Comments on: Bread and also Puppet https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/ The official website of the New York-based composer Nico Muhly. Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:10:59 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.5 By: Gwen H https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8966 Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:10:59 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8966 Oh gosh. I just imploded. Those excerpts are amazing.

]]> By: karin cope https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8937 Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:28:52 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8937 oops dumb–sorry about all those comments–I thought my internet connection crashed again.

]]> By: karin cope https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8936 Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:28:09 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8936 Hey Nico,

Been enjoying your rants and snippets of sound and observations and recipes. Keep it all coming! I figured I owed you a bit in return, for making much of a small thing that appeared here–the ginger syrup. I’ve gone mad with it–see July 3 entry of website above.

]]> By: mary alice https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8895 Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:17:47 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8895 oops, now I see that you knew it was Captain Kidd; did you mean by citation the collection it came from? I think it was the Social Harp and I’ll have to check the author (Peter knows) at home.

]]> By: mary alice https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8894 Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:16:09 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8894 Hey Nico
the song was Captain Kidd and one year Peter and I got to sing a duet in front of the many thousands gathered as part of the pageant: it was Chickens in the Garden from the Waterson family in England. We lived at Bread and Puppet from Oct. till Feb. with Trudi Cohen and John Bell. To be in the sugar bush and the pine forest in the winter was something. We ate schmaltz with Peter S. and snapps, sang shape note and gospel quartets with Trudi and John at breakfast, lunch and dinner: good food.

]]> By: frank https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8892 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:14:20 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8892 re right that , at the end of each day’s events….thousands of people waiting in line for a slice of whole grain bread and a schmear of aioli, the Bread and Puppet sacrament, the wacky, exuberant, inventive circus …it was the pageant that you really miss, the pageant that made out of the simplistic, heartfelt slogans in the woodland shrines something truly sublime. It was visual theater on a scale that didn’t exist anywhere else, built, as you say, on silence, but also on an amazing theatrical exuberance and the use of time as a dramatic element. There in the infield were the peasants or workers or farmers, depending on that year’s script, moon-faced, huddled in little huts, over the course of an hour, menaced by snarling, prancing gorillas, or some other dramatization of the horrible demons of wall street or the military. Finally, the ogre du jour was wheeled in, a sixty foot tall puppet capitalist, or overseer or general, towering malevolence. And then, just at dusk, in the corner of your eye, white floating shapes, maybe half a mile distant, resolving into cranes with ten foot wingspreads, slowly, slowly ‘flying’ closer. By the time they arrived, wings held aloft by running figures in white, the giant effigy was engulfed in flames. It was transcendent. You're right, keep it in memory. ………Only better if we had brought along a shaker of tequila with your new syrup.]]> You got the smell right. Eau de Woodstock …..grass trampled and rotting in the mud, unwashed (hairy) bodies. And I think you’re right that , at the end of each day’s events….thousands of people waiting in line for a slice of whole grain bread and a schmear of aioli, the Bread and Puppet sacrament, the wacky, exuberant, inventive circus …it was the pageant that you really miss, the pageant that made out of the simplistic, heartfelt slogans in the woodland shrines something truly sublime. It was visual theater on a scale that didn’t exist anywhere else, built, as you say, on silence, but also on an amazing theatrical exuberance and the use of time as a dramatic element.
There in the infield were the peasants or workers or farmers, depending on that year’s script, moon-faced, huddled in little huts, over the course of an hour, menaced by snarling, prancing gorillas, or some other dramatization of the horrible demons of wall street or the military. Finally, the ogre du jour was wheeled in, a sixty foot tall puppet capitalist, or overseer or general, towering malevolence. And then, just at dusk, in the corner of your eye, white floating shapes, maybe half a mile distant, resolving into cranes with ten foot wingspreads, slowly, slowly ‘flying’ closer. By the time they arrived, wings held aloft by running figures in white, the giant effigy was engulfed in flames. It was transcendent. You’re right, keep it in memory.

………Only better if we had brought along a shaker of tequila with your new syrup.

]]> By: Grrg https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8887 Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:52:26 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8887 Big hands, you say? You want big hands? Surely what you want is Mme. Jessye Norman with The Biggest Hands in a Lion King Butoh Easter Island Extravaganza.

Also I wrote this thing about vibrato in minimalism this one time. (The vibrato part is at the end.)

]]> By: chris https://nicomuhly.com/news/2009/bread-and-also-puppet/comment-page-1/#comment-8886 Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:15:16 +0000 http://nicomuhly.com/?p=1151#comment-8886 Ok, I read this blog too much… this I know from the fact that I am the first comment. But, I’m really glad you mentioned the match girl passion. It essential ended my entire life when I first heard it on the Carnegie Hall site a few months ago… and now I’m buying that recorded version which I – didn’t – even -KnOw – EXISTED!!! .. phew, I’m excited.

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