Grateful Conversations Reading at Second Sunday, October 13, 2019

Second Sunday Poetry Series is an Open Mic poetry show, hosted by Alex M. Frankel, that happens on the second Sunday of every month. Great poets perform their work, sell and sign books, and mingle with audience members and open mic participants. 

Reading from Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology edited by Maja Trochimczyk and Kathi Stafford will take place on October 13th, 2019 at 5pm at The Studio Theatre at St. Denis Building
3433 Cahuenga Blvd West Los Angeles 90068  (Near Universal Studios)

Participants will include Lois P. Jones, Kathi Stafford, Susan Rogers, and Ambika Talwar.

GRATEFUL CONVERSATIONS is a portrait of a group of female poets from California, who come together each month to hone their craft and share their verse.  Known as Westside Women Writers and active as a group since 2008, they include Millicent Borges Accardi, Madeleine S. Butcher, Georgia Jones Davis, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, Ambika Talwar and Maja Trochimczyk.

In the words of the WWW founder, Millicent Borges Accardi, this is “a community of women writers working together to support each other with strong attention to craft, to grow as writers and as people in community.” The volume includes poems written for seven workshops and  poetic self-portraits of the nine writers.  Many photographs by the poets (Madeleine S. Butcher, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Sonya Sabanac, Ambika Talwar and Maja Trochimczyk) provide illustrations for the poems.

Paperback, 280 pages, with black and white illustrations

ISBN  978-1-945938-22-1  
Color Paperback, 280 pages with color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-945938-24-5 
E-Book in EPUB format with color illustrations
ISBN 978-1-945938-23-8 

http://www.moonrisepress.com/grateful-conversations-anthology.html

ABOUT THIS BOOK: 

"Nine women poets converse, wake us up, send us to higher ground. Grateful Conversations carries us in and out of the emotion of memory, family, spirit, solid things and landscapes. Unlike much modern poetry, the nine writers present life and hope, not death and loss. This anthology gives us abundance, not scarcity, joy, not the grating irritations of guilt, fear and dissolution. There are generous portions for each poet: Accardi, Butcher, Jones-Davis, Jones, Rogers, Sabanac, Stafford, Talwar, Trochimczyk each get twenty to thirty pages of poetry with photographs taken by the poets and also there are seven sections of workshop poems. These are poets on quests for spiritual renewal, yet the poems are not sticky with New Age platitudes, but articulate, moving, textured and the reader is grateful, uplifted. “Look at these dogwood blossoms/caught in the act of flying,” writes Lois P. Jones. We look and we fly.
                                                               ~ Alice Pero, author of Thawed Stars

MORE INFORMATION:

http://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/05/grateful-conversations-poetry-anthology.html (preface, table of contents)

https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2018/06/sample-poems-from-grateful.html (poets' bios and sample of poems)

New Music Book - Andrzej Wendland's "Górecki, Penderecki - Diptych"

ISBN 978-1-945938-30-6  paperback (available in Poland)

ISBN 978-1-945938-31-3  PDF ebook (available worldwide from Lulu.com)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/maja-trochimczyk-and-andrzej-wendland/g%C3%B3recki-penderecki-diptych/ebook/product-24018263.html

In December 2018 and March 2019, Moonrise Press published two versions of a new book of music studies by Andrzej Wendland, entitled Górecki, Penderecki - Diptych and celebrating the 85th birth anniversaryof both composers. The book consisted of two extended essays: a) "Two Tristan Postuldes and Chorale. Górecki – Wagner, intelektual reflection" and b) "Elegy for the Dying Forest -
Krzysztof Penderecki VIII Symfonia „Lieder der Vergänglichkeit”  The paperback edition is only available in Poland, and includes essays in Polish and English. The PDF Book edition is available from lulu.com worldwide, and is in English only. Cover design by Maja Trochimczyk.

The essays, translated into English by Maja Trochimczyk, deal with "Two Tristan Postludes and Chorale" by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (1933-2010) and The Eight Symphony by Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933). They draw from philosophy, aesthetic and poetry of importance to each composer to place each work in a broad cultural context.

The essays are introduced by a following preface by the author:

"A riddle and a surprise. In these words, we can briefly define the content of two essays on the music of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki and Krzysztof Penderecki. A riddle—because an essay concerns the "secret" connection of two such distant artists as Wagner and Górecki. A surprise—because a musician writing about music will discuss Krzysztof Penderecki's work without musicological analysis, but from the perspective of reading poetic works.

Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki at his desk in Katowice, 1998

The direct pretext for writing these essays was the 85th anniversary of the birth of both composers. Primarily. Secondly, both composers made, at about the same time — in the late 1960s, the beginning of the 1970s—a sudden shift: the re-evaluation of their work. Each in his own way. From the position of avant-garde leaders, they began to turn towards tradition, harmony and beauty. In the compositions discussed here, it is not difficult to see their "connections" stretched along the axes: Górecki—Wagner, Penderecki—Mahler. Thirdly, the works in question had their premieres at the Tansman Festival (Górecki — world premiere, Penderecki — Polish premiere of the 12-movement version, the premiere that took place in  Łódź.)"

ANDRZEJ WENDLAND

Andrzej Wendland is a musician, musicologist, editor and publicist. A graduate of the Instrumental Department of the Academy of Music in Łodz, he also studied music theory and composition. He won many prizes at international competitions as a performer and composer in Poland, Italy and Greece. In 1980-1986, Wendland served as a lecturer of the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. He collaborated with the Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne PWM as the author of the series „El Maestro”  He also collaborated with the Professional Music Press and published articles in many music magazines in Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain and Japan. 

He is the author of books: Gitara w twórczości Aleksandra Tansmana [Guitar in the Oeuvre of Aleksander Tansman] (Łódź, 1996) and Górecki. IV Symfonia Tansman Epizody. Fenomen, Żywioł, Tajemnica [Górecki. Symphony No. 4 Tansman Episodes, Phenomenon, Elements, Mystery] (Łódź 2016). His study of Górecki's Fourth Symphony appeared in Górecki in Context: Essays on Music edited by Maja Trochimczyk and published by Moonrise Press in 2017. Wendland is the founder and artistic director of the Tansman Festival –International Festival and Competition of Musical Individualities. Mr. Wendland is the recipient of many honors and prizes, including the medal „Zasłużony Kulturze Gloria Artis” from the Polish government in 2015.

Available in paperback and four ebooks in EPUB format:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/maja-trochimczyk/g%C3%B3recki-in-context-essays-on-music/paperback/product-23519706.html