Word: chambers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...installation consists of an anteroom where visitors take off their shoes and socks and a U-shaped main room filled with six tons of talcum powder. A single candle placed around the corner from the entrance provides the only light in the dark, dusty chamber, which is filled with the bitter smell of natural gas. Although the work's title warns of an impending explosion, made plausible given the smell, exposed flame and ankle-deep powder covering the floor, the piece seems unable to provoke anxiety in its visitors. It's just too sexy...
Magma held in the chamber eventually makes its way toward the surface through channels in the overlying rock. As the ascending ooze climbs higher, the pressure on it is dramatically reduced, allowing gases trapped within to bubble out like carbonation in an opened bottle of soda. As this happens, the magma takes on a foamier consistency, increasing its speed and mobility. When this scalding froth rises high enough to make contact with subterranean water, the water flashes into steam, turning the whole hellish mix into a natural pressure cooker. Finally, the explosively pressurized magma blasts out of the earth...
...second Mozart piece, the Violin Concerto in G Major, featured Harvard's own Daniel Stepner. Stepner is in his eleventh year as concertmaster for H&H and is a member of many chamber ensembles in Boston. Once again, the orchestra played with a spare precision that complemented the brilliant music and Stepner's clear, light tone. At times, his tone seemed almost too thin, but his low notes were startlingly dark and rich. The cadenzas began tentatively, though they always progressed into intricate virtuosic passages rich with finely wrought ornamentations. The solo passage in the Adagio movement was especially memorable...
Furthermore, individual scenes in Woyzeck are able to stand alone as poignant and stark meditations. At one point, a white tiled box rises up from the stage to serve as an examination room for Woyzeck's tormenting doctor scientist. This room, which later serves as a gas-chamber for the doomed orderly, stands out in the production. The revolutionary doctor (Will LeBow) delights and disturbs in his twisted dealings with his misbehaving subject Woyzeck...
...comes a darker novel, Cloud Chamber (Scribners; 316 pages; $24). It is a sequel of sorts, though Rayona appears only at the end. She's still 15 and untroubled by romance, still living with her crusty Aunt Ida on the reservation in Montana. Her father turns up in the last chapters with a couple of elderly white ladies who are, surprisingly, his Irish-American mother and his aunt. By this time the novel has traced Rayona's tangled lineage from her great-great-grandmother Rose Mannion, a formidable immigrant from Ireland. The author follows a chain of matrimonial disasters involving...