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Will The Metropolitan Opera Allow the Deaf to Sing?

[UPDATE: September 12, 2023; our ASL Opera Project website is now live! Join us there for new videos, translation updates, and for consultation concerning the right interpretation of Opera in American Sign Language!]

[UPDATE: July 11, 2023.  Janna and I met with the Metropolitan Opera to discuss heightened ASL interpreting for their performances. The meeting was positive, forward-thinking, and hopeful! We will soon update with more information! Here’s the July 11 update!]

My delightful wife Janna Sweenie and I are big lovers of opera. Opera is the pinnacle of all the Performing Arts — Painting, Acting, Voice, Costumes, Lights and Sets — and when put together, in unison, in an exaggerated and elevated performance, the entire world glows and resonates! We have always been dismayed that opera is not often, if ever, interpreted in American Sign Language for the Deaf like all Broadway shows are interpreted. Janna and I are currently working on our “Opera Project” where she will present ASL renderings of famous opera arias. We will place those performances online as proof-of-concept. This is a challenging, but rewarding, and complex academic process of interpretation and adaptation, and implementation.

Here’s my Boles.tv live stream discussion of the Deaf singing at The Met:

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The Star-Mangled Banner: Houston, We Have a National Anthem Problem

We have a national crisis with self-indulgent performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the USA. Our national anthem is being mangled by bad taste and poor singers when presented at the beginning of public sporting events.

What used to be a revered practice with hats off and hands held over hearts has now become a gross performance opportunity for a sub-par singer to take our anthem and mangle the melody in order to “show off” just what a wide-range they do not have.

The problem none of these horrible performers realize is that they cannot sing in tune, they fumble out of key, and they are ruining a closely beloved song that should never really be sung live in public because it is too easy to ruin the song with an awful, cat-strangling, performance.

The effort should not be in the song attempt, but rather in the respect we provide the song by allowing it to be heard plainly and properly as intended.

Continue reading → The Star-Mangled Banner: Houston, We Have a National Anthem Problem

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Oh, Baby, Don’t You Cry: Unless Your Mamma Makes You Mew

What would you think of a mother who purposefully set out to make her 10-month-old baby girl cry — just so she could record the breakdown and publish it on YouTube for the entire world to see?

Would you champion that mother as the prime protector of her offspring?

Or would you instead be bothered by the unnecessary spectacle of a mother exploiting the emotional well-being of her vulnerable baby for entertainment purposes?

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Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck, Live at the White House in 1962

Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck are two of the greatest minds to ever stand and sit in the performance of classic modern Jazz .  In 1962, fate brought them together with President Kennedy, for a cobbled-together performance that has now just recently been rediscovered in the aftermath of Dave Brubeck’s death at 91 years and 364 days in December, 2012, and the result is the instant-wonder:  Bennett & Brubeck — The White House Sessions, Live — 1962!

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Beyonce Fakes Reality Once Again

Beyonce is at it again!  She’s faking reality and pretending that we don’t notice and are not offended by her intentional deceit.  Is this capacity for suspending disbelief part of the DNA of her itinerant celebrity status?  Pretending to really sing the National Anthem at Obama’s second inauguration was but the latest straw breaking our camel back.  Four years ago, we addressed the performance fakery of Yo Yo Ma at Obama’s first inauguration; and the second time around — we’re stuck with No Mo’ Beyonce.

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DR Strings Pure Blues 11-50 Review

I live and love The Blues from the great State of New Jersey, and I confess that in the past, I have not been so kind to DR Strings — made right here in the Garden State in Emerson!  I previously recanted my sad ways, and today, I am delighted to tell you I have finally found The Perfect Blues Guitar string for my ’57 Les Paul:  The “Pure Nickle, Round Wound, DR Pure Blues 11-50.”  I like these strings so much that I plan to use them on all my guitars.

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Amplification Made the Live Theatre the Radio

There was a time in the live theatre when actors did not wear microphones.  Actors were required to develop a strong ability to project their voice in song and dialogue.  It was magnificent to hear a live voice singing with a live orchestra.  Today, the actors wear microphones and, for many Broadway shows, the entire orchestra is artificially amplified because the stringed instruments are playing live from a different floor in the theatre and they watch the conductor via closed-circuit television.

Continue reading → Amplification Made the Live Theatre the Radio