May 3

After Phil Mickelson's scintillating closing round at The Masters, I thought it might be a while before we saw another stretch of golf as good; but this Sunday, at Quail Hollow, Northern Irish phenom Rory McIlroy hit a spectacular groove in one of the best rounds anyone will ever see. Nine pars, eight birdies, an eagle; course record 10-under 62; 16-under for the weekend; started Sunday four back, wound up winning by four; capped it all with a 40-foot birdie on the 18th. "Ridiculous," really, as the golfer said himself; but hardly accidental. Jim Nantz at CBS was quick to point out that Seve, Phil, and Tiger all won on the Tour prior to their 21st birthdays; McIlroy celebrates his 21st on Tuesday, so he's in pretty nice company. He's got a tremendous gift and comes across as a charming young guy, besides; CBS commentators Nick Faldo and David Feherty (a fellow Ulsterman) could barely contain their delight, and fellow golfers Lee Westwood, Padraig Harrington, and Jim Furyk were all waiting to congratulate him as he came off the course. Good going!

   
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/golf/wires/05/02/2070.ap.glf.quail.hollow.3rd.ld.writethru.1041/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/may/03/rory-mcilroy-quail-hollow

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/golf/mcilroys-incredible-62-seals-charlotte-win-1960923.html

http://www.cbssports.com/golf/story/13337026/any-way-you-look-at-it-an-amazing-us-coming-out-party-for-mcilroy

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/sports/golf/03pga.html

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/blog/devil_ball_golf/post/McIlroy-Tway-Kim-pull-off-the-shots-of-the-wee?urn=golf,238241

That thing called star power: operatic tenor Lawrence Brownlee also has it:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jrLkRXVDEhn_g1v-OtixhmSyDV8wD9FDB6G80

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/arts/music/14armida.html

It is good to see the Metropolitan Opera taking on a major, neglected, difficult work such as Rossini's Armida for the first time; and although the lead, Renee Fleming, received somewhat mixed reviews, Anthony Tommasini is perfectly right to say, "Armida belongs at the Met."

Athletes and artists naturally want to announce, "I am here," and I would say that with his bruising video for M.I.A.'s song "Born Free," director Romain Gavras has done just that:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/04/music-video-m-i-a-s-born-free/

Romain Gavras, who is the son of the renowned film-maker Costa-Gavras, and M.I.A., whose father is a Sri Lankan Tamil activist, are entirely serious political artists, and deserve to be treated as such. This video is one of the most powerful pieces of film I have seen in a while. At the link, Eric Henderson suggests two likely cinematic influences -- Peter Watkins's Punishment Park and the ending of Brian De Palma's The Fury -- and let me add a third: the opening sequence of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

Also eminently serious, in his ornery, elusive way, is Mark E. Smith, founder and only constant member of the British band The Fall, now at 34 years and 28 studio albums. I've got to like, at least conceptually, any artist who admires Wyndham Lewis and who named his outfit after a Camus novel (which, by the way, happens to be one of the greatest works of fiction that I have ever read).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/arts/music/02fall.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_%28band%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_%28novel%29

A musician who similarly stuck to his own path is the late French composer Gerard Grisey (1946-1998), whose whopping big Les Espaces Acoustiques just received its U.S. premiere as a complete work in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed attempts to explain the piece and the genre of "spectral music" that it (maybe) belongs to (Grisey disowned the phrase):

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/05/g%C3%A9rard-griseys-spacetime-epic-recieves-its-us-premiere-at-redcat.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Grisey

The follow-up concert "New Music After Grisey" also sounds extremely interesting. When I was at Yale, I hung out with the new music crowd (as a non-musician, which made me unusual), and attended a number of concerts of this kind which I remember with great pleasure -- specifically an all-nighter by the student ensemble Sheep's Clothing which ended with a greet-the-dawn performance of Terry Riley's In C (and along the way featured an arresting account of the dadaist Kurt Schwitters's spoken Ursonata by Scott McLarty, now a Green Party politician).

I'm enchanted by Tim Bavington's color-based paintings:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/04/art-review-tim-bavington-at-mark-moore-gallery.html

http://www.markmooregallery.com/exhibitions/2010-04-24_tim-bavington/

http://www.timbavington.com/

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/32321/my-brilliant-career-tim-bavington/

I could perhaps display one in this Austrian summerhouse, which was designed for a collector:

http://www.archdaily.com/57876/komic-house-synn-architekten/

Among notables born on this date are political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli, cowboy writer Andy Adams, journalist Jacob Riis, novelists May Sarton, Dodie Smith, Nelida Pinon (Brazil), Tatyana Tolstaya (Russia), and Konstantine Gamsakurdhia (Georgia), poet Yehuda Amichai (Israel), lyricist Betty Comden, playwrights William Inge and August von Kotzebue (Germany), radio dramatist Norman Corwin, pop singers Bing Crosby and Frankie Valli, folk singer Pete Seeger, composer Marcel Dupre, film composer Hugo Friedhofer, film historian Robert Osborne, theatrical producer Richard D'Oyly Carte, boxer Sugar Ray Robinson,  and actors Mary Astor and Beulah Bondi. One of the first scenes to excite me about the possibilities of movie scoring is the incomparable airplane graveyard sequence in The Best Years of Our Lives, acted by Dana Andrews, directed by William Wyler, shot by Gregg Toland, and scored by Hugo Friedhofer. Goosebumps: