Jim Dayton
Reporter - Janesville city government
Kicks
Pok矇mon Go walking tour combines history, technology
JANESVILLE
Capturing a Bulbasaur while learning intricate details of the Armory or Monterey Rock is probably an unconventional concept for most local history buffs.
But Hedberg Public Library and the Rock County Historical Society believe its a combination that can help new audiences discover the wonders of Janesvilles past.
The two organizations will again partner for the third year of the Pok矇mon Go Historical Walk. The event will take place from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29. Admission is free.
No registration is necessary, and refreshments will be provided. Kids 12 and younger must be accompanied by an adult.
The walking tours have followed a different route each year. The inaugural event started at the Tallman House and wound through downtown to the library, childrens librarian Julie Westby said.
Last years walk highlighted some of the ornate homes located in the Courthouse Hill neighborhood.
The 2018 version of the tour will start and end at the library. It will first head toward Monterey Park and then meander through the Fourth Ward, stopping at St. Patrick School.
The tour group will then proceed to the Armory, First Congregational Church and the new ARISE Town Square. Final stops will include The Venue and the Janesville Senior Centerthe citys former librarybefore finishing at Hedberg, Westby said.
Nate Fuller, the historical societys education curator, will give a brief historical overview at each stop. While hes talking, Pok矇mon Go gamers can try to capture nearby Pok矇mon using the popular app.
The 69蹤獲 could not reach Fuller for comment, but Westby said blending local history with modern technology was his brainchild.
When we started in 2016, Pok矇mon Go was all the rage. We knew it would be something of interest to people and would be something to get them out and about, she said. It seemed like the perfect way to match something thats current and popular and get some of that history out there as well.
While the games popularity among casual players has waned somewhat, the event still grew last yearfrom 24 folks in 2016 to 44. The walking tour has attracted an even split between gamers and history enthusiasts, Westby said.
Westby is expecting a similar mix this year. If the weather is nice, shes hopeful for another attendance increase.
If Pok矇mon Gos popularity diminishes enough in the next several years and can no longer be the centerpiece of this type of event, Westby said the library and historical society might try to find another way to engage new audiences with local history.
Finding those audiences helps the library achieve some of its goalscreating new, regular visitors and bringing back people who havent been to Hedberg in years, she said.
The Pok矇mon Go walking tour is one way to do that. Even if people are solely there for the game and dont care much for the historical aspect, the game can help people learn and be engaged, she said.
That benefits both the individual and the entire Janesville community.
If youre an active Pok矇mon player and out and about, youre coming across all kinds of things you might not have known were in the community or important in the community, Westby said. Just getting people out and about in the community has been a wonderful benefit.
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Kicks
West meet east: BJSO to perform Romantic masterworks from Russia
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Catherine Idzerda
Reporter - Education
JANESVILLE
Classical music has its greatest hits.
Tchaikovskys Violin Concerto in D is right up there in the top 20.
The moment the bow hits the strings, the music reaches into the recesses of listeners memories and recalls every moment of tenderness, deep love and even deeper regret they have felt.
At the same time, theres no gloppy sentimentality. Nothing that would embarrass the fastidious.
Its both Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina and Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, and you could argue that is a balance the composer was seeking.
On Sept. 22-23, the Beloit Janesville Symphony Orchestra will give audiences a concert of Russian masterworks including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys Violin Concerto in D and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade. Beloit native Matt Pickart will perform as violin soloist.
A violinist, violist, jazz musician and assistant professor of strings at Webster University in St. Louis, Pickart also is founder of the Clazz International Music Festival in Arcidosso, Italy. He has performed jazz in New York City at both the Lincoln Center and Carnegie Music Halls Weill Recital Hall.
Before the shows in Beloit and Janesville, Beloit Janesville Symphony Orchestra music director Rob Tomaro will give a talk titled One Thousand and One Nights: Romanticism and Seduction in Pre-Soviet Russia.
The featured pieces by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were written eight years apart by composers who knew each other but who had radically different ideas, Tomaro said.
Rimsky-Korsakov was part of a group of five Russian national composers who were consciously rejecting Western musical thought, philosophy and even Western principles of composition in favor of creating a nationalist Russian body of work, Tomaro said.
Scheherazade is a musically retelling of stories from One Thousand and One Nights. The stories of Aladdin and his lamp and Sinbad the sailor are the best known of these stories.
Scheherazade is a young woman married to a prince who executes his brides after their wedding night to keep them from being unfaithful.
The Oriental themes upon which the piece is based come from folk melodies from the southern provinces of Russia, from Mongolia, Tomaro said.
In Rimsky-Korsakovs work, the stories of adventure are carried by the richness of the piece. A series of clarinet, bassoon, violin, oboe and flute solos give the piece its narrative quality, Tomaro said.
Scheherazade has become an orchestral standard and a favorite among listenersmuch like Tchaikovskys Violin Concerto in D.
But Tchaikovskys work, so popular now, was soundly rejected by his contemporaries in Russia and the western European critics he sought to impress, Tomaro said.
Tchaikovsky was a man caught in the middle of two musical factions, Tomaro said. Western critics declared his works to be too provincial and too Russian. In Russia, his worked were denounced for being too Western.
The Russian critics thought he had sold out to Western culture, Tomaro said.
When Violin Concerto in D came out, Western critics called it ugly and boring. Ironically, it might be a blend of Eastern and Western cultures that makes the piece so powerful.
The piece was written in 1878, the same year Tolstoys Anna Karenina was released. It was unlike anything that had been written in western Europe, and to this day it is considered a distinctly Russian workand one Western readers often find exhausting.
In Violin Concerto in D, Tchaikovsky reaches all of those emotions, but the music elevates rather than exhausts.
It is unknown if Tchaikovsky read Austen or Tolstoy, but in Violin Concerto in D it is thought he leavened Anna Karenina with something from Austensomething deeply felt but not so steeped in pathos.
You have to understand, there was a great gulf between Russian and Western artistic culture, Tomaro said. But in the end, if anybody could be said to triumph, it was certainly Tchaikovsky. He was embraced by the West and began to get more and more performances, both as a composer and a conductor.
At the end of his life, Tchaikovsky received a distinctly Western honor: He was chosen to conduct the opening concert at newly built Carnegie Hall in New York.
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