by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Enlarge Geoff Countryman/Courtesy of the artist Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy. L-R: Nasheet Waits, Vincent Chancey, Luis Bonilla, Marcus Rojas.

Geoff Countryman/Courtesy of the artist Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy. L-R: Nasheet Waits, Vincent Chancey, Luis Bonilla, Marcus Rojas.

The debut from the Captain Black Big Band isn’t the only upcoming brass-heavy jazz album you can preview in full right now on NPR Music. You can also hear all of United Front, the upcoming album from trumpeter (and erstwhile guest-blogger) Dave Douglas. But you won’t find that on the NPR Music First Listen page. That’s because it’s a live album from the 2010 Newport Jazz Festival, where we and WBGO recorded the Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy live in concert. Douglas and co. liked the performance so much that they mastered our recording, and are set to release it as a CD (or digital files) via Greenleaf Records (Douglas’ own label) on April 5. Here’s the (mastered) title track, after the jump:  

If I am permitted a comment, Brass Ecstasy is one of the bands which illustrates the stark difference between studio-recorded jazz and live jazz well. The studio version of “Bowie,” a tribute to the band’s namesake, clocks in at 6:27. The live version was 12:28. You need to hear this jazz stuff live, folks! Otherwise, you simply aren’t getting all the information that musicians are trying to tell you. One might also mention that Dave Douglas is celebrating a birthday tomorrow, Thursday, March 24. He’s doing so with Brass Ecstasy at the Village Vanguard in New York. (His standard quintet was recorded there by NPR Music/WBGO in 2009.) There’s a Wall Street Journal piece about it, which says he’s presenting yet unreleased material for that band.

A Jewish lawmaker is asking Minnesota Senate leaders to allow only nondenominational prayers to open sessions, after feeling “highly uncomfortable” when a Baptist pastor repeatedly mentioned Jesus Christ and Christianity in one of the invocations. Democratic Sen. Terri Bonoff says she wants Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch to change the letter submitted to all visiting chaplains to say they are “required,” rather than “requested,” to make prayers nondenominational. “I’m a very religious woman and believe deeply in God,” said Bonoff, of the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka. “We honor God in public and our political discourse, and that’s proper. But in doing a nondenominational prayer we are honoring him without violating the separation of church and state.” Koch said Wednesday she wouldn’t support such a requirement. She said the Senate invites leaders from numerous Christian and non-Christian faith traditions to pray, and notifies them that senators come from a diverse background. “I’m not going to get into the process of sort of editing prayer,” Koch said. Several Jewish senators, all Democrats, are backing Bonoff’s request but she’s also meeting resistance from other Republicans. The GOP gained control of the Senate after November’s election. “I believe we don’t have a right to censor their prayers,” Sen. David Brown, a Republican from Becker, said of visiting chaplains. The prayer that prompted Bonoff’s request was delivered Monday by the Rev. Dennis Campbell of Granite City Baptist Church in St. Cloud, who mentioned Jesus Christ by name three times and made other overt references to Christianity. Campbell later defended the content of his prayer. “There’s nobody that loves the Jews any more than the Christians, so that was not meant as an insult or disrespect,”Campbell said. “Rather, it was a show of respect to Jesus Christ just like our founders showed respect to Jesus Christ and the word of God when they built our Constitution.” It’s not the first time Jewish legislators have taken issue with how prayers are conducted in state Capitol sessions. A decade ago, a handful of state representatives unsuccessfully fought for House guidelines similar to what Bonoff is proposing for the Senate. Rep. Michael Paymar, a Democrat from St. Paul, said he has spent several years outside the House chamber during opening prayers. He said he spoke to Speaker Kurt Zellers after a pastor opened a February session with a Christian prayer that made several Jewish members uncomfortable. Paymar said he’d likely push for further steps if it happens again. “It makes anyone who doesn’t pray through Jesus Christ, or believe in Jesus Christ, it makes them feel like they don’t belong,” said Sen. Ron Latz, a Democrat from St. Louis Park, who is Jewish. “It makes me feel like I don’t belong on the Senate floor to which I was duly elected by my constituents. In a government chamber, I and others should not be made to feel that way.” The Hawaii State Senate in January ended opening prayers altogether out of concern over possible lawsuits on First Amendment grounds.

The Bottom Line
Screen stars Fox and Williams add depth to new Neil LaBute play.

Cast
Matthew Fox, Olivia Williams
Playwright-director
Neil LaBute

LONDON — Compelling performances by Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams as battling siblings make Neil LaBute’s In a Forest Dark and Deep, in its world premiere in London’s West End, more interesting than it really is.

A two-hander in which a secret is revealed slowly pits Williams as Betty, a successful intellectual, against Fox as Bobby, her redneck brother. It gives LaBute, who directs as well, free rein to indulge in attacks from both sides on the other, with Bobby given most of the good, which is to say politically incorrect, lines.

The problem with the play is that during its 105 minutes without an interval, it does not provide sufficient depth of character and relies heavily on the performers to make up for it. Lost star Fox and Williams (The Ghost Writer) do that skilfully, and it is to their credit that interest is sustained in the fate of the pair.

Designer Soutra Gilmour provides a woodsy, book-filled set where Bobby arrives in a rainstorm to answer Betty’s plea for help in emptying a cabin of books and odds and ends before a new tenant moves in.

She is an accomplished teacher with a husband and children, and he is a carpenter twice divorced. Their relationship, however, is clearly abrasive and Bobby derides his sister’s welcome as being the last call she made. It transpires gradually that he was the only one she asked. He drinks beer and comments freely with cheerful vulgarity on the cabin and its contents as Betty reveals more about the previous tenant, a young male student.

Books and magazines prompt Bobby to voice such opinions as anyone who reads the New Yorker must be gay and authors such as Tolstoy and Hemingway are douche bags. The reason Betty has trouble defending herself is made apparent as more information is revealed about the previous tenant and her relationship with him.

This gives Bobby freedom to rant about her behavior as a young woman when she was sexually precocious and he had to put up with the constant gossip of men who’d been with her. There is a faint suggestion of incestuous envy, but LaBute steps away from it.

It’s more that the brother is less intellectual but clings to a moral high ground while the sister is sophisticated but has no moral compass. This theme would have been more absorbing had LaBute better illuminated the characters. The direction of the play might also have been handled more subtly as the clues provided mean that many in the audience will conclude early that it can go only in one way.

Fox makes Bobby lean and threatening, capable of violence and witheringly self-righteous but willing to forgive, and Williams gives the duplicitous Betty an earthy sexiness to go with her wiles that have led her down a very dangerous path. It’s not their fault that in the end, it’s very hard to care.

Venue: Vaudeville Theatre, London (Through June 4)Cast: Matthew Fox, Olivia WilliamsPlaywright-director: Neil LaButeSet designer: Soutra GilmourLighting designer: Mark HendersonSound designer: Fergus O’Hare

March 14, 2011

By Ralph Jennings | IDG News Service

Taiwan’s major semiconductor manufacturers, a crucial link in the global tech supply chain, scrambled on Monday to gauge how their access to raw materials from Japanese suppliers will be affected by the powerful earthquake in Japan. United Microelectronics, ProMOS Technologies and other firms said they were unsure how long existing inventories of wafer stock such as silicon would last and how disruptions in transportation or power following the magnitude 9.0 quake on Friday will upset supplies. Most can get by for one to two months, analysts believe.[ Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter and InfoWorld Daily podcast. ] “There will be an impact, but we don’t know how big,” said Powerchip Vice President Eric Tang. One of its four wafer material suppliers is in the disaster area of northeast Japan. “We are trying to understand it, but we can’t get through to our suppliers yet.” Japan supplies an estimated 50 percent of raw 12-inch wafers and 30 percent of raw eight-inch wafers to Taiwan. Any halt in supplies would likely raise prices paid by semiconductor customers such as Apple and ultimately by buyers of PCs, smartphones, and electronic gadgetry. “Whether it affects the end user depends on whether you’re talking about items of necessity,” said Chen Hung-yi, a semiconductor analyst with Taishin Securities in Taipei. “Prices would definitely be adjusted, but for things that are less necessary, the public level’s of acceptance would be lower.” Many firms said they opened business on Monday with meetings to get a grip on the effects of Japan’s quake. United Microelectronics was doing an internal assessment of likely consequences and had not ruled out a price rise despite having “adequate supplies” at the moment, a spokesman said. ProMOS said it could get raw materials from Japan, for now, as its vendors are spread out around the country. Longer-term supplies are less certain. But once power and transportation systems are back to normal, semiconductor makers will see little long-term impact, analysts said, as a nation as modern as Japan should be able to recover those systems within two months. Not all manufacturers are worried. “Raw material-wise, we are in good shape,” said Elizabeth Sun, acting spokeswoman for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry. It can get by without a supply hitch for 30 days. “I don’t think this will be a problem for TSMC. In 30 days transportation will come back up.” Taiwan’s top smartphone designer High-Tech Computer (HTC), a buyer of semiconductors, said its supply chain and distribution channels are unaffected, but said it was keeping a wary eye on the future. It said it will take “any necessary steps” to keep operations going.

Combined times from all three days of testing at Jerez for the Moto2 class:

Pos

No.

Rider

Bike

Time

Diff

Diff Previous

1

65

Stefan Bradl

Kalex

1:42.697

2

93

Marc Márquez

Suter

1:42.980

0.283

0.283

3

3

Simone Corsi

FTR

1:43.046

0.349

0.066

4

72

Yuki Takahashi

Moriwaki

1:43.338

0.641

0.292

5

12

Thomas Luthi

Suter

1:43.435

0.738

0.097

6

40

Aleix Espargaro

Kalex

1:43.504

0.807

0.069

7

60

Julián Simón

Suter

1:43.542

0.845

0.038

8

45

Scott Redding

Suter

1:43.565

0.868

0.023

9

51

Michele Pirro

Moriwaki

1:43.751

1.054

0.186

10

71

Claudio Corti

Suter

1:43.802

1.105

0.051

11

38

Bradley Smith

Tech 3

1:43.997

1.300

0.195

12

16

Jules Cluzel

Suter

1:44.012

1.315

0.015

13

36

Mika Kallio

Suter

1:44.019

1.322

0.007

14

54

Kenan Sofuoglu

Suter

1:44.189

1.492

0.170

15

4

Randy Krummenacher

Kalex

1:44.203

1.506

0.014

16

76

Max Neukirchner

FTR

1:44.211

1.514

0.008

17

15

Alex De Angelis

Motobi

1:44.340

1.643

0.129

18

77

Dominque Aegerter

Suter

1:44.378

1.681

0.038

19

29

Andrea Iannone

Suter

1:44.494

1.797

0.116

20

21

Xavi Forés

Suter

1:44.554

1.857

0.060

21

75

Mattia Pasini

FTR

1:44.570

1.873

0.016

22

34

Esteve Rabat

FTR

1:44.633

1.936

0.063

23

25

Alex Baldolini

Suter

1:44.649

1.952

0.016

24

35

Raffaele de Rosa

Moriwaki

1:44.657

1.960

0.008

25

53

Valentin Debise

FTR

1:44.699

2.002

0.042

26

9

Kenny Noyes

FTR

1:44.717

2.020

0.018

27

13

Anthony West

MZ

1:44.758

2.061

0.041

28

49

Kev Coghlan

FTR

1:44.814

2.117

0.056

29

80

Axel Pons

Kalex

1:44.853

2.156

0.039

30

63

Mike DiMeglio

Tech 3

1:44.884

2.187

0.031

31

68

Yonny Hernandez

FTR

1:44.934

2.237

0.050

32

44

Pol Espargaro

FTR

1:44.948

2.251

0.014

33

19

Xavier Simeon

Tech 3

1:44.983

2.286

0.035

34

14

Ratthapark Wilairot

FTR

1:45.204

2.507

0.221

35

88

Ricky Cardus

Moriwaki

1:45.304

2.607

0.100

36

39

Robertino Pietri

Suter

1:45.592

2.895

0.288

37

64

Santiago Hernández

FTR

1:45.649

2.952

0.057

38

95

Mashel al Naimi

Moriwaki

1:46.506

3.809

0.857