Week Two - Day One - Preface

Philip Munger: Fred James and I went to the Anchorage Symphony Saturday evening, for the premiere of Chris Brubeck's Spontaneous Combustion, a jazzy concerto for violin and orchestra. The jazz-based concert featured selections from Leonard Bernstein's On the Town, Darius Milhaud's Creation of the World, and George Gershwin's An American in Paris. Best ASO concert for my wife and me in a while - very well played and enthusiastically received.

Brubeck's concerto was the fifth product in less than five years by the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra's new work commissioning club, Musica Nova. Created in 2003 for the purpose of commissioning a work per year. Beginning with my Piano Concerto, the results, so far, of this annual enterprise have been a legacy of four solo concerti and a tone poem. You can click on the titles of the movements of my Piano Concerto to hear them played by the Anchorage Symphony, with pianist Juliana Osinchuk:

I. Tug Ruby XIV II. The Dark Passage III. Channel Fever

This week, both Fred James and I will be contributing more - and more varied - entries. Over the weekend, two important articles on the trial's defense aspects came out. The Anchorage Daily News's Lisa Demer wrote an article, titled Kohring's lawyer is known for being flamboyant, effective, that looks into the background of the lead attorney for Kohring's defense team. The article's comments contain even more biographical information on Browne. Fellow trial blogger, Steve Aufrecht has attempted a biographical sketch of Vic Kohring, titled The Enigma that is Vic Kohring. Steve asks some important questions about missing gaps in Kohring's official bios.

Steve also notifies us of the following event:

Several of us who have been at the trials will be talking on this subject Thursday at noon in the federal building cafeteria. The event is sponsored by the local chapter of the American Society for Public Administration. So some of these thoughts are warm up for that session.