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Arts

She couldn’t stop clicking
Lucy Llewellyn Byard ‘s popular adventure column, ‘What's a girl to do?’ and her various feature articles and photographs have appeared in numerous American publications. Most recently her photograph of the late Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar appeared in The Sunday Times.

“I’ve led a charmed life: I’ve jumped out of an airplane, was head-butted by a shark, learned to fly on a trapeze, tried hang gliding,” says Ms. Byard. “I’ve driven a racecar, slammed a golf ball the length of a fairway, and learned how to stir macrobiotic food in a North-South direction. Amazingly, I’ve lived to write about it.

“Three Christmases ago I left California bound for the Maldives on what was to have been a simple, 9-day location story for Sport Diver Magazine. On the last day there, I decided to come to Sri Lanka for Ayurveda treatment and some shopping.

“Once on the island I fell madly for everything Sri Lankan and stayed. I stayed because I could not stop taking photographs of the children with their giant, black-as-night eyes, of the Buddhist monks with their skin contrasting against their brilliant orange robes, the muscled arms of low-country drummers as they held a beat all night long, the ancient ruins of long ago kings, baby elephants hiding from the scorching sun in shadows cast by the hulk of their mothers, and the island’s pristine beaches.

“Since Sri Lanka is a complex land full of many cultures that I have yet to explore, villages to visit and old people, children, fathers and mothers whose faces will undoubtedly capture my heart, there are many photography collections yet to come. Sri Lanka – A Woman’s View is simply the first.”
For more information, visit www.lionelwendt.com or http://www.whatsagirltodo.net

Shanthi to shine amidst Romantic greats
Shanthi Dias nee Thambar will be the soloist in Rachmaninov’s brilliant Piano Concerto No. 2 at the premiere concert of the Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, October 1 at 7 p.m. at Ladies College Hall.

This will be her seventh appearance as a soloist with the SOSL. The other works in the programme are also by great composers of Romantic music- Verdi’s Prelude to La Traviata and Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony Winter Dreams.

Rachmaninov’s famous Piano Concerto is a dramatic work, of many changing moods. It abounds with lovely expansive melodies and demands both power and delicacy and a wide range of virtuoso playing- Rachmaninov himself was a soloist at the first performance in 1901.

This is Shanthi’s first performance under the baton of Ananda Dabare. She has previously performed with Prof. Earle de Fonseka, Lalanath de Silva, and Prof. Ajit Abeysekera in concertos by Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Schumann and Grieg. The concert will open with the prelude to La Traviata, one of Verdi’s best loved operas.

Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony Winter Dreams is the earliest of his major compositions- it dates from 1866, three years before his Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet. He was 26 when he composed it.

Though the work bears the descriptive title Winter Dreams, it is not really a piece of programme music so much as mood music. It has echoes of Mendelssohn and Schumann whose works Tchaikovsky studied, but the lyrical outpouring and atmosphere of the endless Russian landscape of the slow movement and the waltz in the scherzo are typical of Tchaikovsky as is his setting of an energetic folk song in the fourth. Tickets for the concert are available at Titus Stores, Liberty Plaza and from the SOSL office, tel. 2682033.

Oh! that city of jazz and fun
The BBC reporting the Katrina disaster from New Orleans lamented the harsh cacophony of the helicopters hovering over rather than the racy sounds of jazz that usually enriched the city's environs.

Jazz and New Orleans are inseparable indeed! Jazz was born there early last century. Conceived and nurtured by black musicians it was a hybrid of American-African and European forms as ragtime, spirituals, marches and even opera, syncopated and deftly improvised. This was the marvellous gift New Orleans bestowed on America which became such a powerful cultural influence.

One of the greatest jazz musicians of all, Louis Armstrong, was also born there. Nicknamed "Satchmo" (short for 'satchel mouth') he helped change the face of jazz music. Duke Ellington was the other jazz deity.

The city was also home to two famous American writers, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. The latter set his play, the shocking masterpiece, "A Streetcar Named Desire" in New Orleans. Marlon Brando won his first Oscar nomination as best actor for his role in the movie version that followed.
New Orleans was a city of fun, frolic and charm. The Mardi Gras parade, the jazz festivals, the exciting cuisine and the delights of the French quarter were all irresistible. A place to forget your cares. Its sobriquet, the "Big Easy" says it all.

All that has been blasted away in a single day turning it into a wrecked ghost city. One remembers with nostalgia the song "Do you know what it Means to Miss New Orleans?" the jazz standard immortalized by Satchmo himself. Miss? Alas! swept away! Almost. Said President Bush: There's no way to think of America without New Orleans.

This great city will rise again". He promised billions of dollars to rebuild the city. But it is hoped that Big Easy would not rise up to be garishly modern, but preserve its pristine charm, its soul, so to say. Let those "Saints Go Marching In" and paint their beloved town red, with their brass bands and all, the song, another Satchmo perennial, seems to suggest. -Asoka Weerakoon

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