Y, oh y...

March 22 - the birthday of Holy Roman Emperor Maxilimilian I, the Pentium processor, and the poet Billy Collins. Things are as busy as can be around the library today in preparation for Volodymyr Vynnytsky's piano concert here tonight (a few tickets still available!)... tables to be moved, seats to be placed, wine to be chilled, all that sort of stuff. As always, a big thanks to our Music Committee for their help, and a double thanks to Cowan Holdings, Ltd., for sponsoring the event. Volodymyr is such an impressive pianist... your loyal blogger can't wait!


Also upcoming... tomorrow is the first evening for our Sunshine Readers programme! The CofC Tri-Delts will host a fun children's story hour starting at 6:30 PM tomorrow here at the Library Society. Parents, grandparents, and babysitters are encouraged to bring their wee ones, three and up, to this exciting adventure in reading. Kids are encouraged to bring a pillow or stuffed bear, and come dressed in their jammies for this pre-bedtime event.


Parents... wearing your jammies is allowed, too. Just... use your best judgement.

A little bit taller, y'all

The Library Society hosts a lot of programs.  In the Fall of 2010, for example, we offered over fifty extracurriculars.  So far in 2011, the story is the same.  Let's take a two-week period from last Friday (January 21) to next Friday (February 4): the Poetry Society brought in Billy Collins; the 263rd Annual Meeting of the Society was held; the Charleston Symphony Orchestra is playing a concert tonite; and a week from tomorrow we'll have our first Unedited concert of the new year.  That's well over 500 plus folks in the Library Society after hours amongst those four events alone, more than enough hustle and bustle to make up for the quiet library-like moments around here.

But we know there's going to be a big crowd for these events.  When you're hosting literary rock stars like Billy Collins, you put out all the chairs.  [Every last one you can find- thanks Gibbes Museum!]  When something is a 260 year old tradition, you expect strong attendance (free wine and passed hors d'oeuvres help).  We can rest easy knowing programs like these are going to be well-attended.

It's the smaller events, the events without a "built-in audience", that we worries about (and email about, and advertise, and talk about, etc.).  So it's always nice when such a program takes off successfully, and our new "Grecian Architecture in Charleston" has been just like that.  This Lifelong Learning Series class, hosted by Peg Eastman and Christopher Liberatos (who made the cover of the latest Charleston Mercury), starts next Tuesday and runs for three weeks.  This time last week it had approximately zero people enrolled.  Today, we registered half a dozen new students.  Spots are still open: $150 for members, $200 for non.  Call us at 723.9912 to sign up, or for more information.

Also, one week from Thursday: Unedited: Chanteuse, Chocolate and Champagne.  Sopranos Margaret Kelly Cook and Laura Ball will be cranking out the chansons françaises.  $15.  It's a great early Valentine's present, and ticket sales are clipping along.  Get yours online here, or call us at 843.723.9912.

Or you could buy her some Valentine's basketball shoes.

Make sure to have a divorce lawyer, too.

It was also the Army's name for certain nuclear bombs... don't know if that's insulting or not.

  Friday, January 21st.  Your loyal blogger almost wrote in celebration of the 198th birthday of pathfinder of the West, Republican presidential candidate, and fellow College of Charleston alumnus John C. Fremont (who, for the record, led a thoroughly amazing life). Instead, I'll briefly celebrate an inanimate object: the bassoon.

  Subject to all forms of jokes and insults, there are some admitted quirks to the instrument.  For one, the bassoon is big.  A performer has to strap it to the chair or the floor or to their person just to hold it.  A cheap one costs as much as a good used car, and a nice new one as much as a small BMW.  Fingering is incredibly complicated, there is a huge variety of playing styles and methods, reeds need to be custom-cut, and there are two significantly different systems of construction.  And once upon a time in the 1960s, the father of erectile dysfunction medicine- a Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire, famous for once demonstrating the positive effects of his chemical treatments by dropping his drawers in the middle of a urological conference- tried to turn the instrument electric.  It didn't take.

  It's a frequently mocked, maligned, and altogether under-appreciated instrument.  Which is quite sad, really; think of all the great places where the sound of a bassoon just works.  The creepy opening solo in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.  The bassoons (and contrabassoons!) in Beethoven's 9th.  The stiff-but-smooth, so-very-Edwardian baritone running throughout the works of Elgar.  Nothing but bassoons.  Blast it, imagine some other instrument as grandfather in Peter and the Wolf (I'm lookin' at you, cello- knock it off).  The bassoon is a wonderful instrument.

  Happily for your loyal blogger, we're gonna have a bassoon here at the Library Society next week.  Yuriy Bekker, concertmaster, alongside seven other CSO principal musicians, will perform Schubert's Octet in F Major next Wednesday, January 26th, at 7PM.  Tickets for the event, Time Machine: Schubert in Vienna will be available at the door starting at 6PM.  $15 ($10 for students).  Check out CharlestonSymphony.com for more details.


And to get you in the mood: some bassoonists playing Lady Gaga!

And think of how cool trance music would sound with mandolins!

As the ever-brilliant webcomic xkcd recently pointed out, "there's no reason to think that people throughout history didn't have just as many inside jokes and catchphrases as any modern group of high-schoolers."  Tonight at the Library Society, we'll see another riff on the same theme.  Dr. Nic Butler will present "Concert Night in Colonial Charleston; Or, How to Snare a Mate With Music".  Nic wrote the excellent Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766-1822 (USC Press, 2007), and probably knows more about Charleston nightlife circa 1770 than anyone else around.

So if you're ready to find out about the colonial equivalent to our modern club scene, you need to get down here.  Personally, I'm enjoying the mental image of a illuminated underfloor dancing surface, a la Club Light over on East Bay Street, existing in the 1700's.  Fire, metal grating, etc.... it might actually be an improvement over the real Club Light.

7PM tonight, in the Main Reading Room.  Free.  There will be audio and visuals accompanying the talk, which Nic promises "will be light, fun, and just a little scandalous."

Unedited (and very brief).

If you missed it, you messed up.  Last night's concert, Unedited: Favorite Arias and Duets was by far the best fifty minutes of your loyal blogger's week (and it's been a pretty good week).  If you missed Thursday, then we expect to see you for Unedited:Beatles Bach and Beer.  It's October 2nd.  Tickets are already available at the Library, and will be available online by the start of next week.

Okay, I'm off to set up those ticket sales.  And get ready for the next big event announcement... look for it next week.

Lisztomania (not Lizstomania, stupid), like a riot, like a riot, ohh...

And so it begins, the first Monday of the rest of our lives (or at least the rest of our Fall events season).

Only two events this week: Thursday morning we're hosting a Darkness to Light Stewards of Children training session.  This is a free training session addressing the issue of child sexual abuse.  No registration is needed, and everyone is welcomed and encouraged to attend.

Thursday evening we're hosting Morsza, a voice and piano recital concert.  Pianist Oszkar Morzsa and soprano Eva Morzsa, along with local violinist Nicholas Bentz will perform a program of Mozart, Chopin, Verdi-Liszt, Puccini, and Lehar in the Main Reading Room of the Charleston Library Society.  Twenty bucks, cash only, at the door.

As for Lisztomania (and my apologies to the Morszas, Franz Liszt, and everyone else with the "sz" construction... bocsánat, bocsánat, bocsánat.  Heaven knows how many times I have transposed those letters in the past few weeks.)... we hope you'll make it to the concert; we hope you're wildly excited about how great the concert is: but, we will have to ask that no one bottle the performers' coffee backwash...

Me and you, your momma, and your cousin too...

It's hot, it's rainy, and now the elevators are dead.  The minsis horribilis continues.  SCE&G has swapped a transformer on our block, and until we get compatible motors, our elevators are just a pair of storage closets with electrically actuated doors.  Oh well: the good folks at SCE&G are on top of it, so the elevators should be back posthaste.

But the bitter always comes with the better.  Butter.  Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.  How many boards could the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored.  Irish wristwatch.  Arg!

Okay, no more of that rubbish.  The better = Unedited: A Concert Series with Laura Ball and Friends, which premiers about a month from now on September the 9th.  A series of seven unique concerts, Unedited will present a wide spectrum of artists and styles, captained by inimitable soprano Laura Ball.  September 9th is Favorite Arias and Duets, featuring a selection of film soundtrack favorites.  Single event tickets are $15, and series tickets are $85 (about a twenty percent discount from single event price).  Get 'em via paypal through our website, linked above, or call us, 843.723.9912.

I have a little dreidel, I made it out of clay, and when it's dry and ready, with dreidel I shall play...

If you weren't at the Library Society this past Saturday evening, you missed our first ever holiday concert.  Yuriy Bekker, Norbert Lewandowski,  Jill King, and Lauren Paul from the CSO played a wonderful selection of holiday favourites in the warm, candlelit Main Reading Room of the Society.  We even tried to sing a few old carols together as an audience.  Happily Yuriy and Co. were every bit as good as we were... well, at least we made a "joyful noise", as the psalmist exhorted.  Though I still can't believe your loyal blogger was the only person singing along with The Dreidel Song...

If you're still trying to think of a Christmas present, especially for an aspiring writer in your life, the Library Society has a great one: a new CLS Writing Salon, starting in January.  A ten-week course led by bestselling novelist Bret Lott, participants will grow through critiques of original work they generate.  Matters such as dialog, pace, plot, setting, and, most importantly, the development of one’s own artistic vision will be discussed, as well as discussions of revision, strategies for securing an agent, and matters involving the publication of one’s work. Course cost: $1125 for members of the Charleston Library Society; $1200 for nonmembers: membership is included in the cost of the course, as is Lott's Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life.

Bret is a phenomenal writer: his works have been featured in The Yale Review, The New York Times, and The Georgia Review; his novel Jewel was an Oprah book club pick; and he has edited The Southern Review.  In addition, Bret teaches at the College of Knowledge Charleston (Go Cougars!), is a wonderful speaker (he's given a pair of excellent lectures at the CLS), and a great friend to this institution.  We hope you or someone you know can be a part of this wonderful new Salon.

For enrollment, or more information, please contact Anne Cleveland here at the CLS, 843.723.9912 or acleveland@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.

Yuriy & Co., rocking the house.

and away he flew, "like the down of a thistle"...

Six. The CSO concert at the Library Society will be at six tomorrow, not at four as was reported in this morning's P&C.  Six.  Tickets will go on sale, at the door, one hour prior to showtime; $15 general admission, $5 students and children.   We hope you'll join us for some festive holiday favourites from a terrific string quartet.  The quartet includes concertmaster Yuriy Bekker; principal cellist, Norbert Lewandowski; violist, Jill King; and violinist, Lauren Paul.  Fantastic musicians (they're in here practicing while I'm typing this), in a great setting, playing beloved music for a special time of year: we couldn't be happier to host this concert.

We're also happy because it's our last event of the season.   In the space of one month, the Library will have had the Fall Book Sale, the Reyburn/Griffith Lowcountry Artist Award, the Annual Christmas Parade Party, and the Patoberfest The Pat Conroy Electric Koolaid Traveling Roadshow The Pat Conroy South of Broad reception and it's associated events, and the Holiday Strings Concert.  Everyone here at the Society is overjoyed at the success of these events: but, lately, we're even more overjoyed every night when we go home and get some sleep.  The CLS will be closed from December 23-January 3rd to give the staff some time to recover... a full events schedule starts back January 7th...



See y'all tomorrow.  At six.

Three days...

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Parade party this past weekend.  The weather was perfect, the cocoa was warm, the basset hounds were low to the ground: it was everything you could want for the Charleston Christmas parade.  As a native Johns Islander, I was especially proud to see the St. Johns JROTC double-timing it, while strictly maintaining dress, cover, interval, and distance.  I'm certain their vigilance will keep al-Qa'ida far away from Angel Oak, or JB's, or the tomato packing sheds...

This Saturday, December 12th, we host our first ever holiday concert! A string quartet from the CSO will play a host of Christmas favourites. The music starts at six in the evening, in the Main Reading Room. Tickets will be available at the door, fifteen dollars. For more information, call 843.723.9912, or email us at info@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.


Don't forget, the Library will be closed from December 23rd through the end of the year.  Normal library hours will resume on January 4th.


Also, on a literary note, happy 136th birthday to Willa Cather.  Cather was a favourite of Mencken and Sinclair Lewis (not to mention your loyal blogger), a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the first person to ever receive an honorary degree from Princeton.  Her "Prairie Trilogy" is recognized as three of the greatest novels in the American canon, teaching generations of Americans that: the 1800's were full of terrible ways to die (O, Pioneers!); your friends hold you back from reaching your full potential (The Song of the Lark), and older women will yank out your heart, and stomp that sucker flat (My Antonia).  She also wrote the excellent Death Comes for the Archbishop, but it's much less cheery than any of the Prairie Trilogy...