Prague Journal

Thursday, February 24, 2005.

While I was meeting with Staňa at VŠE this morning, US President Bush was in Bratislava meeting with Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic at the Presidential Palace and then Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda at the Government Office. While I am meeting with Eva this afternoon, Bush will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at Bratislava Castle. According to Pravda, Laura Bush and Lyudmila Putina will meet at Bratislava Castle and then visit the Primacial Palace in the centre of the city. In the evening, they will tour the Old Town and visit the city museum. And, by the time you read this, the Bushes will have left central Europe to head back to the U.S.
Meanwhile, back at the University of Economics, Staňa and I had a nice chat and talked about her research – she’s in the Informatics (IT) department doing research on learning styles and interactive computer simulations. We had a light lunch at the school cafeteria – lots of traditional Czech dishes to choose from and, of course, beer on tap – before heading back to her office for coffee.
At 2:15, I headed downstairs to Eva’s office, to prepare for our 3:00 interview with Miša, the daughter of the glass-bead company owner in Želežny Brod. Miša is the company’s sales manager, so she filled us in on the company’s strategy, among other things. Eva and I need to have a draft of the case tomorrow, so I’m sure we’ll both be up late transcribing notes and making revisions.
I headed toward the American Embassy at 4:30, arriving only a few minutes late to the 5:00 lecture by Bob Gluck, sponsored by the US Embassy and the Jewish Museum in Prague. The lecture was part of a series on “Jewish Presence in Contemporary Visual Arts,” and Gluck’s presentation was billed as “Layered Histories” in connection with an art exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Had I read the announcement more carefully, I would have know that Mr. Gluck would be talking about “the development of new electronic music interfaces for installation and performance, offering image, sound and video examples…[and] then discuss the evolution of his own work in the multimedia installations “Sounds of a Community” (2001-2002) Gluck is a composer, performer, and educator whose compositions integrate sounds and music from Jewish culture. But the lecture was pretty strange and disjointed and ended with slides and sounds of Gluck’s home-built interactive electronic instruments, including the sensor expanded Turkish saz and shofar (ram’s horn), the multi-sensor “eBoard” and a variety of musical sculptures modeled upon traditional Jewish religious objects. His music has been discussed and reviewed in Hadassah Magazine, Computer Music Journal, Moment, The Forward, Berkshire Eagle, Reconstructionism Today, and in music critic Seth Rogovoy’s “The Essential Klezmer.” He has won grants and awards from Meet the Composer and The Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, is a Reconstructionist Rabbi, Assistant Professor and director of the Electronic Music Studio at the University at Albany, Associate Director at the Electronic Music Foundation, and a concert pianist. I’m afraid Rick and I didn’t sufficiently appreciate his brilliance.
After the lecture, we went to Haveli, the Indian restaurant near the Hradčanská metro station, with Veena, Aaron, and Aditya. It’s interesting to hear the perspectives of three American students in Prague. This would have been a nice end to the day, had I not had so much work to do after I got home. So I was up very late revising Eva and my case study, finally sending her a draft after midnight, at which point I was totally brain dead. So much for this being a relaxing year with no deadlines.

posted by JWinn @ 11:19 PM