The Well i Fell Into

A group of anarchist leftist called "Nada" and led by the terrorist Buenaventura Diaz abducts the American ambassador Richard Poindexter in a brothel in Paris and brings him to a farm in the countryside. The French Minister gives a blank cheque to the violent chief of police Goemond that is assigned to destroy the kidnappers. Then the Minister makes him the scapegoat of the messy situation to protect the State.

Brian Cullman grew up in New York City with a radio glued to his ear and a passport tight in his fist. Over the years, that radio has gotten larger as the world has grown smaller, and he has been a frequent explorer of the world’s hidden musics, from Iran to Senegal, from Morocco to Trinidad, before coming home to his new album The Opposite of Time. There’s a long and tangled history behind the album that belies the ease and naturalness of the music, one that takes in years of bumping into and working with some of the most interesting musicians of the late twentieth and early twenty first century.

GRAMOPHONE RECORDING OF THE YEAR 1996. Scharwenka was one of the most beloved of musical figures during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His Concerto No 4 in F minor, written in 1908, was greeted at its premiere with astonishing enthusiasm from an audience ‘which may, without exaggeration, be said to have included almost every pianist – virtuoso, teacher and student – in Berlin’. Two years later Scharwenka was to give his first performance of the work at a concert in New York. The conductor was Gustav Mahler. Emil Von Sauer’s compositions have suffered from an even greater neglect, wholly unjustifiable, than Scharwenka’s. The E minor Concerto had already gone through eight printings by 1908 when he performed it in Chicago: “It was no matter for astonishment that when the pianist-composer had brought the work to its conclusion a storm of genuine enthusiasm should seep the house from gallery to floor … Mr Sauer represents a school of piano-playing that has all but vanished. The pianists who are now moulding the taste of the public are, one and all, engaged in the questionable task of reproducing with their instruments effects that are orchestral … but in the meantime we are in danger of forgetting the joys of pure pianism. To such joys Mr Sauer has awakened us.” Two first recordings, played by one of the greatest virtuoso pianists today.

You cannot repent without faith, and you cannot have faith without repentance. This is a dilemma. To be able to see the future, the past must first be created. The creation of the past is dependent on the future being lived.