Letters: One-way ticket to Cass County

Confused (not really) after reading about Don Henley [“Solo Flight,” Sept. 20 in Arts & Books, and “He Soars Even Without the Eagles,” Oct. 12 in Calendar].

I play guitar and write country rock, so I’ve got my whole foot in that water. But I bought the new Henley album, “Cass County,” and I challenge any one of you critics to sit down, track by track, and break down this boring piece of tripe. Are you seriously trying to tell us this is quality work?

The reason this record is No. 1 (whatever that means anymore) on the country charts is that the baby boomer generation still buys hope and hardware; that means CDs. Period.

I’m here waitin’. Bring a copy of “Cass” with you. I threw mine out the window after fast-forwarding through it on the way home from Amoeba.

Hal West

Los Angeles

The many sides of Ol’ Blue Eyes

Susan King’s “Remembering Sinatra at 100” [Oct. 11, Calendar] was right on.

He was, is and will always be an icon.

As a dancer in the film “Can-Can,” I saw the many sides of him. There was the Sinatra that got a female extra fired when she purposely bumped into him as he moved through a nightclub scene.

I saw another side of him 10 years later. I was talking with a lady in a wheelchair who had a photo of Sinatra on her mantel. She and her husband were dining in Palm Springs when in walked Sinatra. He stopped at her table and asked if she had been in an auto accident. She explained that she had a severe case of multiple sclerosis. He then invited her and her husband to Las Vegas for his opening that week, and he paid all the expenses.

Many people I met in the Soviet Union told me they had learned to speak English from listening to Sinatra sing. His phrasing was so clear and his soul so deep.

Barbara DeKovner-Mayer

Encino

A rethink on arts funding, please

In response to “Bleak Funding Picture for Arts Groups” by Mike Boehm [Oct. 13, Calendar]: I bristled reading that a recent DeVos Institute of Arts Management study had suggested yet again that the rich arts organizations should get richer and that art quality should depend on dollar quantity. Though my 25 years as a grant writer for small, ethnically rooted, artist-run organizations has felt like a Sisyphus-like challenge, their creative works, community building and personal healing have been uplifting.

After all, where are sophisticated performing and exhibition works conceived and developed? In those “weak” organizations the study advocates defunding. Thank you for reigniting this debate.

Susan Braig

Altadena

Supertitles sorely missed

I’d agree that Abigail Fischer was luminously inspiring as the lead in the REDCAT presentation of “Song From the Uproar” [“Ups, Downs and Hokey Gestures,” Oct. 10, Calendar], but I would add that she was undercut by a staging that was largely incomprehensible unless one had studied the libretto and was familiar with the relatively unknown subject matter.

The director had decided against supertitles to make the singing intelligible, and so it wasn’t. Many of the projected visuals were at best perplexing. I found that it was a struggle to try to make sense of what I heard and what I saw, and so I just closed my eyes and listened to the music, which was beguiling. It reminded me of opera in the U.S. before supertitles were the norm, when so many people either just let the music wash over them or “did their homework,” as one soprano instructed me, by studying the libretto in advance or at the performance.

But the current norm of opera performance deems audience comprehension of importance, and it realizes that a work must be accessible and enjoyable to that audience without prior study. By that norm, the production was deficient.

Carl Pearlston

Torrance

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An artist by any other name

Although it’s worthwhile to explore the tension between guest curators and the value of art [“Brush With Conflict or Stroke of Genius?” Oct. 10, Calendar], it would have had better effect if you had chosen a show with a less worthy painter. Lawren Harris isn’t just “famed in his [Canadian] homeland.” As a Group of Seven painter, his work is historic and iconic. Article author Mike Boehm scratched the surface of Harris’ legacy in a way that served only to bolster the thesis. Good read, though.

Jasmin Tuffaha

Los Angeles

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If Georgia O’Keeffe and Thomas Hart Benton were one person, he or she would paint just like Harris.

Lynn Leatart

Sherman Oaks