Word: canon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Christopher Durang '71 is a playwright of extremes. His plays and musicals combine sophisticated literary allusion and bawdy sexual humor. He parodizes and satirizes such revered institutions as religion, the family, and the literary canon. According to Durang, the only rule in writing is "whatever you write about, you must have a strong reaction to it." Ironically, the one institution Durang seems to have no strong opinion about is his alma mater--Harvard...
...GORDON BENNETT BALLOON RACE is one of the most prestigious contests of its kind and is based on a single rule: the balloon that travels the farthest wins. Following that canon has led many daring pilots over the years to risk their lives, and sometimes to lose them. Tragedy, when it occurs, usually boils down to collision with one of three things: bad weather, bad judgment or bad luck. In 1923 five balloonists were struck by lightning and killed in Europe. But during the 89-year history of this race, no balloon had ever fallen victim to deliberate human aggression...
...articulated by Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past, this ethic dictates that the individual's imaginative re-appropriation of his own past is the best means of cultivating an educated perspective. A liberal education can scarcely aspire to do more. And those who seek to elevate the Western canon by denying racial and ethnic minorities a chance to create their own "usable pasts" do nothing but dishonor its normative implications...
...relies on inventiveness and vision rather than pure razzle-dazzle. Equipped with a degree in classical piano from the Parisian conservatory Lycee Lamartine, which he topped off with a year of jazz studies at Boston's rigorous Berklee College of Music, Terrasson mixes a thorough knowledge of the jazz canon--from Cole Porter to Duke Ellington to Miles Davis--with a rich harmonic sense and a carefully reined iconoclasm. On his debut album, Jacky Terrasson (Blue Note), he squeezes fresh insight and nuance out of fossilized tunes like My Funny Valentine, Bye Bye Blackbird and Porter's I Love Paris...
...Haden, a man with reverence for tradition and impatience with stasis, had already laid down plans for recording an album of sacred songs with Jones, a kind of informal jazz eucharist that has recently been released by Verve as Steal Away. It's not only unique in the jazz canon--two instrumental Olympians playing spirituals, hymns and folk tunes with improvisational brio and numinous respect for sources and traditions--it's also uniquely beautiful. Like all the best sacred music, it is a sensual tribute to the unblemished secrets of the soul...