November 17th, 2008 admin
This LJ Hutchen flute is significantly different from other brands. This instrument allows young musicians to learn without the frustration that comes with playing a poorly designed product. The materials used throughout the LJ Hutchen flute are simply the best that money can buy. Every instrument is double-bench tested and meets the most stringent level of quality before leaving our facility. LJ Hutchen instruments are an outstanding option for student musicians. Pricing and warranty terms are the best value offered in todays instrument market. Because LJ Hutchen instruments are predominantly used by students, we believe that high quality is not only necessary, but is imperative for successful music education.
LJ Hutchen Silver C Flute with Case - 2 Year Warranty
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November 14th, 2008 admin
No, it’s NOT too early to start thinking of holiday gifts. Believe me, you will be SO incredibly happy if you get your gift shopping done well before the holidays.
Mamma Mia is, to me, the ultimate feel good movie of the year. I saw it three times this summer, and every time I loved it a little more. The critics seem to have forgotten that this is, in fact, supposed to be a musical. Musicals are NOT meant to be like “regular” movies.”
Meryl Streep’s performance was outstanding, hilarious, sweet, fun… and her voice rocks! Pierce Brosnan may not make a career as a singer, but he was wonderful, just as my very favorite actor Colin Firth. But really I loved all the actors and their performances… and Mamma Mia is on my wish list for christmas.
by Ute Mitchell “Phoenix Mommy” 
Mamma Mia! The Movie 
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August 10th, 2008 admin
It’s virtually impossible to approach No Direction Home without a cluster of fixed ideas. Who doesn’t have their own private Dylan? The true excellence of Martin Scorsese’s achievement lies in how his documentary shakes us free of our comfortable assumptions. In the process, it plays out on several levels at once, each taking shape as an unfailingly fascinating narrative. There is, of course, the central story of an individual genius staking out his artistic identity. But along with this Bildungsroman come other threads and contexts: most notably, the role of popular culture in postwar America, art’s self-reliance versus its social responsibilities, and fans’ complicity with the publicity machine in sustaining myths. All of these threads reinforce each other, together weaving the film’s intricate texture.
Scorsese’s 200-plus-minute focus on Dylan’s earliest years allows for a portrayal of unprecedented depth, with multiple angles: a rich composite photo is the result. The main narrative has an epic quality: it moves from Dylan growing up in cold-war Minnesota through Greenwich Village coffeehouses and the Newport Folk Festival, climaxing in the controversial 1966 U.K. tour that crowned a period of unbridled and explosive creativity. In his transition from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, we observe him concocting his impossible-to-describe, unique combination of the topical with the archaic, like an ancient oracle. Scorsese was able to access previously unseen footage from the Dylan archives, including performances, press conferences, and recording sessions. He also uses interviews with Dylan’s friends, ex-friends, and fellow artists, and, intriguingly, with the notoriously reclusive Dylan himself (who looks back to provide glosses on the early years), fusing what could have turned into a tiresome series of digressions and tangents into a powerful whole as enlightening, eccentric, contradictory, and ultimately irreducible as its subject.
Some of the deeply personal bits remain unrevealed, but Dylan’s preternatural self-assurance acquires a slightly self-deprecating, even comic edge via some of his reflective comments. Alongside the arrogance, we see touching moments of the young artist’s reverence for Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash. Joan Baez, in a poignant confessional mood, comes off well, and the late Allen Ginsberg is so seraphically charming he almost steals the show a few times. A crucial throughline is Dylan’s hunger for recognition and ability to shape perceptions so that would be singled out as not just another dime-a-dozen folk singer. It’s illuminating–particularly for those familiar with the artist’s latter-day aloofness on stage–to see his reactions to audience booing in the wake of his “betrayal” in this fuller context. No Direction Home also makes clear–in a way that wasn’t possible in D.A. Pennebaker’s iconic Don’t Look Back–how Dylan’s ability to manipulate his persona always, at its core, protects the urge for expression: Dylan’s ultimate mandate, as an artist, is never to be pinned down. As Scorsese masterfully shows, the myth around Dylan only grows bigger the more we discover about him. –Thomas May
Order the DVD: Bob Dylan No Direction Home now
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