Wilfrid

Do you know the name of the bookstore? The only one I can think of in the French Quarter is Faulkner House Books in a narrow passageway off Jackson Square.

Erik J. Larson, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence Billed as a computer scientist, tech entrepreneur and NLP researcher, it comes as no surprise that he also has academic qualifications as a philosopher. This is a very good explanation of why AI (as the project of mimicking human reasoning, not crunching data) faces philosophical problems -- and why it's an act of faith rather than a shrewd hypothesis, that such problems will be overcome by increased computational power or larger quantities of training data. It's not written for a philosophically trained audience, which means some r

I think I have precisely that problem with opera.

Mm, close... But Lloyd Webber doesn't write lyrics and his best tunes were written first by Anthony Newely.

Nice work!

I could have gone to the celebration in Times Square this afternoon if only Lin-Manuel or Laura Benanti or someone had told me it was on. Apparently I should follow musical theater people on Twitter.

Cherry’s Mu again this time trying to pay attention to Ed Blackwell’s percussion.

And that really lame London production of Sunday in the Park which came to Broadway, but the two leads were really weak.

And I saw Elaine Paige and Mark Devalan in Sweeney, NYC Opera in 2004. But the best Sweeney was a promenade production in some old location in South London (was it the Clink?) where the audience was the crowd, walking around and following the action. And then there was A Little Night Music with Juliet Stevenson and Jeremy Irons, NYC Opera 2003.

Yeah I saw that. It followed a similar production of Sweeney Todd with Patti Lupone, I presume from the same direction/production team.* All the players were carrying and playing musical instruments throughout the show. Generally I felt it was an affectation that didn’t work. In the case of Raul, his instrument in Company was the piano, so he was stuck sitting at it for most of the show. When it came to “Being Alive,” he was allowed to stand up, walk to the front of the stage, and sing to us. It was indeed wonderful, but it was the last five minutes. *John Doyle.

Well that was a late night of watching music videos. Just wanted to share some other memories: A UK-based friend and I competed for years to see the most Sondheim shows in production (even if only concert performances). He had to throw in the towel when I saw the belated New York premiere of Saturday Night in 2000. I've seen everything except The Frogs and Bounce/Roadshow. And then there's all those anthology productions like Side by Side with Sondheim which I saw in London or New York, and solo Sondheim shows by Patinkin and Barbara Cook. And Mostly Sondheim at the Du

That’s a great connection.

His age doesn't make it any easier. The supreme composer and lyricist in the American tradition of musical theater. Cole Porter is the nearest challenger, but although Sondheim mastered all of Porter's idioms I find nothing in Porter with the emotional charge of "Losing My Mind," "In Buddy's Eyes," "Not a Day Goes By," or even "Send in the Clowns." Edit to add “Being Alive.” Berlin is the other contender but he seems a lifetime away. Sondheim was also (obviously) a brilliant lyricist for composers like Bernstein and Rodgers. It's less a question of what one will play tonight as