Imaginary

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Haydn’s String Quartets, Opus 20 (“Sun” quartets, 1772), express the composer’s reaction to a strain of strict rationalism in the Enlightenment of his time. He seems to have meant these quartets to express an opening to a freer emotional life, as expressed by a shining sun.

• Quartet No. 28 in E-flat major, Op. 20, No. 1, FHE No. 43, Hob. III:31
• Quartet No. 25 in C major, Op. 20, No. 2, FHE No. 44, Hob. III:32
• Quartet No. 26 in G minor, Op. 20, No. 3, FHE No. 45, Hob. III:33
• Quartet No. 27 in D major, Op. 20, No. 4, FHE No. 46, Hob. III:34
• Quartet No. 23 in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5, FHE No. 47, Hob.III:35.
• Quartet No. 24 in A major, Op. 20, No. 6, FHE No. 48, Hob. III:36

Wes Montgomery played easy-going, straight-ahead jazz guitar. His work creates a sense of core inner goodness, and because it is in ensemble, an acceptance of others. Here are links to many of his albums and, where noted, live performances:

• “Back on Indiana Avenue: The Carroll DeCamp Recordings”
• “The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery”
• “Full House: recorded ‘live’ at Tsubo – Berkeley, California”
• “Just Walkin’”
• “Bumpin’”
• “So Much Guitar”
• “Movin’ Along”
• “Fusion!”
• “The Alternative Wes Montgomery”
• “Fingerpickin’”
• “Movin’ Wes”
• “Montgomeryland”
• “straight, no chaser”
• “Wes Montgomery & The Billy Taylor Trio”
• “Smokin’ at the Half Note”, with the Wynton Kelly Trio
• “smokin’ in seattle live at the PENTHOUSE”, with the Wynton Kelly Trio
• “A Day in the Life”
• Workship in Hamburg, April 28, 1965
• Live in 1965

Accordionist Maciej Zimka has composed several works in which his instrument is paired in a way that many people might consider unusual. If an accordion can pair with a violin, a guitar or a clarinet, we should be able to accept each other, regardless of our differences.

• Sonata for Violin and Accordion (2009)
• Sonata for Accordion and Guitar (2018)
• Out of the Circle (2018), for clarinet and accordion

Albums:

• Rabih Abou-Khalil, “Blue Camel” (1991) (61’), “demonstrates . . . that a fusion between jazz and a musical form from another culture is possible and can work to the advantage of both.”
• Daniel Binelli and Pedro H. da Silva, “Tango Fado Duo” (2018) (53’)
• Paul Green, “A Bissel Rhythm” (2019) (46’), incorporating characteristic Jewish Klezmer sounds and jazz elements
• Lamine Cissokho & Manish Pingle, “New Continents: West African Kora Meets Indian Slide Guitar” (2019) (31’)
• Re/Semblance, “Saath-Saath: An India-China Musical Collaboration” (2021) (108’) – the title means “together-together”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• When the Saints Go Marching In

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

• Naomi Kritzer, Catfishing on CatNet: A Novel (TorTeen, 2019): “From the believable teenage voices to the shockingly effective thriller plot, it swings effortlessly from charming humor to visceral terror, grounding it all in beautiful friendships, budding romance and radical acceptance.”

From the dark side:

• Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Four Treasures of the Sky: A Novel (Flatiron, 2022): “Zhang has trained her gaze on an area of American history that has gone largely unnoticed in westerns, even revisionist ones: the Chinese immigrants who built railroads and worked in mines — only to be met with racist persecution when they tried to assimilate into American life.”
• Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus: The Account of a Minor and Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family (New York Review Books, 2021): “. . . Blum realizes that Netanyahu sees no difference between 1490 and 1940, and that his central insight is that hatred of the Jews is the Jewish birthright.” (Pulitzer Prize winner)

Poetry

From the dark side:

• Edgar Lee Masters, “Harmon Whitney”