Attending a new play festival is like celebrating your birthday, or Christmas: these unknown plays are nicely wrapped gifts; you have no idea what’s inside until you open them. With a new play festival, you’re seeing brand new plays that have never been produced, not familiar plays you may have seen elsewhere before. Other than
PHOTO COURTESY Attending a new play festival is like celebrating your birthday, or Christmas: these unknown plays are nicely wrapped gifts; you have no idea what’s inside until you open them. With a new play festival, you’re seeing brand new plays that have never been produced, not familiar plays you may have seen elsewhere before.
Music Review: Robert Paterson and American Modern Ensemble - The Four Seasons
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Jon Sobel, BLOGCRITICS.ORG
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As one of the most celebrated present-day American composers, Robert Paterson does not fear the shadow of a luminous predecessor like Antonio Vivaldi. Paterson s new album
The Four Seasons is the culmination of a 20-year project comprising four song cycles, one for each of our earthly seasons. The prolific composer set texts by well-known poets - Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Carlos Williams, Rita Dove, Billy Collins and others - all on seasonal themes.
A different voice gives life to each cycle, accompanied by the musicians of the composer s own American Modern Ensemble on flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. Paterson is a master at composing and arranging for this lineup. Known as a Pierrot ensemble, it gives a composer a wide range of colors in a compact and economical form
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A few months ago, following the death of an Indian actress in her 20s from kidney failure – allegedly brought on by her ketogenic lifestyle – I wrote a story on the divisive keto diet, which prescribes high-fat, medium-protein and low-carb meals.
The piece outlined the risks involved with eliminating entire food groups for weeks on end, as well as the effects of consuming higher-than-usual quantities of protein and fat. As nutritionist Mitun de Sarkar said at the time: “Eating a higher protein diet could add more stress to the kidneys by raising levels of uric acid.”
Even more alarming was her first-hand experience with a client who followed a social media influencer’s transformational advice. “Followers were told they are allowed to eat slabs of butter to meet their fat needs, plus free-flowing ghee, fried burger patties without the bread and so on. A stage came when my client had zero energy, suffered severe acidity and started losing her hair,” said de Sarka