All posts tagged: gleaming

Hallé/Chauhan/Helseth review – Muhly paints doom with Helseth’s gleaming trumpet | Classical music

Hallé/Chauhan/Helseth review – Muhly paints doom with Helseth’s gleaming trumpet | Classical music

Audiences can be fickle. The Hallé’s latest programme featured one of the world’s most celebrated trumpeters, a UK premiere from one of the world’s most high-profile living composers, and one of this country’s most successful young conductors – yet the Bridgewater Hall yawned with empty seats. Whatever the reasons, those who decided against booking missed an exhilarating evening. It started politely enough, with the rollicking baroquery of Britten’s Courtly Dances from Gloriana. A set of Tudorbethan pastiches, these dances encourage orchestral good behaviour. But conductor Alpesh Chauhan also allowed glimpses of a harsher, modernist world outside in the viciously chirrupping winds and off-kilter repetitions of the central Morris Dance and the gleeful snaps and rattles of the closing Lavolta. A Hallé co-commission, Nico Muhly’s trumpet concerto Doom Painting was composed for Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and inspired by the instrument’s biblical roles. Muhly’s note on the piece points to distinct sections featuring the trumpet as a ceremonial instrument, as an expressive fixture of depictions of the apocalypse, and as a jubilant feature of the …

Jared Kushner’s vision for Gaza as a gleaming port city clashes with reality

Jared Kushner’s vision for Gaza as a gleaming port city clashes with reality

‘No Plan B’ Kushner was optimistic on Thursday, saying “there is no Plan B” beyond his vision and telling world leaders in Davos he wants “New Gaza” to be “a hope, a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place where the people there can thrive and have great employment.” “We think this really gives the Gazan people an opportunity to live their aspirations,” Kushner said, with one slide suggesting that Gaza could have an estimated GDP of “$10bn+” by 2035. The United Nations Office for Project Services says Gaza has more than 60 million tons of rubble, enough to fill nearly 3,000 container ships. That will take over seven years to clear, they say, and then additional time is needed for demining. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly derided the U.N.’s estimate, saying it was “laughable.” “Their ‘estimates’ are just as useless as their broken escalator,” she said, referring to an escalator malfunction when Trump visited the organization’s headquarters in September. There is also some skepticism about whether Israel would …