaults.
It was first aired during a Sinatra celebration at Radio City Music Hall, New York, in 2003 and soon after Leveaux was approached by the show’s producers to see if he could fashion a live production from the film; Leveaux believed he could.
Sinatra quickly paid back a chunk of its massive £5m budget with a record-breaking run at the Palladium and its current UK tour is proving very popular because, according to Leveaux, the show received the financial backing it needed.

icwales.icnetwork.co.uk

Former child prodigy and two-time Grammy-nominated pianist Taylor Eigsti releases his sixth overall CD and second for the Concord Jazz label, in what is sure to be another Grammy contender with “Let It Come to You.” Presenting a repertoire of eleven standout tunes, Eigsti provides refreshing interpretations to several old classics, “new standards” and four original compositions reflective of the pianist’s commitment to new music.
The album features a solid group of musicians including long time collaborator Julian Lage on guitar, Reuben Rogers on bass and Eric Harland on drums forming the core quartet. Among the special guests here, are saxophonist Joshua Redman and Edmar Castaneda on Columbian harp.
Eigsti opens up the program with a delicious up beat rendition of Cole Porter’s “I love You” ending with a rapid burst on the keys. On the following number, Pat Metheny’s “Timeline,” he gives way to Joshua Redman who delivers two brilliant tenor solos all in dedication to the late Michael Brecker. With an interesting arrangement to Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” Eigsti, with Lage’s play, proceeds to fashion an Afro-Cuban spin to this classic.
Combining again with guitarist Lage for a duet, the duo deliver a warm and gentle performance on Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Portrait in Black and White.” Eigsti pounds the keys into submission on a very boppish rendition of “Deluge,” which I’m Sure, Wayne Shorter would not argue with, yet he goes on and delivers perhaps his best performance on “Fever Pitch” one of the best cuts on the album containing dynamite play from Castaneda on the Columbian harp.
The title tune is an absolutely beautiful love ballad designed to appeal to one’s softer side played gracefully by Eigsti. He ends the program presenting a multilayered three part suite entitled “Fall Back Suite” featuring Dayna Stephens and Ben Wendel on tenor saxophones as well as Evan Francis on flutes.

ejazznews.com

The Raconteurs made their 2006 debut with “Broken Boy Soldiers,” a delightful burst of power-pop enthusiasm that found Jack White showcasing his range as a songsmith by partnering with fellow singer and songwriter Brendan Benson to find a much more expansive and challenging setting for his talents than the now well-defined blues-rock minimalism of the White Stripes. The problem with the follow-up is that White was so eager to go in the opposite direction that the Raconteurs’ second album topples under the weight of its own maximalist bombast and hollow filigree.
Yes, with “Consolers of the Lonely” — rush-released in all formats on Tuesday to prevent leaks (though leak it did) — the Raconteurs have made the sort of art-rock record that gave art-rock a bad name, heavy with pretentiously tinkling grand pianos, overwrought guitar solos, those mariachi horns that White loves so much (”The Switch and the Spur”), sawing fiddles that give way to rampaging Moogs (”Old Enough”) and (egads!) an absolutely wretched orchestral homage to Queen at its very worst (”Many Shades of Black”).
Echoing the arguments self-indulgent art-rockers such as Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer made for flawed epics like “Tales from Topographic Oceans” and “Works, Volume 1″ back in the day, the Raconteurs issued a press release stating they “prefer that fans buy the album as a whole instead of breaking up the tracks” (’cause genius just can’t be carved into three-minute blasts for your iPod, don’tcha know). The irony here is that “Consolers of the Lonely” is one of the least consistent album-length rides from a major band in recent memory, and the few good moments — including the more typically effervescent single “Salute Your Solution” or the bouncy “Attention” — are best appreciated via exactly that sort of cherry-picking.
Who are the ideal buyers for the latest album by Van Morrison? First, there are the diehards who adore his voice, which remains entrancing even at age 62. Then there are those who want to pick up the latest studio effort before they see Van the Man on tour this year. Everyone else should consider buying this album only after they have acquired Morrison’s handful of bona fide classics (”Astral Weeks,” “Moondance,” etc.), some of his strong, lesser-known works (like “Hymns to the Silence”), as well as compilations by two eccentrics who have collaborated with Morrison — Mose Allison and Georgie Fame.

suntimes.com