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The Waynesboro boys and girls track and field teams finished the regular season with a nice showing at the 25th Stan Morgan Invitational.
CARLISLE — The Waynesboro boys and girls track and field teams finished the regular season with a nice showing at the 25th Stan Morgan Invitational.
No less than 14 competitors from Waynesboro set personal records at the invitational in which the boys team finished fourth and the girls team placed sixth.
The Indians, with three top finishes, finished with 52 points. Carlisle won the invitational with 144 points, followed by Lower Dauphin and Gettysburg. James Buchanan finished ninth in the 13-team event.
"I'm really pleased with our overall performance," said Waynesboro head coach Darwin Seiler. "Of course, both Johnnie (Adgers) and Hollister (Rolls) continue to create impressive resumes. This meet sets us up for our postseason."
With the Mid-Penn Conference Championships set for Saturday in Chambersburg, Saturday's invitational served as a nice tuneup for this weekend's meet.
Setting PRs for Waynesboro were Ben Petrie, Johnnie Adgers, Shaquill Smith, Ethan Mankins, Hollister Rolls, Kiki Hodge-Shindledecker, Gini Jacobs, Brooke Smith, Lilly Harnish, Camry Huff, Taylor Davis, Jonathan Daniels, Brittany Hoffman and Mason Benchoff.
Adgers won the long jump and high jump, setting a school record in the long jump with a distance of 22 feet, 5 1/2 inches. He finished the high jump with a top height of 6-1 and was second in the triple jump (44-11 1/2).
Also earning a top finish was Andrew Paterno in his signature event, the shotput. Paterno's winning effort was 50-6 1/2. Paterno placed fifth in the javelin throw, while Smith finished fifth in the 800 meter run. The 3200 relay team of Mankins, Jared Weisbrod, Smith and Abram Moats placed third. Justin Croteau was fourth in the 300 hurdles.
In the girls invitational, Harnish placed second in the long jump and fourth in the triple jump. Hollister Rolls grabbed third-place finishes in the 100 and 300 hurdles, while Carrie Mowen (long jump) and Hodge-Shindledecker (100) placed third as well. Hodge-Shindledecker added a fourth-place finish in the 200.
Rolls set a school record in the 300 with a time of 46.2 seconds.
James Buchanan's Peter Hughey won the 400 meter run in 50.20 seconds.


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Bushnell Outdoor Products, an industry-leader in high performance sports optics and outdoor accessories for more than 60 years, has launched a complete redesign of its Bushnell website, Bushnell.com.
The new Bushnell.com was built with ease of navigation and user experience at the forefront. With sections designed for each enthusiast market and a complete site index at the bottom of each page, Bushnell.com allows users to quickly navigate the site and access content with minimal clicks.
"The new and improved Bushnell.com was designed to deliver a simple yet enhanced user experience," said Aaron Oelger, Bushnell Outdoor Products director of marketing. "We understand the growing importance of our web properties and will continue to invest in providing an optimal user experience while delivering fresh content," added Oelger.
The site brings to life the Bushnell New Laws of Performance campaign, giving visitors an opportunity to learn more about the pledge Bushnell is making to its customers including the new 100 percent money-back Bulletproof Guarantee program.
In addition, the site is mobile-friendly, offering a quality user experience for the growing number of consumers accessing the web with a mobile device or tablet. Integrated with the Bushnell social media channels, users can instantly access the company's Facebook, Twitter or YouTube profiles for the latest content and news from the field.

subset: commoncrawl


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In an all new interview, Basketball Wives star Evelyn Lozada opens up about her relationship with fiance Chad Ochocinco, even revealing their wedding plans (hint- next summer). Evelyn also discusses costar Meeka's lawsuit and her relationship with Jennifer today.
When it comes to her fiance Chad, Evelyn promises his surprising romantic gestures such as having dinner on the beach in a recent episode aren't just for show. "He's very spontaneous. He's like that all the time; it wasn't just for TV," said Evelyn to Miami New Times. As for her wedding plans with Chad, Evelyn wouldn't divulge much details though she did reveal it will take place "definitely next summer." She adds that a newlywed types spin-off show is not out of the question.
Evelyn was also very vocal about Meeka Claxton's lawsuit against Tami Roman for battery. "My honest opinion is that it is ridiculous. I think she is doing it for attention," said Evelyn. "When you sign up for a show, you have to know that everything isn't going to be peaches and cream. Not everyone is going to be BFFs. It's a reality show. Fights are going to happen." Apparently getting sucker punched in the face comes with the territory of doing the show.
And despite her past hangups with Tami, Evelyn makes it clear she is Team Tami. "After Tami and I got over our drama, we genuinely like each other. Our loyalty is with her," she said. As for her friendship with Jennifer Williams, Evelyn reveals all is now well except that Chad and Jennifer are no longer speaking.
"It is awkward for me. We run into each other on South Beach and they don't speak," said Evelyn. "Chad doesn't comment, but the fact we bumped into her one day at the movies on Mother's Day and he didn't speak says a lot without saying anything." As we reported, the reunion show was taped just over a week ago and Evelyn tweeted pictures of the risque Herve Leger dress she wore. Those pics are below!
In other Basketball Wives news, TMZ is reporting Royce Reed suffered a seizure during a charity softball game on Saturday.
Sources reveal that after playing in the game and signing autographs for fans, Royce pulled a hamstring muscle and when she went to go sit down, she passed out.
Once Royce came to, she was surprised to hear she suffered a seizure as she stated she had never experienced one before. The paramedics were called though Royce declined to go to the hospital. The good news is Royce is however feeling fine today and told friends a combination of exhaustion, stress, the heat and her diet caused the episode.
A new episode of Basketball Wives airs tonight on VH1 at 8/7 and a preview clip is below!
Get More: Basketball Wives, Full Episodes, Reality TV Shows
Evelyn in her Herve Leger dress backstage at the reunion
"Back of the dress! I was pretty much naked! Woop!" tweeted Evelyn.


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Upcoming Events:
A CINEMATIC LOVE LETTER Filmed in 1985 and released in 1987, No Picnic tells the story of Macabee Cohen, a failed musician on a quest for an elusive dream girl who may offer him a shot at redemption. Part of the HOWL! Film Festival. Pictured above is David Brisbin. Aug. 25-31. Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 E. 3rd St. at Ave. A. $9. 212-591-0434. Photo by Anne Chauvet.
Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St, www.jewsinamerica.org: Monday Night Film Series Editing America celebrates 20th-century cultural icons appearing in award-winning films, thru Sept. 19.
CBs 313, 313 Bowery, 212-677-0455, www.cbgb.com, Wed., Aug. 24, 8pm: Going Out of Reality Sale - Help Save CBs, give an acoustic song, a poem, a joke, a rant, a short performance or just hang out and let your presence be your protest, $3.
dixon place, 258 Bowery, 212-219-0736: Through Aug. 29-HOT! The 14th Annual NYC Celebration of Queer Culture, annual festival featuring over 100 artists presenting their newest and most challenging work over the course of 8 weeks, call or go to dixonplace.org for more information or for tickets, which run from $10-$15.
Educational Alliance Art School, 197 E. Broadway, bet. Jefferson & Clinton, 212-780-2300 x378, www.edalliance.org/artschool: Wed., Sept. 7, 5:30-7:30pm, Open House - See the studio and art demonstrations, meet teachers, register for a class and get $20 off. Fri., Sept. 19 - Adult art classes begin: welding, photography, ceramics, stone carving, clay sculpture, figure drawing, painting, ink drawing, beginning drawing & watercolor; evening, daytime & weekend classes; $190-$350.
Enchantment, 341 E. 9th St., 212-228-4394, Art in Odd Places, Part of the HOWL Festival, Aug. 21-28, 1-8pm, free, www.artinoddplaces.org.
here arts center, 145 Sixth Ave., 212-868-4444: Through Aug. 21-The American Living Room Festival, featuring six original multi-disciplinary productions developed by resident artists, call or go to www.here.org for more information and schedule, all performances start at 8:30 p.m. and tickets are $10-$15.
HurryDate, 646-435-8264, www.hurrydate.com, Go on lots of real live dates all in one fun night out. Wed., Aug. 17, Falucka, 162 Bleecker St., men ages 24-32, women 21-29; Tues., Aug. 23, XL Lounge, 357 W. 16th St., gay men 21-39; Tues., Aug. 30, Alibi, 116 MacDougal St., Jewish men & women 25-35. Doors open at 7pm, dating starts at 7:30pm. $37, includes drink specials.
NYC Century Bike Tour, www.NYCcentury.org, Sun., Sept. 11: Linking NYCs breathtaking bridges and beautiful parks to its incomparable neighborhoods and famous waterfronts, you will see the worlds greatest city like youve never seen it.
ramakrishnananda center, 96 Ave. B., 646-436-7010, www.ramakrishnanda.com: Sat. - Festival of the Holy Names, live meditative music and chanting as an expression of spiritual devotion, 4 p.m., call ahead. Sat., Aug. 27, 12-4pm, Meditation Workshop - Explore a variety of contemplation and concentration techniques which create the suiting conditions for meditation to occur, pre-register.
take me to the river festival 2005, various locations, 212-533-PARK: Through August-Various events for the whole family including free movie nights, music, amateur boxing and other events, call or go to www.hudsonriverpark.org; through Aug. 26-RIVERFLICKS, free screenings of movies throughout the Summer, including family movies at Sundown on Fridays at Pier 25, and Slacker movies on Wednesday nights at Pier 54, call for schedule, or go to the website.
union square park, Union Square, 212-460-1200: Aug. 17-Summer in the Square finale, featuring music, theater and dance, from 12:30 p.m., free.
Neighborhood Hot Spots & Organizations:
collective unconscious, 279 Church St., 212-254-5277.
the kitchen, 512 W. 19th St., 212-255-5793.
lower manhattan cultural council, 120 Broadway, 212-219-9401.
EAST VILLAGE HISTORY AT HOWL! Alphabet City... III, a new series of monologues based on East Village interviews, spotlights the vital history and present diversity of the Lower East Side. Series of three separate solo performances. Aug. 17-21 and 24-28. Wed. Sat. at 8pm; Sun. at 7pm; Sat. & Sun. at 2 and 4pm. Metropolitan Playhouse, 220 E. 4th St. $15 for one evening, $10 for additional evening, $30 for all 3 in series. 212-995-5302. www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.
A CANDID LOOK AT MOTHERHOOD Part of the New York International Fringe Festival, You Mutha, a one-woman show starring Jennie Fahn, pictured above, is an energetic romp through the gory details of motherhood for anyone who is a mother or has a mother. Fri., Aug 12 Sat., Aug. 27. 8/12 at 5pm; 8/13 at 2:15pm; 8/14 at 7pm; 8/17 at 6pm; 8/20 at 2pm; 8/21 at 8:30pm and 8/27 at 7pm. Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, 2nd Fl. $15. 212-279-4488. www.fringenyc.org.
NEW PLAY AT THE FRINGE FESTIVAL Ponzi Man, premiering at the 9th Annual New York International Fringe Festival, explores the issue of white-collar crime and its life-altering effects on an upper class Jewish family in New Jersey. Pictured above are Jane Purcell Dashow, left, Steven Savona and Marlene Wallace. Sat., Aug 13 at 2:15pm; Wed., Aug. 17 at 6:30pm; Fri., Aug. 19 at 3pm; Mon., Aug 22 at 8:45pm and Sat., Aug. 27 at 9:30pm. Connelly Theatre, 220 E. 4th St. $15. 212-279-4488. www.fringenyc.org.
A SURREAL WEST VILLAGE PERFORMANCE Enjoy a program of five short plays, originally written in French and spanning from 1920-1953, entitled On the Banks of the Surreal. Pictured above are Niae Knight (bottom), Dirk Weiler and Rachel Lu in a scene from The Gas Heart. The Bank Street Theatre, 155 Bank St. Aug. 4 21. Tues. Sat. at 8pm & Sun. at 6pm. $20, $15 students & seniors. www.TheaterMania.com.
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Not many classical pianists maintain blogs where they ruminate on everything from eating a terrible bowl of meatballs while on tour with Joshua Bell to seeing Twilight: New Moon (twice) and hearing strains of a Schubert song.
But then, not many classical pianists are Jeremy Denk. The 42-year-old concert pianist's playful side is apparent on his blog Think Denk, as well as in his music, which until recently consisted mainly of solo recordings for smaller labels. (His album Jeremy Denk Plays Ives, released on his own label, made many critics' Best of the Year lists in 2010.)
Denk's latest album, Ligeti/Beethoven, was recently released on the more mainstream Nonesuch Records label. The masterful performance features selections from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32, along with Gyorgy Ligeti's etudes, for solo piano.
Ligeti's pieces, including Desordre and Automne a Varsovie, are notoriously difficult, Denk tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
"The main thing Ligeti is doing is throwing in different chromatic lines all the time in different voices and then, towards the end, amassing a tremendous amount of sound and making you pound out one more devastating chord after another," Denk says. "Especially after the four minutes of the etude as a whole, you're pretty wiped out mentally, and then you have to create this visceral, destructive force."
Ligeti, a Hungarian composer, is perhaps best known today for his music from Stanley Kubrick's films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. Ligeti's etudes, Denk says, are like explorations of entirely new frontiers on the keyboard.
"Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before, and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never been made before," he says. "But all of it is derived from ideas from earlier piano etudes and his love of the great piano repertoire."
On Automne a Varsovie, for example, Ligeti instructs the pianist to play a note with eight fortes. (Normal piano pieces have at most, maybe three.) Denk recently wrote on his blog:
How to interpret eight fortes? I think maybe I should hurl my whole body at the piano as violently as possible and hope for the best. They would find my bloody corpse weeks later amid the moldy coffee cups, odiferous testament to my devotion to the composer's intent. How would eight be different from seven? Both must be so searingly loud as to be painful, a distinction between degrees of agony: if seven fortes is like being disemboweled by a wolf, then eight is like being disemboweled by a bear.
In addition to dynamics, Ligeti also played with math. His music, Denk says, is filled with infinite mathematical complexities translated into music.
"There are things that begin simply and then with one small branching or one instability, suddenly becomes incredibly complex and wild," he says.
Learning to play the etudes isn't the easiest endeavor. Denk spent four weeks sitting at his piano for seven hours a day, drinking pots of coffee and playing the etudes.
"I did nothing else," he says. "The amount of fingering, the amount of mental focus — Ligeti's deliberately written things that are going to screw with your mind in one way or another. And you have to develop new mental muscles, because he's really fascinated with simultaneous different rhythmic groupings going on, so in a way, you have to divide your body and mind into two parts."
Denk's album is also split in two. He moves swiftly between the descending chromatic madness of Ligeti and Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32, the last piano sonata Beethoven wrote.
"The last Beethoven sonata seems to me [to be] one of the most profound musical journeys to infinity ever made," he says. "The whole piece seems to want to bring us from a present moment into this timeless space where everything is continuous and endless."
Interview Highlights
On Automne a Varsovie
"The idea of the piece is something [Gyorgy] Ligeti was obsessed with late in his life was this lamenting, descending chromatic idea. Descending chromatic lines like that have been used in music for centuries to designate sadness. And there's this way in which this idea becomes so obsessive and destructive and takes over and transforms from something beautiful into something sort of horrible and all-consuming."
On the scores
"The scores, at least some of them, tend to look like undifferentiated streams of data. Like you'd imagine a programming code might look. And it takes a little bit of practice to pick out the important ones. It's like reading a matrix or something. You have to know what he's after. Once you discover the principle behind the etude, the score will look a little more common-sensical, but it takes a little while."
On Ligeti
"He's written music at the edge of the human possibility for performing it. That is, so fast and complex as to be almost impossible to keep track of; dynamics that are incredibly extremely, incredible nuances of voicing — bringing out six different voices at one time, all in descending chromatic tones."
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Jeremy Denk, is an acclaimed classical music pianist who also writes a popular blog about music and his life. The New Yorker music critic, Alex Ross, describes Denk as, quote, "a superb musician who writes with arresting sensitivity and wit," unquote.
Denk has performed with many orchestras and chamber groups and since 2004 has frequently performed with violinist Joshua Bell. Denk's new album is called "Ligeti/Beethoven," and it features a Beethoven sonata and a series of etudes composed by Gyorgy Ligeti in the last decade of his life. He died in 2006.
An etude is a composition that's meant to build the pianist's technical skills. In the liner notes, Denk says, quote, "These etudes celebrate the genre's perversity and repurposes it into wild, unheard-of art, drawing inspiration from the etude's most unpromising attributes: obsession, monotony, ad inifinitum at repetition, mathematical dryness. Ligeti fearlessly redeems them," unquote.
Denk describes some of Ligeti's writing as fiendish. You'll hear why in the crashing descending lines that conclude the sixth etude.
GROSS: Jeremy Denk, welcome to FRESH AIR. So that incredible descending climax that we just heard, it sounds so physical to me. It sounds like the force of gravity expressed through music.
JEREMY DENK: That's good.
GROSS: I just feel this pull, you know, and then this thud at the end. It almost reminds me, I don't usually use analogies like this, but when I throw trash down the trash chute, and you hear it kind of falling down, and then it, you know, hits the ground, it's kind of what it - it's like so physical. Can you talk about just the experience of playing that?
DENK: I mean, it's sort of like trickling down the drain of tonality or something like that.
DENK: And the idea of the piece, I guess, is something Ligeti was obsessed with late in this life, was this lamenting, descending chromatic idea, you know, and descending chromatic lines like are - have been used in music for centuries to, you know, designate sadness. And so - and there's this way in which that idea just becomes so obsessive and destructive and takes over and becomes - transforms from something beautiful into something sort of horrible and all-consuming. That's the idea, anyway.
DENK: It's also very physically difficult, unfortunately, because it's so - he wants ever louder and ever more complicated sounds towards the end, and you're just trying to get this devilish feeling.
GROSS: So technically what is he doing there to make your life difficult?
DENK: What is he doing there? Well, the main thing Ligeti is doing is he's throwing in different chromatic lines all the time in different voices and then, towards the end, of course, amassing a tremendous amount of sound and making you pound out one more devastating chord after another. Especially after the sort of four minutes of the etude as a whole, you know, you're pretty wiped out mentally, and then you have to create this visceral, destructive force.
GROSS: What are these Ligeti etudes that you've just recorded intended to do? Are they intended to be exercises, performance pieces, both?
DENK: Well, they're kind of like explorations of new frontiers, I guess. It's interesting because Ligeti took the piano to places it had never been before and makes demands of the pianist and the mind that had never in a way been made before. But all of it is derived from ideas from earlier piano etudes and his love of the great piano repertoire.
So it's an interesting mix of things. Ligeti was obsessed with chaos theory and fractals, and so part of the etudes is extrapolating these sort of mathematical ideas into music; infinite complexities and things that begin simply and then with one small branching or one little instability suddenly become incredibly complex and wild.
GROSS: So I want to play another excerpt from one of these etudes, and this is from "Vertige," which means vertiginous, dizzy.
DENK: Uh-huh, yeah, this is another chromatic nightmare, just like - yeah.
GROSS: You call this one the most fiendish of them all.
DENK: Yes.
GROSS: Why?
DENK: Well, what he's done is pretty despicable at the beginning.
DENK: He writes a set of - any pianist will tell you. He writes a set of chromatic scales, you know, very fast, and he writes over them legato. And he also writes - so you have to play them super-connected, right, so there's no spaces between the notes. And then he keeps adding different chromatic scales at different time intervals.
So you end up playing like - it's like a million exercises in one thing, you know, like every kind of thirds, fourths, all kind of intervals. Like every little finger-twister you can think of happens in the first page. And then it's all supposed to be incredibly soft, connected, and then he writes - the real mean thing is he writes no pedal, which is like kind of this - you know, you can't even rely on the usual pianist's crutch for doing these sorts of things.
GROSS: In what sense is the pedal a crutch?
DENK: Well, the pedal connects - the pedal allows the string to resound. So when you are unable to connect some complicated set of notes to the next because your fingers are like - it's like playing Twister with your fingers, sort of. So at that moment when you've got the stumping, the chord that you can't quite reach, you put down the pedal for a millisecond, and it will connect what you can't connect with your fingers.
It may be that I relied every so often on a little, hidden pedal in this opening passage to help, even though Ligeti told me not to.
GROSS: So I think what I'd like to do is play that opening passage and then kind of skip ahead a little bit to some of the more bass clef madness that sets in afterwards. So let's hear the very opening.
DENK: Great.
GROSS: So that's the opening that you were describing. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. We're continuing to hear those trebly notes, but they're starting to get louder, and then the left hand starts in and starts rumbling away in opposition. Can you tell us what's going on in that passage?
DENK: Well, that's a wonderful moment, and I guess, you know, Ligeti's written this series of kind of overlapping chromatic scales coming down. And while the scales are coming down, the pianist is creeping ever farther up into the stratosphere of the instrument, right, and you have this great sense of sort of falling and rising at the same time.
And, right? And then as it gets softer and softer, hopefully, and then you get to the very top of the keyboard, and at that moment the bass comes in. And that's such a classic Ligeti thing to go from the very highest register to the very lowest, to kind of span the mind gap between the top and the bottom of the keyboard.
It's a very Beethoven thing, too, actually, to explore these registral extremes, but it's very wicked sounding and very disturbing when the bass comes in.
GROSS: It is disturbing. It's very invasive.
DENK: Yes, it is, and very difficult, also. He writes some very nasty things there for the pianist to do.
GROSS: OK, so this is Jeremy Denk from his new album "Ligeti/Beethoven," and here's more from the Ligeti etude "Vertige."
GROSS: That's Jeremy Denk from his new recording of Ligeti etudes and a Beethoven sonata. So how obsessive do you need to be in order to learn a piece like we just heard?
DENK: Well, I'll tell you, there was a period, I don't know if it was a fun period or a miserable period, and last - maybe a year and a half ago where I was sitting in my apartment for four weeks. I was brewing two pots of coffee a day, and I was practicing maybe seven hours, you know, with a little break in the middle for a walk or some sort of entertainment.
But I did nothing else and put in - I mean, the amount of fingering, the amount of sort of mental focus, you know, and there's - Ligeti's deliberately written things that are going to screw with your mind in one way or another. And you have to develop new muscles, new kind of mental muscles, 'cause he's really fascinated with, you know, simultaneous different rhythmic groupings going on. So in a way, you have to divide your body and mind in two parts.
GROSS: I'm just trying to think about what the sheet music must look like for this. You know, I'm one of the many people that played piano or got piano lessons in elementary school and junior high and then gave it up and so on. So I have like a child's understanding of, like, sheet music. And you show me something really complicated, like this would look, and I would just have no idea what any of it meant, even though I can read simple music, because it gets so complicated.
I mean, how do you even figure out what the meter - you know, what - how much of a beat each note gets when things are so fast, and there's so many notes crowded into each measure? Does that sound like an incredibly stupid thing to ask? I'm sorry, But I really do have like a child's understanding of all of this.
DENK: It's not a stupid thing to ask and actually because it happened that I was following along with the score when we were editing together the record. And I often had trouble finding myself on the musical score, where I was. So somehow I was able to play it, but I wasn't able to follow the music at the same time, if that makes any sense.
The scores do tend to look, some of them especially, look a little like undifferentiated, like, streams of data, you know, like you'd imagine a programming code would look. And it takes a little bit of practice to, you know, pick out the important one. It's sort of like reading the matrix or something from - you know, you have to know what he's after.
And then once you kind of discover the principle behind the etude, the musical score will look a little more commonsensical, but it takes a little while, especially, for example, the first one, "Desordre," where he splits the sort of bar line between the left and right hand, it begins to split like there was a seismic shift, and it was like a crack splitting between the two bar lines.
And then you have to make all sorts of decisions of how you're going to think of the rhythm because Ligeti was obsessed with, like, not really writing in bars or meters but the constantly shifting sense of what the meter is, you know, the pulse. Not the pulse, the pulse is fixed, but the meter is shifting.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is pianist Jeremy Denk. He has a new recording of music by Ligeti and Beethoven. Let's take a short break here, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is pianist Jeremy Denk. He has a new album of music by Ligeti and Beethoven. So, we've heard some of the Ligeti that you play. Let's hear some of the Beethoven. Let me start by asking you why you've grouped these two composers together. What commonality do you find in them?
DENK: There's a lot of different commonalities. One thing is that late Beethoven was so insane in many ways that those - some elements of the last pieces, the whole 19th century couldn't really deal with. And I think only in the mid-20th century do people begin to sort of take up the weird mania of late Beethoven and use it for further explorations.
And I think in some ways the Ligeti etudes can sound like sequels to some of the weirdest moments in late Beethoven, and Ligeti is really obsessed, as I said, with like chaos theory and fractals and these things that are infinitely complex. And almost every one of the etudes is kind of like a little visit to infinity of one kind or another.
And the last Beethoven sonata seems to me one of the most profound sort of musical journeys to infinity ever made. The whole piece seems to want to bring us from sort of a present moment into this timeless space where everything is continuous and endless. So that's kind of the connection between Beethoven's sort of vast infinity and Ligeti's bite-sized bits of infinity.
GROSS: And on a more prosaic level, I think a comparison is that both the Ligeti that we've heard and the Beethoven we're about to hear seem very obsessive about, you know, repeating a certain theme or a pattern in a very tumultuous and demanding way.
DENK: Yeah, Beethoven obsesses about this three-note idea in the first movement, and it becomes kind of a - what they call kind of a fixed obsession, like fixed (unintelligible).
GROSS: An idee fixe?
DENK: Idee fixe, yeah, yeah. And he's so interested in his last works in sort of concision and how much can be said and how little. So this whole first movement is just on those three notes.
GROSS: So let's hear an excerpt of that first movement.
GROSS: So that's my guest Jeremy Denk playing an excerpt of Beethoven's Sonata No. 2 in C Minor, Opus 111 from his new album of music by Ligeti and Beethoven. I have to say listening to that reminds me really of mind on a very bad day, where, you know, like you're just totally obsessed with something, and it won't stop, and just as you think it stops, it's like back again.
DENK: That's true.
GROSS: But it's really just so commanding. You have such an incredible commanding presence at the piano. And no matter how fast and tumultuous the playing is, I feel like every note is so crisp, so delineated, so, like, clearly delineated.
DENK: Oh, that's nice. That's - I hope so. Yeah, that's - in this movement especially, there's a sense that, you know, you really want to pound out the idea with kind of steely fingers. You know, you really want to hear each note as it kind of obsessively climbs in these kind of fugal passages. So I guess I was aiming for that element, yeah, the clarity but also the sort of drive behind the notes.
GROSS: You recently wrote a piece in The New Yorker about the difference - about recording and how if you're a classical musician now, and you're making a record, you're not doing it to make money because the odds are against you. You are probably not going to make any money, but you'll be able to sell it at concerts.
And you talk about how difficult it is to record a piano and record it well. What are some of the problems of recording a piano as opposed to other instruments?
DENK: I was kind of under-educated about, you know, the real, like, nuances of mic placement, but the piano is always decaying, right, so that you always have the beginning of the note, and you have the attack, and then you have this sort of ephemeral singing remainder that comes off of it.
And the balance between those two elements is really delicate. And depending on where you put the mics, the piano can sound completely different, right, and you can capture more bass or more treble. So it's like this really chameleonic situation. And that's a whole other, like, layer of relativism in making a record that's amazing. You're like this is the way I play this piece, but then depending on where he puts the mics, you know, your piece sounds completely different.
In fact in doing the Ligeti, the fourth etude, we changed something, put a little veil between the mics and the piano to be able to create a more veiled sound in that etude. It's like something even more nuanced than being in a concert hall.
GROSS: How willing are you to use digital technology to fix things, to change the length of a pause, to change the beat of something, to edit in different parts of different performances to make a complete performance?
DENK: I'm disturbingly willing to do these things.
DENK: But up to a point. And Adam, my producer, is - you know, always the best thing is to have it just as it is, you know, some great take. And occasionally you feel you really must monkey with a little bit of timing or something that wasn't quite exactly right or something. But the best thing is to have the take there and just put it out.
And a lot of the 111's second movement, for example, is in one continuous take because of the nature of the music. You want it to speak naturally, as you would when you were playing. But sometimes it can be fun when you want to bring out - you know, there are certain times that I forgot to bring out one voice or another, and you're able to voice up one note or another in some of these Ligeti etudes, for example, to reveal some dirty laundry.
DENK: So, you know, it can be fun in a little way.
GROSS: Well, Jeremy Denk, thank you so much for talking with us.
DENK: Thanks, my pleasure.
GROSS: Jeremy Denk's new album is called "Ligeti/Beethoven." Denk writes a popular blog about music and his life. You'll find links to some of his funniest blog posts on our website, freshair.npr.org. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.


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Tropical Update – Humberto Strengthens, Gabrielle Coming Back & Trouble For The Gulf?
We are basically at the climatological peak of the Atlantic Hurricane season. What that means is today and tomorrow are historically the most active time of year when it comes to tropical storms.
This year we have seen 8 named systems. None of those systems have reached hurricane strength. That will most likely change within the next 48 hours. Tropical Storm Humberto off the coast of Africa is expected to gain the distinction of the season's first hurricane. The good news is that Humberto according to the latest models should stay well out the sea and cause no problems for any land area.
The remnants of Tropical Storm Gabrielle have also shown signs of organizing again.In fact the National Hurricane Center has reclassified Gabrielle as a tropical storm. The system is currently in the Atlantic south of Bermuda. The good news is that Gabrielle, part II should pose no threat to any land mass either.
Many tropical forecast models are indicating the possible development of a tropical cyclone in the southwest Gulf of Mexico by this weekend. The Hurricane Center is watching an area of thunderstorms located just east of the Yucatan Peninsula and right now the probability of tropical formation is listed at only 10%. That number is expected to go higher as the system cross the land mass of the Yucatan and emerges into the warm waters of the Bay of Campeche. The good news for coastal residents of the United States the forecast models suggest the system will continue a westerly track that would take the system into the Mexican coast.


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When Metallica heard that guards at Guantanamo Bay were torturing detainees with their music, the thrash-metal pioneers requested the government cease and desist.
Skinny Puppy, which will perform Saturday at the Ritz Ybor, is taking it a step further. The Canadian industrial pioneers are billing the U.S. government for utilizing its songs to break down prisoners in America's war against terror.
"We thought we would invoice them properly, so we hit them with the evil numbers of $666,000," Keyboardist CeVin Key said during a phone call from New Orleans. "We gave them a breakdown of the bill."
According to a guard, who is writing a book about his Guantanamo experience, guards used Skinny Puppy songs on four occasions. "The funny thing is that one of those songs was used on a bootleg," Key said. "What really bothers us is that they played our songs at an intolerable volume for hours on end. The guards would ridicule the detainees when they defecated or urinated themselves. How can there be a torture camp there? It's wrong. We've found out all about this over a year ago and it just ticked us off."
Skinny Puppy, which also includes vocalist Ogre, channeled their anger into creativity. The Guantanamo flap inspired the band to create "The Weapon," which dropped in May.
The album is filled with dense and intense industrial rock. The familiar ominous Skinny Puppy sound is present, but there's also a bit of funkiness and some catchy moments, unlike what the band presented throughout 2011's experimental "Handover." "That was our 'Metal Machine Music," Key said, referring to the late Lou Reed's inscrutable noise record.
Key and Ogre, longtime animal rights activists, are on the road 30 years after their debut album "Back & Forth" was released. The two lone original members of the industrial dance act co-exist peacefully.
"There was a time when that wasn't so," Key said. "We had our rough patches."
During the mid-'90s, the band's constant bickering led to a breakup. However, Ogre and Key, who weren't on speaking terms, ran into each other at a Bauhaus reunion show in Los Angeles in 1998. Ironically enough, the tandem, who were once best of friends, decided to reform Skinny Puppy at the event.
"We were at this incredible show with a band we respected, who were just great live," Key said. "We decided to do it again just like Bauhaus and it's been nothing but positive ever since."
The current Skinny Puppy configuration, which started playing live again in 2000, has been together longer than the initial version.
The band doesn't sound much different than Skinny Puppy did during its salad days. "I think that has something to do with the equipment," Key said. "I remember buying analog synthesizers for about $180 back then. Nobody wanted them during the mid-'80s. Now if you go on Ebay, they're going for about $15,000. They still sound great. It proves that things from the '80s still sound good. Everything is good now. I think more people than ever are hearing our music."
Even prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. "That's the one group of people I would rather not have exposed to our material," Key said. "Especially in the manner they're hearing it. It's just not right."