In Brief

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Evan Tucker hit the blogging world with a full head of steam last fall, at Bloviating Musically, and then suddenly disappeared. He is back this summer with a new project, in which he plans to blog about the Internet broadcasts of the Proms in London. Go take a look! [American Proms Blog]


• Who would send a classical music critic to cover the opening night of Washington's World Team Tennis franchise? Well, I got to shake Billie Jean King's hand, so I'm happy. [DCist]


• Congratulations to Tim Rutherford-Johnson, who may now be addressed as either Dr. Johnson or Dad. [The Rambler]


• Another Dad, Scott Spiegelberg, gets paterfamilias geek points for knowing that Telly Monster on Sesame Street likes triangles. I got the joke without Scott's hint, of course. He harps on musical toys, which invariably have mistakes or oddnesses that could be prevented simply by hiring a trained musician as a consultant. We were once given a crib keyboard for our son that had five keys, marked A-B-C-D-E, arranged without black keys (strike 1) and that actually played do-re-MI-fa-sol (strike 2). We had to exchange it. [Musical Perceptions]


• Norman Lebrecht has a nice piece on one of my favorite singers, Natalie Dessay. Two things. First, "Dessay and Florez have erased Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti from Fille memory" -- only because they are still alive and/or singing. On disc, I am not so sure Sutherland/Pavarotti will be forgotten anytime soon. Second, Mr. "Amateurs are stealing our thunder," this blogger can at least spell Laurent Pelly correctly. [La Scena Musicale]