January 22 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s three-act drama of life in small-town America—and in the theater in which we are all seated—was performed for the first time on this date in 1938 at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama later that same year.
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January 21 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

When Marie Smith Jones died on this date in 2008, the living history of a people and a language died, too. She was 89 and she was the last of the Eyak people, an indigenous group that lived along the Copper River in south-central Alaska.

Smith Jones (above) was also the last native speaker of Eyak, which was once the dominant language from Alaska down along the western coast of Canada, and the death of a language brought global attention to the fact that languages are disappearing at an increasingly rapid rate. Since the start of the century, about one language per year goes extinct with the death of its final native speaker. (There are about 7000 living languages spoken around the world right now, and ethnologists estimate that more than 90% will be extinct by 2050.)
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Climbing the Charts: Tania Stavreva

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Perhaps my accidental double-purchase helped, but probably not. More about that encounter between an artist and listener in a moment …

A new entry appeared on Billboard magazine’s charts this week: pianist Tania Stavreva’s self-produced, independent, debut CD, Rhythmic Movement, which introduced itself at number 8 two days ago. It remains in the top 25 today.

Among her album’s competitors are new CDs from Andrea Bocelli, Björk, Murray Perahia, Renee Fleming, the Vienna Philharmonic, Elvis Presley (!), and Heart (!). The reviews of Ms. Stavreva’s album are in, they are stellar (and this website has been quoted); the record-buying public has followed, and listeners are discovering an important new talent.
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