Word: instrument
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most Americans think of the Swatch as a trendy timepiece that was embraced by everyone from K Mart shoppers to the owners of SoHo galleries. But in its country of origin, Switzerland, the Swatch represents nothing less than an amazing instrument of industrial rejuvenation. Before it came along, the Japanese had more or less usurped the Swiss as the heavyweight champions of the watch business by substituting their cheap and reliable digital technology for Switzerland's legendary craftsmanship. The question now is whether that industrial formula can work for -- of all things -- automobiles...
...requiring that the listener decipher the thematic "content" of each phrase, "Surrendering to the Stream" depends for its success primarily on its purely aural beauty. Commencing with a lone low cello note, the piece progresses to reveal two different motifs, one embodied in the romantic solos played by each instrument, the other rousing and dramatic. Although the work seems slightly too long, its musical characterizations are quite memorable and the lyric sections are especially beautiful...
Consider Evelyn Glennie, a small, vivacious Scotswoman who has been "profoundly deaf" since she was 12. Glennie is a full-time percussion soloist -- the only one in the classical field -- and one of today's brightest young stars on any instrument. "People have the wrong idea about deafness," says Glennie, 28, currently in the midst of an American concert tour that is taking her to Cincinnati, Washington and Cleveland. "They think you live in a world of total silence, but that isn't the way it works...
Sharp-eyed and keen, Glennie reads lips so fluently that an interlocutor would never know she cannot hear. In performance she watches the conductor and orchestra with a fierce intensity, picking up visual cues and bounding from instrument to instrument with the grace of a natural athlete. She often gets a workout: Dominic Muldowney's astringent Concerto for Percussion, subtitled Figure in a Landscape, which she performed with the Cincinnati Symphony late last month, employs cymbals, marimba, Japanese bells, a pair of bongos, two congas, a vibraphone, four small drums, four wood blocks and several boobams, which are tuned cylindrical...
...light. He stands in a relaxed position, head bent downward as if contemplating his costume of lights. His head directs attention towards the ground where the wires become one, flowing into a socket and then in to the corner of the photograph. The man in the picture is an instrument in the circuit; he provides the framework and carries the wires to light the tiny bulbs. While simultaneously, the light creates him; he would not be visible without the illumination...