Category: Emerson

Ridgewood Concert Band : Martha Mooke

Martha Mooke is a pioneer in the field of the electric viola/violin performance who uses her classical music training along with digital effects processing and improvisation to create a unique musical voice.  She has toured internationally as a member of Barbra Streisand’s acclaimed orchestra during the North American 2006 and European 2007 tours and traveled throughout North America with “Star Wars In Concert”. In addition to being a performer and recording artist, she is an award-winning composer and a clinician who introduces students to new concepts of playing and listening.

The Ridgewood Concert Band is excited to be working with Ms. Mooke this season. She will be performing her own composition “X-ING” with the RCB at their upcoming concert in December. This piece was born out of conversations between Ms. Mooke and RCB Music Director Chris Wilhjelm, who had played in various orchestras together over the years. According to Ms. Mooke, the thought of the combination of sound worlds between the electric viola (with electronic processing) and concert band was “incredibly inspiring” and her goal in creating the piece was to make the collaboration “as organic and unique as possible.”

A string soloist and a concert band is not a traditional pairing in music. However, because she plays an electric/amplified string instrument, the usual “audibility handicap”, as Ms. Mooke said, of an acoustic string instrument is removed.

The title “X-ING” was inspired by road signs (i.e. Deer XING, Pedestrian XING). This piece is an “Electric Viola-Concert Band X-ING” with three movements that portray three different “X-ING” concepts: Pegasus (as in winged horse X-ING), X-ING Over and Double X-ING.

Martha Mooke invites the audience to experience the music – not merely listen to it. She said, “If it moves the listener, feel free to respond – a smile, applause, a sigh, a tear, a grin, or even a grimace. A performance is equal parts give and take. The performers feel the vibe of the audience as much as the audience hears the sounds of the performers.”

See Martha perform with the RCB on December 7th

7:30 pm
Prelude Performance by Emerson HS Band

8:00 pm
Ridgewood Concert Band

West Side Presbyterian Church, Ridgewood, NJ

The Emerson Quartet In Concert at West Side Presbyterian Church
Parlance Chamber Concerts
Sunday, November 11 at 4PM, West Side Presbyterian Church, South Monroe St. tickets and Information

www.PARLANCECHAMBERCONCERTS.ORG

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New Year’s Resolutions for Conservatives
David Azerrad January 2, 2012 at 7:11 am
https://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/02/morning-bell-new-years-resolutions-for-conservatives/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
 
Let’s be honest: We all know you’re not really gonna quit smoking, start exercising, and eat more vegetables as of today. As Emerson wryly remarked: “All promise outruns performance.”

The key to keeping your New Year’s resolutions is to make them more realistic. Rather than try to drastically change the way you live, why not start with the more modest goal of changing the way you speak? And what better place to start for conservatives than with America’s Founding principles?

As conservatives continue to rediscover the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, it is important to use words and embrace ideas that are consistent with our Founding principles.

If you’re fond of the term “states’ rights,” have a soft spot for nullification, are tempted by isolationism or are wary of equality, here are four simple resolutions to begin getting right with America’s principles. Once you have these down, you can start correcting your friends and move on to other core concepts.

1. Speak of Federalism, not “States’ Rights”
States don’t have rights. People do.
States have powers. Nowhere in the Constitution are states said to possess rights. Congress has certain powers, clearly enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, and the conservative-favorite Tenth Amendment makes clear that all the other powers are reserved to the states.
Not only is it incorrect to speak of states’ rights, but the expression has more baggage than Samsonite and Louis Vuitton combined. In case you didn’t know, “states’ rights” was the rallying cry of segregationists. Since no right-thinking conservative will keep company with such people, let’s just drop the term states’ rights once and for all.
If you’re concerned about federal encroachments on state sovereignty or the erosion of federalism–as you should be–then speak of federal encroachments on state sovereignty or the erosion of federalism. Or of the need to restore limited constitutional government, reinvigorate local self-government, decentralize power or check the growth of out-of-control government. With so many great formulations to choose from, why weaken the case for liberty by relying on “states’” rights?

2. Resist the Nullification Temptation
Are you unhappy with the constitutional abomination called Obamacare? Do you think that Congress has no power to compel you to purchase health insurance?
Good. Now encourage the repeal of the law or wait and see what mood Justice Anthony Kennedy will be in next June when the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of Obamacare.
But please don’t start talking about nullification as the magical silver bullet that other conservatives somehow overlooked in their efforts to repeal Obamacare (or any other unconstitutional law, for that matter).
Nullification is blatantly unconstitutional. As James Madison pointed out in 1798, 1800 and again during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, individual states do not have the power to unilaterally declare federal legislation unconstitutional. They have the power–in fact, the duty–to challenge laws they deem objectionable, but this must be done within the existing constitutional framework. Let us behold a republican remedy, as Madison would say, to this federal overreach.

3. Isolationism is un-American
Unless you’re describing the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan or the hermit kingdom of North Korea, “isolationism” should be eliminated from conservative foreign policy discussions.
As a nation dedicated to the universal truth of human equality, America simply cannot withdraw from the world and be indifferent to the fate of liberty. American exceptionalism is fundamentally incompatible with isolationism. More so than any other country, we have a duty to stand for liberty.
And no, the Founders were not isolationists. The Heritage Foundation’s Marion Smith has written the definitive refutation of this bogus argument in “The Myth of Isolationism.”
So if we’re not isolationists, does that mean we’re interventionists who want to make the world “safe for democracy“? Of course not. There is a middle ground between naive isolationism and crusading interventionism: a distinctively American foreign policy, anchored in the principles of the Founding, that secures our interests all the while upholding our commitment to liberty–a commitment which need not necessarily translate into military interventions.

4. Equality is not a four-letter word
Seeing how the Left blathers on incessantly about inequality and dreams of a Harrison Bergersonesque America, some conservatives are wary of equality. Yet no word is more central to the American tradition which we uphold than equality.
Equality is the first self-evident truth proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and ours is a country “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” By this, of course, we mean equal natural rights and the equal opportunities afforded by free markets and the rule of law.
The real tragedy of inequality in America is not that some earn more than others–class envy is something that afflicts Europeans, not Americans. Rather, it is that big government breeds what Paul Ryan calls “a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society.”

Let us therefore reclaim the mantle of equality from those who’ve perverted it in the pursuit of equal outcomes.

– David Azerrad is Assistant Director, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics.
https://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/02/morning-bell-new-years-resolutions-for-conservatives/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

>Pascack Valley residents to state: ‘We need our hospital’

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2011  
BY JASON BRAFF
MANAGING EDITOR
PASCACK VALLEY COMMUNITY LIFE

Township of Washington – The 1,000 plus Pascack Valley residents in attendance at the state Health Planning Board’s public hearing to reopen the old Pascack Valley Hospital were loud and clear: they want their hospital back.

“The bottom-line is that this a matter of need and a matter of life and death,” said Emerson Mayor Carlos Colina, one of many that testified to the board on Wednesday, Oct. 19 at Westwood Regional High School.

Politicians, emergency technicians, physicians and residents presented their case for a new hospital in Westwood and shared varying personal stories.

The hearing was held as part of the board’s process to make a recommendation to the state health commissioner to determine whether or not a certificate of need should be granted to Hackensack University Medical Center to reopen the hospital as a 128-bed acute-care facility.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/132675813_We_need_our_hospital.html