A blog rec: Eighty Days Of Toscanini

[fpb]

For anyone who loves classical music (except Norman Lebrecht), this is by a professional player in a minor American band, who, unlike many of his fellow professional musicians, has not been embittered and has not forgotten why he got into music in the first place. An enthusiast about music and a pleasant, amusing personality, not afraid of forthright opinions, but also with the ear and insight of a professional orchestral player, this comes pretty close to being the last word on the musical side of one of my heroes.

Comments

Re: OT but perhaps of interest

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The rest of the article is pretty much bang on target. The whole town is fed up with the Olympics even before they started, and when practically every new news item from them is an item of scandal or disgrace, I don't see how we are going to get an upside from all this. And I speak as a lover of sports.

London Olympics Redux

[joetexx.livejournal.com]

London Olympics

I don't want to rag on your adopted country too much, but I have developed a grim fascination with this subject. 

Is it really this bad?


Last week a bus taking athletes from Heathrow Airport to the Olympics village got lost in central London for four hours. 

 I tried to embed the links but it didn't take. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/sports/olympics/olympics-leave-british-complaining-even-more-than-usual.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120720

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9403023/London-2012-Olympics-American-and-Australian-team-buses-get-lost-from-Heathrow-to-Olympic-Park.html