Objectivist Meeting at My House

Happy Spring-Time...

Robert and I will be hosting an Objectivist meeting this Saturday, April 26, starting at 530pm, and having dinner around 630pm. We hold Objectivist study meetings every fourth Saturday of each month. So if you live in south-eastern Michigan, please email me for more information. We'd love to meet you!

Oh, and don’t forget to celebrate Earth Day by purchasing your very own Carbon Debit.

Gottschalk: The Chopin of the Creoles

I recently discovered some sparklingly beautiful piano music, which I first thought was Chopin. I was surprised and delighted to find out the composer was American, born in 1829 in New Orleans. Here is an excerpt from a NY Sun article:

When he died in 1869, Louis Moreau Gottschalk was the most famous musician in the Western Hemisphere. New Orleans's answer to Europe's great virtuosi - the Chopin of the Creoles, as he was called - Gottschalk enjoyed the kind of popularity that today we associate with rock stars. In the smallest towns of the American West, on isolated Caribbean plantations, in war-torn Latin American capitals, listeners turned out by the hundreds and thousands to hear him. Girls passed him notes before concerts, begging him to play their favorite pieces. He gave command performances for President Lincoln and the emperor of Brazil. His compositions, short and sparkling piano pieces that drew heavily on folk rhythms and popular tunes, sold tens of thousands of copies. During the Civil War, his patriotic fantasia "The Union" and his sentimental "meditation," "The Dying Poet," were some of the best-known pieces of music in America.

This is my kind of music – joyous, hopeful and individualistic. Please listen here and read more from Wiki.