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Catchup: Boston
Apr. 27th, 2022 11:30 pmTone Rangers: I left the Women’s Storytelling Festival a bit early on Sunday so I could zip up Chain Bridge Road to Jammin’ Java to see the Tone Rangers, one of my favorite a cappella groups. Since this was their first show in over two years, they focused on familiar songs. I was happy that included “Helen,” “One More Minute,” and (of course) their arrangement of “Wild Thing,” which starts with Gregorian chant. It was a lot of fun and continued the theme of of live entertainment being the best sort.
Boston - Part 1, The Encore: I already wrote about going to the opera on Monday night. On Tuesday, I flew up to Boston. That gave me a chance to check out the changes they’ve made to DCA, which mostly consist of having centralized the security screening so you can go between the piers of Terminals B and C without having to go through security again. While that does open up more shopping and dining options, in the process of doing that they got rid of the mail drop and all of the fee-free ATMs.
My flight (on Jet Blue) was delayed, but that wasn’t a big deal since I didn’t have anything pressing to do Tuesday evening. I took the T to North Station and checked into my hotel, the Citizen M, which is very conveniently located and decidedly modernistic. That evening I went over to the Encore casino to have what proved to be a mediocre dinner and check out the architecture and decor (not all that impressive). I was not impressed by their selection of gambling machines either. Vegas isn’t going to lose any sleep over this as competition.
Boston - Part 2, The Gardner: On Wednesday, I went over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I used to occasionally go to chamber music concerts in the tapestry room there when I was in college, but I hadn’t been back in 40+ years. The main change is that they added a new, modern wing, with temporary exhibits (plus a cafe and the museum shop). For example, one exhibit was of portraits of museum staff and patrons by artist-in-residence Charmaine Wheatley.
There was also an intriguing exhibit of art by Zanele Muholi, a non-binary South African artist.
The main part of the museum is preserved as it was when Gardner lived there. The courtyard is lovely in early springtime,
“The Rape of Europa” by Titian is probably the most famous painting in their collection.
There is also plenty of stained glass.
And tapestries.
I had lunch in their cafe and then, because the weather was nice, walked around the area for a while. In the evening I was off to see The Tannahill Weavers.
Boston - Part 3, The Tannahill Weavers: The excuse for the trip was a concert by the Tannahill Weavers at The Burren, an Irish pub in Somerville. I met up with my friend, Ron, there and we had dinner (fish and chips in my case) before the show started. When I first saw the Tannies live (sometime in the early 1980’s), they were described as ‘young, loud, fast, and good.” They are all of those 40 some odd years later, except for young. And, even there, they do have a new young (ish) piper, Iain MacGillivray, and a young fiddler, Malcolm Bushby. But both Roy Gullan (vocals and guitar) and Phil Smilie (flute, tin whistle, bodhran) are original members.
Anyway, it was a nice lively evening, marred only by the room being too small for people to move very much beyond a toe tap or two. This is not music you can listen to sitting still! I was especially pleased that they did the Stan Rogers song, “The Jeannie C,” as well as their arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne.” Also, they closed with “Johnny Cope” which is one of the songs I associate most closely with them. All in all, an enjoyable evening.
Boston - Part 4, Salem: On Thursday, Ron and I went up to Salem, primarily to go to the Peabody Essex Museum. The weather was miserable - cold and rainy. Since our train got in before the museum opened, we had coffee at a place nearby.
When we got to the museum, they told us we could get right into their special exhibit, The Great Animal Orchestra. We didn’t really know what it was about, but figured we should take advantage of not having a wait. This proved to be an excellent move, as this was one of the best museum exhibits I’ve been to in my life. You sit in a dark room, while animal sounds (recorded in a number of different places, from Alaska to Zimbabwe) play and a screen shows their frequencies and amplitudes. There are brief explanations by Bernie Krause, who recorded the sounds, before each segment. The whole thing is about 100 minutes and I loved every second of it. It mostly reminded me of camping in remote places mixed with night safaris where they turn off the jeep engines and you listen to the night sounds. A particularly dramatic segment included sounds from the same place before and after trees were cut down, showing the impact of even controlled forestry. The whole thing was absolutely incredible and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to experience it.
We went to some of the other exhibits upstairs, starting with Each/Other: Marie Watt and Canupa Hanska Luger. This was a series of mixd media sculptures by two indigenous artists. There was an interesting set of opera costumes by Luger:
Watt had several pieces that focused on textiles, like this collection of blankets:
We also looked through parts of the exhibits of Salem Stories and Japanomania! Japanese Art Goes Global. The latter covered the history of Japanese art and its interaction with the West. I was intrigued by this “edict tablet,” which apparently has to do with a ban on Christianity in 17th century Japan.
After a stop for lunch we went on to On This Ground: Being in Belonging in America. This combines Native American art and American art over 10,000 years. This had a wide range of works. For example, there was a piece titled “Honoring Our Foremothers” by Patrick Dean Hubbell, a contemporary Dine (Navaho) artist, with its obvious links to the American flag:
There’s a very different tone to this early 19th century painting, “The Apotheosis of Washington,” by an artist in Guangzhou, China after an engraving by John James Barralet.
There was a wide range of art and fashion. My tastes run decidedly towards the more modern pieces. To give just one more example, this piece, “Mari Mary” by the contemporary Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, was panted on two Toyota car hoods.
By the time we finished with this exhibit, we were both pretty much museumed out. While there was more stuff we might have liked to see (the PEM is a very large museum), neither of us felt capable of absorbing much more. So we adjourned to the Kakawa Chocolate Haus, next door to the museum. This is a branch of a favorite place of mine in Santa Fe and specializes in historic chocolate, including excellent hot chocolate blends.
We had one more stop to make before returning to the train station. If the weather had been nicer, we’d have walked around Salem more, but we were not going to let mere rain stop us from visiting the extremely silly Bewitched statue. (Never mind that the Salem witch trials were actually in what is now Danvers. They know how to stir up tourist business.)
Once back at North Station, Ron went home while I retrieved my bag and switched to the Hilton at Logan Airport, as I had an early flight in the morning. That flight went smoothly and I had plenty of time to nap before going off to the Kennedy Center for the Michael Tilson Thomas concert I’ve already written about.
I hope not to be so slow on further catchup posts.
Boston - Part 1, The Encore: I already wrote about going to the opera on Monday night. On Tuesday, I flew up to Boston. That gave me a chance to check out the changes they’ve made to DCA, which mostly consist of having centralized the security screening so you can go between the piers of Terminals B and C without having to go through security again. While that does open up more shopping and dining options, in the process of doing that they got rid of the mail drop and all of the fee-free ATMs.
My flight (on Jet Blue) was delayed, but that wasn’t a big deal since I didn’t have anything pressing to do Tuesday evening. I took the T to North Station and checked into my hotel, the Citizen M, which is very conveniently located and decidedly modernistic. That evening I went over to the Encore casino to have what proved to be a mediocre dinner and check out the architecture and decor (not all that impressive). I was not impressed by their selection of gambling machines either. Vegas isn’t going to lose any sleep over this as competition.
Boston - Part 2, The Gardner: On Wednesday, I went over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I used to occasionally go to chamber music concerts in the tapestry room there when I was in college, but I hadn’t been back in 40+ years. The main change is that they added a new, modern wing, with temporary exhibits (plus a cafe and the museum shop). For example, one exhibit was of portraits of museum staff and patrons by artist-in-residence Charmaine Wheatley.
There was also an intriguing exhibit of art by Zanele Muholi, a non-binary South African artist.
The main part of the museum is preserved as it was when Gardner lived there. The courtyard is lovely in early springtime,
“The Rape of Europa” by Titian is probably the most famous painting in their collection.
There is also plenty of stained glass.
And tapestries.
I had lunch in their cafe and then, because the weather was nice, walked around the area for a while. In the evening I was off to see The Tannahill Weavers.
Boston - Part 3, The Tannahill Weavers: The excuse for the trip was a concert by the Tannahill Weavers at The Burren, an Irish pub in Somerville. I met up with my friend, Ron, there and we had dinner (fish and chips in my case) before the show started. When I first saw the Tannies live (sometime in the early 1980’s), they were described as ‘young, loud, fast, and good.” They are all of those 40 some odd years later, except for young. And, even there, they do have a new young (ish) piper, Iain MacGillivray, and a young fiddler, Malcolm Bushby. But both Roy Gullan (vocals and guitar) and Phil Smilie (flute, tin whistle, bodhran) are original members.
Anyway, it was a nice lively evening, marred only by the room being too small for people to move very much beyond a toe tap or two. This is not music you can listen to sitting still! I was especially pleased that they did the Stan Rogers song, “The Jeannie C,” as well as their arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne.” Also, they closed with “Johnny Cope” which is one of the songs I associate most closely with them. All in all, an enjoyable evening.
Boston - Part 4, Salem: On Thursday, Ron and I went up to Salem, primarily to go to the Peabody Essex Museum. The weather was miserable - cold and rainy. Since our train got in before the museum opened, we had coffee at a place nearby.
When we got to the museum, they told us we could get right into their special exhibit, The Great Animal Orchestra. We didn’t really know what it was about, but figured we should take advantage of not having a wait. This proved to be an excellent move, as this was one of the best museum exhibits I’ve been to in my life. You sit in a dark room, while animal sounds (recorded in a number of different places, from Alaska to Zimbabwe) play and a screen shows their frequencies and amplitudes. There are brief explanations by Bernie Krause, who recorded the sounds, before each segment. The whole thing is about 100 minutes and I loved every second of it. It mostly reminded me of camping in remote places mixed with night safaris where they turn off the jeep engines and you listen to the night sounds. A particularly dramatic segment included sounds from the same place before and after trees were cut down, showing the impact of even controlled forestry. The whole thing was absolutely incredible and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to experience it.
We went to some of the other exhibits upstairs, starting with Each/Other: Marie Watt and Canupa Hanska Luger. This was a series of mixd media sculptures by two indigenous artists. There was an interesting set of opera costumes by Luger:
Watt had several pieces that focused on textiles, like this collection of blankets:
We also looked through parts of the exhibits of Salem Stories and Japanomania! Japanese Art Goes Global. The latter covered the history of Japanese art and its interaction with the West. I was intrigued by this “edict tablet,” which apparently has to do with a ban on Christianity in 17th century Japan.
After a stop for lunch we went on to On This Ground: Being in Belonging in America. This combines Native American art and American art over 10,000 years. This had a wide range of works. For example, there was a piece titled “Honoring Our Foremothers” by Patrick Dean Hubbell, a contemporary Dine (Navaho) artist, with its obvious links to the American flag:
There’s a very different tone to this early 19th century painting, “The Apotheosis of Washington,” by an artist in Guangzhou, China after an engraving by John James Barralet.
There was a wide range of art and fashion. My tastes run decidedly towards the more modern pieces. To give just one more example, this piece, “Mari Mary” by the contemporary Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, was panted on two Toyota car hoods.
By the time we finished with this exhibit, we were both pretty much museumed out. While there was more stuff we might have liked to see (the PEM is a very large museum), neither of us felt capable of absorbing much more. So we adjourned to the Kakawa Chocolate Haus, next door to the museum. This is a branch of a favorite place of mine in Santa Fe and specializes in historic chocolate, including excellent hot chocolate blends.
We had one more stop to make before returning to the train station. If the weather had been nicer, we’d have walked around Salem more, but we were not going to let mere rain stop us from visiting the extremely silly Bewitched statue. (Never mind that the Salem witch trials were actually in what is now Danvers. They know how to stir up tourist business.)
Once back at North Station, Ron went home while I retrieved my bag and switched to the Hilton at Logan Airport, as I had an early flight in the morning. That flight went smoothly and I had plenty of time to nap before going off to the Kennedy Center for the Michael Tilson Thomas concert I’ve already written about.
I hope not to be so slow on further catchup posts.
