v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

In San Juan, Some Photos

Always eager to get here and shoot away as if on a vacation away from work, but now that I have control of my time it still feels like a lucid vacation.









Vallejo Nocturno 2023-En Borinken

The Benefits of Working for the Extreme Right

 

Eugene Robinson writes, linking ideology to the benefits of doing the bidding for the right:

Thanks to reporting this month by ProPublica, we now know that Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a hard-right Republican activist, have been treated to lavish vacations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by Harlan Crow, a politically active Texas billionaire. These jaunts included a vacation in Indonesia in 2019 that involved flights on Crow’s private jet and an island-hopping tour on a superyacht — a nine-day trip that alone would have cost the couple more than $500,000. If they had paid for it themselves. Which they did not.

There were also other trips on Crow’s jet and frequent stays at properties he owns in the Adirondacks and in East Texas, according to ProPublica. Accompanying the Thomases as guests, at times, were conservative business executives and thought leaders.

And for some reason, Thomas failed to report any of these gifts — any of them — on the disclosure forms he is required to submit annually.

Nor did Thomas disclose the fact that Crow purchased the Georgia house the justice’s mother lives in, then made tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of improvements to the dwelling, ProPublica subsequently revealed.

We should have seen this coming. From 2003 to 2007, on his disclosure forms, Thomas checked the box labeled “none” for his wife’s income. During that period, Ginni Thomas earned more than $686,000 from the conservative Heritage Foundation. When called on the lie, Thomas said it was an error “due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”

Likewise, regarding the trips he took at Crow’s expense, Thomas issued a statement claiming that early in his time on the Supreme Court, he “was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

Stop laughing. All right, yes, it is hilarious. Thomas expects the nation to take seriously his views on the subtlest contours of the Constitution. He also expects us to believe he cannot understand a clear and simple instruction on a disclosure form; that he sees no distinction between “personal hospitality” and trips halfway around the world by private jet; and that he sees nothing wrong about having a member of the board of the conservative American Enterprise Institute purchase and fix up his mother’s house.

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Karl Berger Gone at 88

 

From WRTI and Michael West, news of Karl Berger's passing away and a good review of his accomplishments. A free musician with great musical sensibilities regardless of the genre. A mentor to many:

Karl Berger, a vibraphonist, pianist, composer, and educator who served as a mentor and father figure for generations of improvising avant-garde musicians, died on April 9 at Albany Medical Center in Albany, NY. He was 10 days past his 88th birthday.

His death was confirmed by Chuck ver Straeten, a former student and longtime family friend who was at Berger’s bedside when he passed. Ver Straeten tells WRTI that the cause of death was complications following gastrointestinal surgery.

Born and raised in Germany, Berger was part of the first wave of European musicians to pursue free jazz in the 1960s. His breakthrough came in ‘65, when as a vibraphonist he joined trumpeter Don Cherry’s band in Paris; the following year he traveled to the United States to perform on Cherry’s album Symphony for Improvisers. He recorded his own self-titled debut a few months later, and made his home in the States for the next six decades.

Along with Cherry, his résumé included work with bassist Dave Holland, drummers Jack DeJohnette and Ed Blackwell, and saxophonists Lee Konitz, Ivo Perelman and Ornette Coleman. Coleman was Berger’s primary inspiration (and later his mentor), an influence apparent in his vibraphone style: hard-swinging, informed by the blues, eschewing chords to tell a story in single-note lines that he sometimes doubled with his voice.

Berger was also an accomplished pianist, playing the keys with a more chordal and pensive style — but no less exploratory or melodic. “His musicianship was off the charts,” bassist Michael Bisio, another frequent collaborator, tells WRTI. “He was absolutely one of the most underrated musicians, maybe of all time.”

Berger’s most far-reaching achievement, however, was as an educator. Together with his wife, vocalist Ingrid Sertso, and Coleman, he co-founded the Creative Music Studio, producing workshops and concerts throughout the Woodstock area before purchasing a resort property in the Catskill foothills. CMS, which Berger served as longtime director, focuses on teaching improvising musicians to develop their own aesthetics, and to draw and mesh ideas from across genres, traditions, and international borders. From 1972 to 1984, it offered instructional workshops, master classes, multi-week intensives, and hundreds of live performances. In its prime it was considered a premiere school of contemporary creative music.

The organization’s facility in Woodstock, New York closed in 1984, but CMS survived in the forms of “World Jazz Encounters” workshops held throughout the world; Sertso Recording Studio in Woodstock (which Berger and Sertso founded in 2004); and more than 500 CMS concert recordings that are now archived at Columbia University Library.

Berger also taught at the New School, the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth for many years before reviving CMS in 2013, with Sertso as his co-artistic director. “What Karl and Ingrid created was such a unique place,” says ver Straeten. “It really brought together people from all over the world, created such a brotherhood and sisterhood. Karl was incredibly encouraging to everyone to just go exploring.”

“It’s a world,” Berger explained of his concept of music in a 2014 interview with Monk Rowe. “And once you go there, you’re in the world of spontaneity, and you’re no longer in the thinking world…. But everybody can go there. Everybody, whether you play or not.”

Karl Hans Berger was born on March 30, 1935, in Heidelberg, Germany. He began playing classical piano when he was 10, though encountering a live jam session by American musicians at age 14 redirected his interests.

In his twenties he landed a gig as house pianist at Heidelberg’s Club 54, where he got lessons in modern jazz from American soldiers. “The surrounding Army and Air Force stations had all bands,” he told Rowe. “In those bands played a few jazz musicians who later became pretty well known, such as Cedar Walton, or Lex Humphries, and Don Ellis. And they would all come to that club … and we would be playing every night ‘til five in the morning.”

After earning a PhD in musicology from the University of Berlin in 1963, Berger played with the likes of multi-reedist Eric Dolphy and saxophonist Steve Lacy before moving to Paris in 1965. After settling in New York with Sertso in 1966, he became a key figure in the avant-garde music scene, working behind Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Carla Bley, and John McLaughlin. He also built his own career as a leader in earnest, putting together multiple ensembles in both the US and Europe.