Santa Barbara Symphony Plays Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess

Laquita Mitchell

Few works by American composers have enjoyed the life of George and Ira Gershwin’s symphony Porgy and Bess, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. 

Controversial from the moment it premiered in 1935, the symphony based on African-American themes and is set on Catfish Row, a poor district of Charleston, South Carolina.

The action swings back and forth across the water as the characters come and go from Catfish Row to Kittiwah, a fictional island off the coast of Charleston.

The Santa Barbara Symphony will play in the Granada Theatre Saturday, May 16, and Sunday, May 17, for its season finale.

The Santa Barbara Choral Society and vocal soloists Laquita Mitchell and Michael Sumuel will join them for the Gershwin symphony.

“Expect to hear the greatest of all seasonal theme songs, the magnificent ‘Summertime,’ rendered with the taste, beauty, and sheer sonic heft that a full orchestra with a chorus can provide,” writes the Santa Barbara Independent.

In addition to Gershwin, there will be two other pieces by American composers: Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 “Romantic” and a world premiere, Arioso for Strings, Oboe, and Percussion by Dan Redfield.

Redfield’s Arioso was composed in response to waiting to board a flight from New York to Los Angeles on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Redfield’s flight was cancelled and he made his way from the airport through a stricken and confused Manhattan in the back seat of a taxi.

The concerts are Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.

http://www.independent.com/news/2015/may/14/sb-symphony-finale-porgy-and-bess/

More Of Bill O’Reilly’s Untruths And Exaggerations Revealed

Keith Olbermann

A segment by ESPN host Keith Olbermann last year sheds some more light on Bill O’Reilly’s questionable claims about himself (starting at about the 2:35 mark in the video).

On November 19th, 2014, Olbermann named the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly as his daily “Worst Person In The World.”   It wasn’t actually because of their political differences.  Instead, it was about O’Reilly’s past claims about his athletic skills that were presented as fact.

On November 17th, O’Reilly had given a radio interview talking about his days as a varsity football player at Marist College.

“We were undefeated our senior year,” O’Reilly told ESPN radio host Dan Le Batard. “That was a pretty good deal.”

But Olbermann had de-bunked that claim as far back as 2005, and showed that Marist did not have a varsity team until 1978 – seven years after O’Reilly graduated.

Le Batard pointed out Olbermann’s claims. “It was varsity football in the sense of that we played Georgetown, Catholic U., Fordham, Manhattan, Iona,” O’Reilly said in his defense.  “So, you know, look. You know what it is, guys, you know what it is.”

O’Reilly made some claims about baseball that Olbermann also corrected.