Museums

A Story And A Song For My Father

Yeah, Another Blogger178 Comments

As many of us know, Sly Stone left this mortal coil early this month, and two days later Brian Wilson joined him in the Great Rock Band In The Sky. Two superb musical minds, and revered figures, gone, just like that. At least they made it into their 80s. Their passings would have been harder to take had they left us while in their primes.

As the masterminds, respectively, of Sly And The Family Stone and The Beach Boys, Sly and Brian helped turn the 1960s into a music wonderland. During that decade, music was vibrantly alive with love and hope and power and innovation. No decade before or since, to my way of thinking, was or has been as sonically diverse and dynamic. I came of age during the 1960s, becoming, among other things, a music junkie, a description that still fits me, though not to the extent it did back then. Those were the days.

I could go on and on about Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, but I don’t mean to focus on them. The idea to meld them into this story, though, came to me on Sunday, June 19, which was Father’s Day in my nation, the USA. They, and their music, were on my mind, as had been the case for a number of days. My father, of course, was on my mind too. Very much so. Many memories about him played in my head, including music-related ones. I’m sure the latter would not have surfaced had I not been thinking about Sly and Brian.

My dad, Hyman Scheinin, lived to the ripe old age of 96, breathing his last on September 1, 2005. He spent the final six and a half years of his life with me and my wife Sandy, and became a dialysis patient about one year after moving in with us. Dialysis is a hard road for anybody to travel, let alone someone in their 90s. But my father bore the burden pretty well, emotionally and physically. Over time, however, his body began to wear out from the strain of three-times-per-week dialysis sessions, and from infections. He died in a hospital bed, with my wife, my brother Richard and myself beside him. It was a sad day, one I thought about a lot on Father’s Day.

Sandy and I did our best to care for my father, and to try and keep his spirits up. Everyone deserves to experience positive things in life, it goes without saying, so we made it a point to get him out of the house for more than his dialysis sessions and his numerous other medical appointments. He went with us to restaurants and art shows, to name two activities. And I would take him on casual drives, just to see what we would see. He almost always had a good time.

And then there were the Friday night jazz concerts at the Philadelphia Museum Of Art, a series populated by established and up-and-coming musicians from the States and elsewhere. The series ran for about 15 years and ended maybe 10 years ago. Being a jazz head, I miss it. My father attended 19 of those shows with us (Sandy and I also went to shows at the museum without him), and felt completely in his element there, probably to his surprise and certainly to ours. We’d arrive early, so as to be able to grab one of the cocktail tables close to the stage area. Out on the town and in a magnificent setting (the museum’s Great Hall), my father was happy as a clam from the moment he sat down.

Growing up, I didn’t think of my father as a music appreciator. He didn’t listen to songs on the radio, didn’t play albums on the family phonograph. And I had little reason to change my viewpoint until those many decades later. I think, now, that the thrill of just being at the museum concerts opened up my father’s ears, made him hungry to truly experience music. And truly experience it he did. His involvement reached a peak in January 2003 at a performance by the quartet led by the then-new-on-the-scene alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón. Zenón is a wonderful musician, adept at various approaches to jazz. He can play softly and melodically, for instance. And, while soloing, he can be ferocious.

In the middle of the show, following a lengthy and intense Zenón solo, the damndest thing happened. Sandy and I couldn’t believe our eyes when my father leaped from his chair, clapping madly in appreciation of Zenón’s mighty efforts. Normally a mild-mannered sort, he was revealing just how deeply into music he could dive. I was duly impressed. No one at the show was enjoying themselves more than the nonagenarian a few feet away from me and Sandy.

It’s fitting for me to conclude this musical story with the title song from Miguel Zenón’s first album, Looking Forward, because the album came out a mere smattering of months before his appearance at the art museum. Undoubtedly, then, he played tunes from it at the concert. Perhaps this song is the one that made my father applaud like there was no tomorrow. Whether it is or not, I tip my hat to Zenón for having brought joy to my father, and to Sly Stone and Brian Wilson for nudging me to write the words on this page.

Europe 2024, Part Two: Brussels

Yeah, Another Blogger145 Comments

In my previous opus I mentioned that the Brussels leg of our recent trip to Europe didn’t turn out anywhere near as wonderfully as my wife Sandy and I had expected. But, shit, that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Life ain’t perfect, that’s for damn sure. Though I’d do anything but complain if it were.

We fully were expecting to dig Brussels, the capital of Belgium, a lot. Advance research had indicated to me there were quite a few museums, parks and neighborhoods worth investigating, and that the chances were good that we’d attend one or two concerts during the four full days of our stay.

Alas, we attended no concerts and didn’t see all that much of the city. Basically, we were thrown off our game. The bad cold that Sandy came down with had plenty to do with that. It bummed both of us out. And the on-and-off rain showers we encountered on several days were not exactly spirits-boosters.

A view of Grand Place.
A street in the old section of Brussels.

In the end, then, our explorations were limited substantially to the old, tourist-thronged, cobblestone-streets section of Brussels, whose hub is Grand Place, an imposing plaza. That old section looks similar to how it did long, long ago, and at times we had fun taking in the sights there. On one of its many narrow streets sits Choco Story museum, a place we’d put near the top of our things-we-want-to-see-in-Brussels list. So, after paying the admission fees, we embarked on a self-guided tour of the museum’s galleries.

Choco Story’s unpretentious layout appealed to me. Its exhibits explain the history of chocolate, a product first developed and enjoyed, as a beverage, by the Mayans and Aztecs. Solid chocolate, a European creation, made its appearance in the 1800s. I found all of this pretty interesting. And I became especially interested when I reached the end of the exhibits. For, lo and behold, I noticed a sign that said a chocolate-making demonstration was about to begin in the room just beyond the sign. Sandy and I wasted little time in sitting down on a bench in that room. Moments later, a chocolatier walked in.

The chocolatier at work.

Speaking in heavily French-accented English — though French, Dutch and German are Belgium’s official languages, I imagine he used English for the benefit of the museum’s largely non-Belgian clientele — the gentleman explained to the 20 or so folks in the audience the processes required to produce solid chocolates. Temperature control plays a big part. And, while talking a mile a minute with wit and confidence, he demonstrated each step of the operation. Voila! At the end of the show everyone lined up and grabbed a praline (the pralines he offered to us had been prepared earlier, to allow them to solidify properly). Belgium is famed for its chocolates. And, I’m pleased to say, the chocolatier’s creations didn’t let his nation down.

Choco Story wasn’t the best of the two museums we visited in Brussels, as it turned out. Not even close. That honor belongs to Musical Instruments Museum, commonly known as MIM. What a place! And not in the old part of town, either. I’d never seen anything like it. From the moment I began touring the premises, I was certain I was in a truly great museum.

Musical Instruments Museum.

Hundreds and hundreds — thousands? — of instruments fill MIM’s several floors of gallery space. They come from every corner of Planet Earth. Most, it seemed to me, date from the 16th to 20th centuries. And two are from 14,000 or more years ago: pierced animal bones used as whistles by our ancient relatives.

MIM’s cornucopia is meant to please more than our eyes. Our ears are blessed at the museum too, because recorded music performed on a goodly percentage of the instruments can be heard by entering designated code numbers on the headset device given to each museum visitor. Simply put, I was blown away. I listened to saxophone pieces, harmonica pieces, sitar pieces, you-name-it pieces. MIM, on its own, is not reason enough to pay a visit to Brussels. But it almost is.

I hate to be remiss. Which is why I’m going to mention one other aspect of the Brussels vacation that agreed with me well. I’m a bit of a beer geek. And, through reading, I’ve known for years that Belgium produces fine beers, most of which (save for beers made by Leffe, Stella Artois and a couple of other breweries) do not find their way to the USA, the nation I call home.

I’m happy to report that I downed delicious brews in Brussels, each of which I’d never heard of before. The majority of them entered my system at Bier Central, a cozy, handsome tavern whose food is very good. More to the point, its beer selection is out of this world. 366 beers, all of them from Belgium! If you’re a beer lover and ever find yourself in Bier Central, I recommend trying, among others, Floreffe Dubbel (made by Brasserie Lefebvre). It put a contented smile on my frigging face.

In conclusion, I regret not seeing more of Brussels than I did, and never getting a feel for the city. I had a good enough time there, though, to consider the visit a reasonably enjoyable one. And, here in the States, I’m now going to make it my mission to try and find some elusive Belgian beers. Cheers, skoal, bottoms up!

Faces

Yeah, Another Blogger166 Comments

A week and a half ago, Philadelphia Museum Of Art opened its arms nice and wide when my wife Sandy and I entered the building. Then, with feeling, it embraced us. “Yeah,” I thought to myself, “this is going to be a good visit.” And it was. How could it not have been? I mean, over the years I’d roamed through PMA’s galleries more than 100 times, coming away invigorated each trip. The museum rocks.

Arriving with no advance plans as to what to see, we took a look at the museum’s website after showing our PMA-membership cards at the admissions counter. Any number of special exhibits listed on the site, ranging from small to large, piqued our interest. An hour and 45 minutes later, we’d toured them all, plus other gallery spaces. Whew! Had we covered too much ground a bit too quickly? Probably, but little matter. In any event, the museum was readying to close at that point, so off we went to retrieve our car in the museum’s parking garage. The visit, though, didn’t fade from my mind.

Sketch of The Potato Eaters, by Vincent Van Gogh. (This image belongs to Philadelphia Museum Of Art)

Faces! I’m still thinking about some of the face-centric artworks I saw at the museum, more so than the landscapes, seascapes, town scenes and city scenes, and abstractions. Maybe that’s because Sandy and I began our trek at a mini exhibit whose centerpiece was a privately owned, seldom-shown-in-public sketch by my favorite artist, Vincent van Gogh. The drawing, from 1885, is a rendition of The Potato Eaters, an oil painting Van Gogh was working on at the time in the Netherlands, the country of his birth. That painting is now generally considered to be one of his most important pieces.

The five folks in the sketch are Dutch farmers, a hard-working family that never had, and undoubtedly never would have, more than the minimum necessities needed to get by. Van Gogh didn’t try to portray them in exacting detail. He wasn’t a precisionist. His intent was to get to the heart and soul of these people. Hell, getting to the heart and soul was his intent in every one of his works, no matter what the subject matter. And he almost always pulled it off. His enormous popularity developed largely for this reason, I think. Posthumously, needless to say, as the general public was unaware of Van Gogh during his lifetime. (Van Gogh moved from the Netherlands to France in 1886, and died there, by his own hand, in 1890.)

Portrait Of James Baldwin, by Beauford Delaney. (This image belongs to Philadelphia Museum Of Art)

On the opposite side of the museum’s ground floor, hundreds of feet away from the Van Gogh sketch, Sandy and I admired a portrait of James Baldwin, the American writer, social activist and deep thinker. Painted by Beauford Delaney, a devoted artist whom success mostly eluded, the work, painted in 1945, depicts Baldwin in his early twenties. It captures him brilliantly, with bold strokes and an expert disregard for photographic-like realism. As a result, Baldwin comes alive on the canvas. Van Gogh would have approved.

Many other faces greeted us from PMA’s gallery walls that day. I’ll comment on only two of them. They are the visages, as some of you will recognize, of myself and my better half. Man, there was no way I was going to let pass the opportunity to snap a photo when I noticed our reflections in a mirror designed by Stephen Burks. The mirror was part of a dazzling exhibit of Burks’ modern interior-design items.

Somewhat amazingly, it is the only picture I took in the museum that day (the other two pix in this story are from the PMA website). That’s because, while at PMA, I had no intention of writing about Sandy’s and my visit and illustrating the story with photos captured by my phone’s camera. I just wasn’t in a reporter-on-the-scene mood. And yet, this essay emerged anyway. Well, all I can say is, “You never frigging know.” Ain’t that the truth!