Mellow evening for Elvis Costello at Out of Space

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Evanston RoundTable, Aug. 6, 2022 Headliner Elvis Costello, the venerable British rocker, played an inspired selection of classics and new material at last night’s Out of Space concert at Canal Shores golf course. Opening with Accidents Will Happen and Green Shirt, both from his 1979 album Armed Forces, Costello then launched into a bevy of newer material before closing out the 90-minute program with rousing versions of two of his most beloved hits, Pump It Up from 1978’s This Year’s Model album and (What’s So Funny Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding (also from Armed Forces); and a beautiful, unadorned version of his classic ballad Alison from the 1977 album My Aim Is True. Crowd stands for headliner Elvis Costello. A sold-out crowd of 5,000 loved it. A highly unscientific and informal sample of attendees turned up about equal numbers of Elvis diehards (“I’ve been seeing him since the 1980s” was a common refrain) and Out of Space fans. Among the latter were James Blesius, who said flat out, “This venue is great.” He recalled seeing the classic rocker Patti Smith at Out of Space last year. “It was terrific, till the rains came and washed out her set.” The weather … Continue reading →

Beethoven splains it all for you

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Evanston RoundTable, Aug. 3, 2022 In one movement of less than 10 minutes the master offers a lifetime of sonorous beauty and worthwhile lessons. Bach and Beethoven are the two giants of classical music, the twin peaks of composition, the K2 and Everest of sonic sensuality. Whether you prefer one or the other depends on your musical sensibility, stylistic preferences and even your mood at the moment. Bach is generally considered more intellectual, more abstract, more complex. “Bach is written for the cathedral,” Yehudi Menuhin said. Baroque polyphony is like that: many voices echoing brilliantly throughout the church. But Bach wrote beautiful simple melodies and Beethoven wrote exuberant fugues. Beethoven might seem paramount. “Widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, Ludwig van Beethoven dominates a period of musical history as no one else before or since,” wrote Britannica.com. Not so fast. “Johann Sebastian Bach has been voted the greatest composer of all time by 174 living composers for BBC Music Magazine’s December 2019 issue.”\ I prefer Brahms myself, the great synthesist of Classical and Romantic styles. But there is plenty to love – a lifetime of great music to absorb, appreciate and even learn from – in the work … Continue reading →

The gift of great teachers

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Evanston RoundTable, July 20, 2022 Be a great teacher yourself. Be a mentor. After spending a glorious gap year walking around London, traveling around England and hitchhiking around Europe, I returned to University of Illinois in Chicago (known then as “Circle” campus) in September 1968. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do, since I’d been out of the classroom so long. But luck was with me: my first class that fall quarter in Early Modern European History was taught by Prof. George Huppert. Huppert was a small, quiet and unassuming man, but as I quickly came to appreciate, a giant of a teacher. He began the first class by pulling down a map of Europe and describing the geopolitical forces – mountains, plains, rivers, oceans and seas – that were paramount. Sweeping his hands across the map as if leading troops, he pronounced, “This is what shaped national destinies.” It was a revelation. I had always loved history – had done a presentation on Greek history when I was in third grade – but this was of another order altogether. Huppert’s pacing, style, erudition and sense of humor were the perfect gateway back to academia. And his slightly accented English and … Continue reading →

Could it happen here?

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Evanston RoundTable, July 6, 2022 Of course. All the more reason to redouble our efforts. When my son Dan was a freshman at Evanston Township High School, I asked him if anything like the then-recent Columbine shootings could happen at ETHS. ‘No Dad,” he said, “Everyone’s got their own group here. They don’t stick out like those two kids at Columbine.” That was reassuring at the time, but now we know better. As much as we hope and pray our city does not experience the same kind of horror that rained down from a rooftop on Highland Park’s July 4th parade, we know anything is possible in today’s America. Mass shootings and gun carnage can happen anywhere, any time – even here. Ignorance, rage and frustration boil up. I have no easy answers, only difficult questions: — How did America become the gun violence capital of the world? In the U.S. there are 393 million firearms in a population of 330 million. That works out to 120.5 firearms per 100 people. Second-highest is Yemen with 52.8. Canada has 34.7, France and Germany 14.6, the U.K. 4.6. Japan has fewer than half of one firearm per 100 people. Perhaps it is … Continue reading →

Goodbye

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Evanston RoundTable, June 22, 2022 “The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today.” – Cole Porter Bill. Billy. Der Bingle, our father affectionately called him. William. Named after our grandfather, William Jay Jacobson. Billy was William Jay Jacobson II, with Roman numerals, like an Egyptian pharaoh or some English king. I remember Bill. I remember as a kid growing up in New Rochelle, N.Y., being terrorized by Giggy, the local bully. When Bill, who was five years older than me, found out he marched me over to Giggy’s house determined to whale the tar out of him if he didn’t desist. Instead of Giggy, his big brother, Donny, answered the door. As I recall Donny looked a lot like Biff in Back to the Future, beefy and thuggish. No matter: Bill threatened to whale the tar out of him if his kid brother didn’t desist. Nevertheless, this kind of fraternal warmth and protectiveness was rare. Most of the time it was me whom Bill terrorized, at least until the differences in our ages no longer mattered. He was, as they say, one in a million, kind of the family wonder. … Continue reading →

Sweet spring

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Evanston RoundTable, June 7, 2022 Like all good things, it’s here and then gone. Enjoy it while you can. But now it’s back, as if winter and summer have agreed, reluctantly, to pull aside the curtain and reintroduce us to this most delicious time of year. Even foreshortened, spring is grand, when nature reveals her most astonishing displays of vernal plenitude. Spring bloomers include a bevy of wonderful plants: lilacs, irises, hyacinths, crocuses, roses, daffodils, narcissus, tulips, bluebells, poppies, peonies, scilla, Lily of the Valley and many more. My favorites are lilacs, those perfumed shrubs thickly dotted with the pale purple-shaded flowers. They’re in bloom only a few weeks, but what a delight to stick your head in and inhale that heavenly scent. “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d/ And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night/ I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring,” wrote Walt Whitman in his great poem about Lincoln’s death. Is there a flower more beautifully immortalized? Now that it’s No Mo No Mow May, lawns have once again resumed their brilliant-green crew cut. Now also is the season to discern and appreciate all shades green, from moss to … Continue reading →

Second chance

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Evanston RoundTable, May 24, 2022 Others have their heaven. This is mine. There is a phrase I recently heard that describes a plant about to die: going over. While I couldn’t confirm the accuracy of the term, nevertheless I have adopted it into my euphemistic lexicon. Is it dying? No, just going over. Aside from the plant world, the phrase has application to the human world, to our demise, going over to a new abode, the next stage of development. Of course, the physical body after death is merely decomposing or cremated, meat for worms, worms for birds, birds pooping our molecular remains onto the green earth to generate new life. Some might find that vision revolting or depressing; I find it nicely pastoral. But I have a better vision: After we go over we are greeted in some nether realm of the hereafter by our family and friends who have predeceased us. Not their physical presence, of course, but some spiritual representation. Can you imagine the joy such a reunion would spark? Perhaps, as they brought us into the corporeal world, our mothers would bring us into the incorporeal world and introduce us to our dearly departed soulmates. Me … Continue reading →

The unsung legacy of Steve Winwood

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Evanston RoundTable, May 12, 2022 Over the last 250 years there have been many musical geniuses, from Bach to McCartney. But none could do all the things he has done. May 12 is Steve Winwood’s 74th birthday, making today the perfect day to celebrate the British music icon’s unique talents as composer, producer, arranger, singer and multi-instrumentalist. But despite his Grammy and Jammy and BMI Icon awards, his three honorary doctorates, his 22 studio albums plus numerous live and best-of compilation recordings and more than 130 songs, many of which are classics, his appearances with musicians ranging from Billy Joel and George Harrison to Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and Prince, his compositional chops and songwriting genius – admit it, you’re thinking: why should I care? Beethoven complained of that kind of neglect, too, at the end of his career, and Bach’s music was ignored for three generations after his death. So let’s rectify your ignorance of Stephen Lawrence Winwood right now! Herewith a number of my favorite compositions that hopefully will give you some appreciation – new or renewed – for his genius. More than half a century ago this was the gateway song that first led me … Continue reading →

Spring has unsprung

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Evanston RoundTable, May 3, 2022 I remember spring. It was several Saturdays ago, blue sky, light breeze, in the 70s. I took myself to the wonderfully named Rocky Miller Park at Northwestern and watched the Wildcats whip Michigan State 4-1 in a surprisingly well played baseball game. So nice. That was it, a one-off. Next day was overcast and after that it got cold again. Winter was pretty mild this year but is making up for it by clawing back what should rightfully be spring. Instead we get an endless succession of these cold, wet, dreary days that (other than on the calendar) don’t qualify as spring and don’t qualify as winter either. We need a new name for it. Maybe wintspring or spriwint. Or my nominee, enoughalready. We’re told (specifically by my wife) that it’s silly to complain about the weather. What’s the point? In 10 weeks we’ll be complaining it’s too hot, and 10 weeks after that too wet, and then too cold, etc. It’s the cycle of midwestern weather. If you want nice weather, move south. Which many people do. She also says that next to climate change, domestic politics, inflation and the war in Ukraine, the … Continue reading →

America the beautiful

Lester Jacobson Posted on by

Evanston RoundTable, April 20, 2022 I have been feeling grateful lately (see this recent column), especially about our home town, Evanston, and our nation. We moved from Skokie to our modest two-story red brick home on Lincolnwood Drive over Memorial Day weekend 1983, which means next year we will celebrate four decades here. We’re not even the oldest residents on our block: three or four other families were here when we arrived, and they’re still here. It has been a kind of heaven. Neighbors come and go, but generally they stay. Our street is a haven for kids. Lincolnwood Elementary School is within easy walking distance, Haven Middle School isn’t much further. Every morning the girls and boys and their parents queue up in front of each other’s homes and troop off together to class. During summer every lawn is a playground. Kids frolic in the sprinklers or kick soccer balls on the parkways or ride their bikes up and down the sidewalks. The annual block party in August (this will be our 43rd) is a riotous and wonderful affair. We are here thanks to our grandparents, who sailed to Ellis Island a century ago. I cannot even begin to … Continue reading →