Ajahn Maha Bua, Thai Buddhist monk died he was , 97.

Phra Thamma Wisutthi Mongkhon (Bua Yannasampanno) or Pra Dharma Visuthi Mongkol (Bua Ñanasampanno)), commonly known as Ajahn Maha Bua or in Thai Luang Ta Maha Buawas a Thai Buddhist monk died he was , 97. Bua is one of the best known Thai Buddhist monks of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He was widely regarded as an Arahant — a living Buddhist saint. He was a disciple of the esteemed forest master Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta, and was himself considered a master in the Thai Forest Tradition.^[1] He was a harsh critic of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as well as of events taking place in Watpa Salawan after the death of its abbot Luangpho Phut.^[2]

 

(August 12, 1913 — January 30, 2011)

  Biography

Early years

Bua was born in Baan Taad village in the northeastern province of Udon Thani. He was one of 16 children of a rich family of rice farmers.^[3] When he was 21, his parents asked him to enter the monkhood for a season, a Thai tradition to show gratitude towards one's parents. He entered Yothanimit monastery and was ordained on May 12, 1934 with Venerable Chao Khun Dhammachedi as his preceptor. His preceptor gave him the Pali name 'Nanasampanno', meaning 'one endowed with wisdom'. At the time, Bua had no intention of remaining a monk for the rest of his life.
As Pra Nanasampanno, he studied the incarnations of the Buddha and his Arahant Disciples. He has said he was so impressed that he decided to seek the same enlightenment as had the Buddha's original disciples. He tried to understand the ways of practicing the Dhamma (Dharma) which would eventually lead to Nibbana (Nirvana).
He studied Pali, the language of Theravada Buddhism, as well as the Vinaya (the monastic rules of correct conduct). After seven years, he passed the third level of Pali studies, and achieved the highest level in Dhamma and Vinaya studies. He then concentrated entirely on the practice of Dhamma in hopes of studying with Venerable Ajahn Mun, one of the most renowned meditation masters of his time.^[4]

Venerable Ajahn Mun

Nanasampanno then went in search of Venerable Ajahn Mun. When he finally met him, he was pleased with his efforts, since it seemed as if Mun already knew his desires, intentions, and doubts. Mun clarified the questions in his mind and showed him the paths leading to Nibbana still exist.He learned the meditation methods followed by Mun, based on the principles of Buddhism and the code of Buddhist discipline. He continued to follow these methods in his own teaching of monks and novices. Due to his deep respect and admiration for Mun, whom he likens to a father and mother to his students, he was inspired to write a biography of Mun to disseminate his methods of practice and document his character for coming generations. He has also written many books on the practice of Buddhist meditation and recorded teachings on Dhamma so Buddhists may have a guide in practicing meditation.^[5] One of his fellow student monks was Ajahn Thate.

Seclusion and establishing a monastery

In 1950, after the death of Mun, Bua sought a secluded place. He went to Huey Sai village in Mukdahan province. He was very strict and serious in teaching the monks and novices, both in the austere dhutanga practices and in meditation. He continued his teaching until these same principles became established amongst his followers.
Learning that his mother was ill, he returned home to look after her. Villagers and relatives requested that he settle permanently in the forest south of the village and no longer wander in the manner of a forest monk. As his mother was very old and that it was appropriate for him to look after her, he accepted the offer. With a donation of 64 acres (26 ha) of land, he began to build his monastery in November 1955. It was given the name Wat Pa Baan Taad.^[5]

Wat Pa Baan Taad

The wilderness surrounding the monastery has vanished, as it has now been cleared for cultivation. The forest inside the monastery is all that remains. Wat Pa Baan Taad preserves this remnant in its original condition, so that monks, novices, and lay people can use its tranquility for the practice of the Dhamma as taught by the Lord Buddha.^[5]
Some basic teachings on the 'Citta'Bua sees the essential enduring truth of the sentient being as constituted of the indestructible reality of the citta (heart/mind), which is characterized by the attribute of Awareness or Knowingness. This citta, which is intrinsically bright, clear, and Aware, gets superficially tangled up in samsara but ultimately cannot be destroyed by any samsaric phenomenon. Although Bua is often at pains to emphasise the need for meditation upon the non-Self (anatta), he also points out that the citta, while getting caught up in the vortex of conditioned phenomena, is not subject to destruction as are those things which are impermanent, suffering, and non-Self (anicca, dukkha, anatta). The citta is ultimately not beholden to these laws of conditioned existence. The citta is bright, radiant, and deathless, and is its own independent reality:
'Being intrinsically bright and clear, the citta is always ready to make contact with everything of every nature. Although all conditioned phenomena without exception are governed by the three universal laws of anicca, dukkha, and anattã, the citta’s true nature is not subject to these laws. The citta is conditioned by anicca, dukkha, and anattã only because things that are subject to these laws come spinning in to become involved with the citta and so cause it to spin along with them. However, though it spins in unison with conditioned phenomena, the citta never disintegrates or falls apart. It spins following the influence of those forces which have the power to make it spin, but the true power of the citta’s own nature is that it knows and does not die. This deathlessness is a quality that lies beyond disintegration. Being beyond disintegration, it also lies beyond the range of anicca, dukkha, and anattã and the universal laws of nature. ….'^[6]
The fundamental problem that besets human beings, according to Bua, is that they have taken fake and false things as their true self and lack the necessary power to be their 'own true self'; they allow the wiles and deceits of the mental defilements to generate fear and anxiety in their minds. Fear and anxiety are not inherent within the citta; in fact, the citta is ultimately beyond all such things and indeed is beyond time and space. But it needs to be cleansed of its inner defilements (the kilesas) before that truth can be realised. Bua states:
‘Our real problem, our one fundamental problem—which is also the citta’s fundamental problem—is that we lack the power needed to be our own true self. Instead, we have always taken counterfeit things to be the essence of who we really are, so that the citta’s behavior is never in harmony with its true nature. Rather, it expresses itself through the kilesas’ cunning deceits, which cause it to feel anxious and frightened of virtually everything … As a result, the citta is forever full of worries and fears. And although fear and worry are not intrinsic to the citta, they still manage to produce apprehension there. When the citta has been cleansed so that it is absolutely pure and free of all involvement, only then will we see a citta devoid of all fear. Then, neither fear nor courage appear, only the citta’s true nature, existing naturally alone on its own, forever independent of time and space. Only that appears—nothing else. This is the genuine citta’.^[7]
Bua goes on to attempt to describe the inner stages and experience of the cleansed citta. When its purgation of defilements is complete, it itself does not disappear – only the impermanent, suffering, and the non-Self disappear. The citta remains, experientially abiding in its own firm foundation, yet ultimately indescribable:
‘Once the Citta has become so well-cleansed that it is always bright and clear, then … even though the citta has not ‘converged’ in samãdhi, the focal point of its awareness is so exceedingly delicate and refined as to be indescribable. This subtle awareness manifests as a radiance that extends forth in all directions around us. We are unconscious of sights, sounds, odors, tastes, and tactile sensations, despite the fact that the citta has not entered samãdhi. Instead, it is actually experiencing its own firm foundation, the very basis of the citta that has been well-cleansed to the point where a mesmerizing, majestic quality of knowing is its most prominent feature.
‘Seeming to exist independent of the physical body, this kind of extremely refined awareness stands out exclusively within the citta. Due to the subtle and pronounced nature of the citta at this stage, its knowing nature completely predominates. No images or visions appear there at all. It is an awareness that stands out exclusively on its own. This is one aspect of the citta.
‘Another aspect is seen when this well-cleansed citta enters meditative calm, not thinking or imagining anything. Ceasing all activity, all movement, it simply rests for awhile. All thought and imagination within the citta come to a complete halt. This is called “the citta entering a state of total calm.” Then, the citta’s essential knowing nature is all that remains. Except for this very refined awareness—an awareness that seems to blanket the entire cosmos—absolutely nothing else appears… Distance is not a factor. To be precise, the citta is beyond the conditions of time and space, which allows it to blanket everything. Far is like near, for concepts of space do not apply. All that appears is a very refined awareness suffusing everything throughout the entire universe. The whole world seems to be filled by this subtle quality of knowing, as though nothing else exists, though things still exist in the world as they always have. The all-encompassing flow of the citta that has been cleansed of the things that cloud and obscure it, this is the citta’s true power.
'The citta that is absolutely pure is even more difficult to describe. Since it is something that defies definition, I don’t know how I could characterize it. It cannot be expressed in the same way that conventional things in general can be, simply because it is not a conventional phenomenon. It is the sole province of those who have transcended all aspects of conventional reality, and thus realize within themselves that non-conventional nature. For this reason, words cannot describe it.
'Why do we speak of a “Conventional” Citta and an “absolutely pure” citta? Are they actually two different cittas? Not at all. It remains the same citta. When it is controlled by conventional realities, such as kilesas and ãsavas, that is one condition of the citta. But when the faculty of wisdom has scrubbed it clean until this condition has totally disintegrated, the true citta, the true Dhamma, the one that can stand the test, will not disintegrate and disappear along with it. Only the conditions of anicca, dukkha, and anattã, which infiltrate the citta, actually disappear.
'No matter how subtle the kilesas may be, they are still conditioned by anicca, dukkha, and anattã, and therefore, must be conventional phenomena. Once these things have completely disintegrated, the true citta, the one that has transcended conventional reality, becomes fully apparent. This is called the citta’s Absolute Freedom, or the citta’s Absolute Purity. All connections continuing from the citta’s previous condition have been severed forever. Now utterly pure, the citta’s essential knowing nature remains alone on its own….
'Since this refined awareness does not have a point or a center, it is impossible to specifically locate its position. There is only that essential knowing, with absolutely nothing infiltrating it. Although it still exists amid the same khandhas with which it used to intermix, it no longer shares any common characteristics with them. It is a world apart. Only then do we know clearly that the body, the khandhas, and the citta are all distinct and separate realities…'^[8]
Some of the notions found here are reminiscent of the Tathagatagarbha tradition - although the latter posits an original, primordial purity to the mind, whereas Bua sees that purity as needing to be established through mental and moral cultivation.^[9]

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Ian R. Porteous, British mathematician died he was , 80.

Ian Robertson Porteous  was a mathematician at the University of Liverpool and an educator on Merseyside. He is best known for three books on geometry and modern algebra. In Liverpool he and Peter Giblin are known for their registered charity Mathematical Education on Merseyside which promotes enthusiasm for mathematics through sponsorship of an annual competition.^[1]


(October 9, 1930 - 30 January 2011)

Ian was born October 9, 1930 to Reverend Norman and May Porteous of Crossgates, Fife. He attended George Watson's College in Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh, obtaining his first mathematical degree in 1952.^[2] After a time in national service, he took up study at Trinity College, Cambridge. Porteous wrote his thesis Algebraic Geometry under W. V. D. Hodge and Michael Atiyah at University of Cambridge in 1961.^[3]
Ian began teaching a University of Liverpool as a lecturer in 1959, becoming senior lecturer in 1972. During a year (1961–2) at Columbia University in New York, Porteous was influenced by Serge Lang. He continued to do research on manifolds in differential geometry. In 1971 his article "The normal singularities of a submanifold" was published in Journal of Differential Geometry 5:543–64. It was concerned with the smooth embeddings of an m-manifold in Rⁿ.
In 1969 Porteous published Topological Geometry with Van Nostrand Reinhold and Company. It was reviewed in Mathematical Reviews by J. Eells, who interpreted it as a three-term textbook for a sequence in abstract algebra, geometric algebra, and differential calculus in Euclidean and Banach spaces and on manifolds. Eells says "Surely this book is the product of substantial thought and care, both from the standpoints of consistent mathematical presentation and of student's pedagogical requirements." In 1981 a second edition was published with Cambridge University Press.
In 1995 he published Clifford Algebras and the Classical Groups which was reviewed by Peter R. Law. In praise, Law says "Porteous' presentation of the subject matter sets a standard by which others may be judged." The book has 24 chapters including 8:quaternions, 13:The classical groups, 15:Clifford algebras, 16:Spin groups, 17:Conjugation, 20:Topological spaces, 21:Manifolds, 22:Lie groups. In the preface Porteous acknowledges the contribution of his masters degree student Tony Hampson and anticipatory work by Terry Wall. See references to a link where misprints may be found.
The textbook Geometric Differentiation (1994) is a modern, elementary study of differential geometry. The subtitle, "for the intelligence of curves and surfaces" indicates its extent in the differential geometry of curves and differential geometry of surfaces. The review by J. D. Chillingworth says it is "aimed at advanced undergraduates or beginning graduate students in mathematics..." Chillingworth notes "a peculiar feature of the book is its use of compact notation for differentiation using numerical subscripts that allow tidy presentation of calculations." For instance, Porteous gives Faa di Bruno's formula. Furthermore, the reviewer notes that this mathematics has "connections to optics, kinematics and architecture as well as (more recently) geology, tomography, computer vision and face-recognition." These applications follow from the theories of contact, umbilical points, ridges, germs, and cusps. Porteous has suggestions for readers wanting to know more about singularity theory. The underlying theme is the study of critical points of appropriate distance-squared functions. A second edition was published in 2001, where the author was able to report on related work by Vladimir Arnold on spherical curves. In fact, Porteous had translated Arnold's paper from Russian.
Ian Porteous' commitment to mathematics education can be seen through the work of his charity "Mathematical Education on Merseyside" (see references). As recounted in the book Challenging Mathematics, in 1978 Giblin and Porteous began to organize a CHALLENGE competition for first and second formers in secondary school. By 1989 they were drawing 3500 participants each year. Held over two weekends in the Spring Term, students considered six questions each round. Marking was arranged through the mathematics department of Liverpool University, and prizes were awarded at "an evening of mathematical recreation". Broad participation was encouraged by making half the problems widely accessible. Solutions to the problems appear in their book.
Beyond mathematics, Ian enjoyed hill-walking and sang in his church choir. He served as a Liberal councillor on Liverpool City Council from 1974 to 1978. Ian Porteous passed away suddenly of a suspected heart attack on the afternoon of the 30th January 2011.^[1][2]

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Hisaye Yamamoto, American author died she was , 89.

Hisaye Yamamoto was a Japanese American author died she was , 89. She is best known for the short story collection Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, first published in 1988. Her work confronts issues of the Japanese immigrant experience in America, the disconnect between first and second generation immigrants, as well as the difficult role of women in society.

(August 23, 1921 — January 30, 2011)

Historical Context

Immigration

The late nineteenth century in Japan saw momentous political, social, and cultural upheaval, now known as the Meiji Restoration. In an effort to transform the long-established feudal society into a contemporary capitalist economy, Emperor Meiji rapidly imposed western industrial advancements on the traditional eastern values of Japan, creating a great deal of uncertainty and unrest amongst its people, many of whom began to desire a fresh start in a new land. Shortly thereafter, in 1885, the Japanese government approved the emigration of Japanese nationals, bringing the first wave of idealistic immigrants to the west coast of the United States. This generation, known as the Issei, initially was almost entirely unmarried young men. Most led agrarian lifestyles, either farming sugar cane and pineapple in Hawaii or fruit and other produce in California. The goal was to achieve a certain level of establishment before the arrival of family.

Limitations

As a result of anti-Japanese sentiments in California, tensions between the two countries began to rise. The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907, was devised in an effort to ease this mounting stress. The Agreement was an informal one, one in which the Japanese government agreed to cease the issue of passports to men alongside the refusal of the American government to accept them as immigrants. Women, children, and parents were excluded from this arrangement, as was necessary to maintain civility between the two nations. As more and more Japanese families began to reunite on American soil, Americans continued to feel threatened by the growing success of their independent farming ventures, an attitude that led to the passage of the California Alien Land Law in 1913. Prohibiting those not eligible for citizenship from owning or leasing land for more than three years at a time, the hard-earned comfort of establishment dissolved rapidly, leading Japanese Americans into a transient lifestyle of constant relocation. Soon thereafter, in 1924, the Asian Exclusion Act was passed, a federal legislation banning the immigration of all Asian peoples, both nullifying the Gentlemen’s Agreement and, in effect, formally extending it to include women, children, and elders.

Background and Career

Early life

Yamamoto was born to Issei parents in Redondo Beach, California. Her generation, the Nisei, were often in perpetual motion, born into the nomadic existences imposed upon their parents by the California Alien Land Law and the Asian Exclusion Act. As a mainstay, Yamamoto found comfort in reading and writing from a young age, producing almost as much work as she consumed. As a teen, her enthusiasm mounted as Japanese American newspapers began publishing her letters and short stories.^[1] Many Issei immigrants were concerned with preserving their native language, while the interests of the Nisei tended more towards expressions of loyalty to the United States, most easily achieved through knowledge and application of the English language. As a result, the communication lines between Japanese parents and their children faced rapid degradation, hampering the preservation of traditional Japanese culture in America. Initially writing solely in English, Yamamoto's recognition of this language barrier and generational gap would soon become one of her primary influences.

World War II and the Relocation of Japanese Americans

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese navy, an act of war that was both undeclared by the Japanese and unexpected by the United States. Within four months of the bombing, Japanese Americans numbering close to 120,000 were forced into internment, two-thirds of which were born on American soil. Abandoning homes, farms, and businesses, this forceful relocation movement contributed to a certain physical, social, and psychological uprooting that Yamamoto would repeatedly address in her work. Japanese women leading ephemeral lives in the United States often had no female confidants outside of the family. In spite of the perpetual hardships that they faced, literature and poetry continued to flourish in the new land. In a sense, as a response to the various forms of imprisonment and relocation faced by both Issei and Nisei women, be it jail, internment, poverty, gender, or even marriage, art became the only source of freedom in their lives.
Yamamoto was twenty years old when her family was placed in the internment camp in Poston, Arizona. She had two brothers, one of whom was killed in combat fighting for the United States army during her family's internment.^[2] In an effort to stay active, Yamamoto began reporting for the Poston Chronicle, the camp newspaper. She started by publishing her first work of fiction, Death Rides the Rails to Poston, a mystery that was later added to Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, followed shortly thereafter by a much shorter piece entitled, Surely I Must be Dreaming. She briefly left the camp to work in Springfield, Massachusetts, but returned when her brother died while fighting with the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy.^[3] The three years that Yamamoto spent at Poston profoundly impacted all of her writing that followed.

Life after the War

World War II came to an end in 1945 closing the internment camps and releasing their detainees. Yamamoto and her family returned to California, this time in Los Angeles, where she began working for the Los Angeles Tribune. This weekly newspaper, intended for African American audiences, employed Yamamoto primarily as a columnist, but also as an editor and field reporter.^[1] Spending three years sheltered by internment, these next three spent working for the Tribune allowed Yamamoto to explore some of the intricacies of racial interaction in the United States separate from those experienced first-hand in the internment camp. Much of what she learned and implemented in her writing broadened the reception of her work to extend outside of solely Asian American audiences.
After enjoying much critical acclaim in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Yamamoto married Anthony DeSoto and settled in Los Angeles, California.^[1] The mother of five, Yamamoto has discussed the difficulties she has in finding time to write, stating: "Most of the time I am cleaning house, or cooking or doing yard work. Very little time is spent writing. But if somebody told me I couldn't write, it would probably grieve me very much." ^[2]
DeSoto passed away in 2003. Yamamoto, who had been in poor health since a stroke in 2010, died in her sleep at her home in northeast Los Angeles at the age of 89.^[3]

Writing Style and Influence

Yamamoto's stories are often compared to the poetic form, haiku, described as "layered in metaphor, imagery, and irony, but never wordy or given to digression." ^[4] She has also been praised "for her subtle realizations of gender and sexual relationships."^[5] Her writing is sensitive, painstaking, heartfelt, and delicate, yet blunt and economical, a style that pays homage to her Japanese heritage while establishing contemporary appeal.

Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories

This collection was first published in 1988, and includes stories written across a time span of forty years, since the end of World War II. The collection includes some of Yamamoto’s most-anthologized works, such as “Yoneko’s Earthquake,” “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara,” “The Brown House,” and “Seven Syllables,” considered by many to be Yamamoto’s definitive work.^[6]
The stories, arranged chronologically by the time of their composition, deal with the experiences of first generation Japanese immigrants (Issei) and their Nisei children. The title is drawn from one of the stories within the collection and refers to the structural requirements of Japanese haiku poetry. Many of the stories have admittedly autobiographical content,^[7] making references to the World War II Japanese internment camps, to life in Southern California during the 1940s and ‘50s, and to the experience of being a writer.

Editions of the Text

The original 1988 version of the text was published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. In 1998, Rutgers University Press released a new edition that included the 1987 short story “Reading and Writing.” In 2001, a revised and expanded edition of the book added four more stories written as early as 1942: “Death Rides the Rails to Poston,” “Eucalyptus,” “A Fire in Fontana,” and “Florentine Gardens.”

List of Stories

The High-Heeled Shoes: A Memoir (1948)—This story deals primarily with how women are treated in society. The first-person narrator describes instances of sexual harassment she and other women have experienced, from phone solicitations to threats of rape.
Seventeen Syllables (1949)—This story tracks the parallel stories of a young Nisei girl and her Issei mother: the daughter’s inability to understand her mother’s interest in haiku, the daughter’s budding romance with a young Mexican boy, the mother’s winning of a haiku contest and the father’s resentment of her mother’s artistic success. The story explores the generational gap between Issei and Nisei, as well as themes of interethnic interaction, patriarchal repression, and class-based resentment.
The Legend of Miss Sasagawara (1950)—This is the only story that takes place in a Japanese relocation camp. Narrated by a young Japanese-American girl, the story provides a broad portrait of one of the inmates at the camp, the daughter of a Buddhist priest, a woman named Miss Sasagawara, who develops a reputation for acting insane. At the end of the story, a poem written by Miss Sasagawara reveals her lucidity and her sense of being repressed by her Buddhist father. In this way, the story confronts the intersection of ethnic and patriarchal oppression.
Wilshire Bus (1950)—Shortly after World War II, a young Japanese-American narrator observes an American on a bus attacking a Chinese couple, whom he has taken to be Japanese and believes to be enemies of the United States. The narrator contemplates anti-Japanese sentiment as well as the complicated interactions between different ethnic groups.
The Brown House (1951)—A wife becomes an unwilling enabler of her husband’s gambling habit, which brings financial trouble on the entire family. This story explores themes of beleaguered wifehood as well as ethnic interactions.
Yoneko’s Earthquake (1951)—One of the most complex stories in the collection, “Yoneko’s Earthquake” relates two parallel plot lines as observed by the main character Yoneko, a young Nisei girl living on her family’s small farm. The story describes the consequences of the arrival of a Filipino farm hand—for both Yoneko, who develops a crush on the man, and for her mother, who commences an affair with him. The story reiterates the theme of mother-daughter, Issei-Nisei, and wife-husband relationships as explored in “Seventeen Syllables.”
Morning Rain (1952)—This story relates a moment in time taking place over breakfast between a Nisei daughter and her Issei father. Over the course of the story, we learn that the daughter has married an American man and feels disconnected from her father. The story ends with a sudden revelation that is symbolic of the communication gap between generations: the woman discovers that her father has difficulty hearing.
Epithalamium (1960)—A Japanese-American bride reminisces about her turbulent relationship with her new husband, an Italian American alcoholic whom she met at a Christian community. The story explores the hopes and disappointments of romance, in particular interethnic romance. The title refers to an ancient Greek poetic form written in honor of a bride.
Las Vegas Charley (1961)—A decades-spanning account of the life of an Issei man, the so-nicknamed “Las Vegas Charley.” The story charts Charley’s immigration to the United States, his marriage and early family life, his confinement in a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans, and his subsequent migration to Las Vegas to become a dishwasher. The story describes his earnest attempts and inevitable failures to reform himself and improve his circumstances.
Life Among the Oil Fields, A Memoir (1979)—In this non-fiction account, Yamamoto describes her life on a farm among the oil fields of Southern California. The story ends with her brother Jim's injury in a hit-and-run accident. The Caucasian couple in the car are later tracked down, but they refuse to take responsibility and do not even inquire about Jim's condition.
The Eskimo Connection (1983)—A Japanese American writer forges a bond with an Eskimo prison inmate through written correspondence. The story paints a humorous and affectionate portrait of interethnic friendship.
My Father Can Beat Muhammad Ali (1986)—An Issei father tries to impress on his American sport-loving sons an interest in Japanese sports. The story reflects the generational gap between traditional-minded Japanese parents and their Americanized children.
Underground Lady (1986)—Describes the encounter between a Japanese American woman and a white woman, who inadvertently reveals her own racial prejudices. The story reveals a negative side to interethnic interaction, as a counterpoint to “The Eskimo Connection,” among others.
A Day in Little Tokyo (1986)—In this story, a young Nisei girl grudgingly accompanies her father and brother to a sumo match, but is left in Little Tokyo, where she observes the comings and goings of the inhabitants. The story explores the generational gap between Issei parents and Nisei children.

Overarching Themes

Disconnection between first- and second-generation immigrants: Many of the stories—notably “Seventeen Syllables,” “Yoneko’s Earthquake,” “Morning Rain,” and “Las Vegas Charley”—comment on the generational gap between the Issei and Nisei, a gap exacerbated by the cultural differences between Japan and the United States. Nowhere perhaps is this gap more clearly stated than in “Las Vegas Charley,” in which the eponymous protagonist mournfully observes, “The young Japanese, the ‘‘Nisei’’, were so Americanized now. While most of them still liked to eat their boiled rice, raw fish, and pickled vegetables, they usually spent New Year’s Eve in some nightclub.”^[8] “Las Vegas Charley” observes the generational gap from the perspective of an Issei man and is especially sympathetic to the loss of language and cultural traditions. Other stories, like “Seventeen Syllables,” are told from the perspective of the Nisei, and focus on the confusion of American-born children as they struggle to understand their parents’ remote native culture. In “Seventeen Syllables,” the narrator’s apathy towards haiku is linked to her more serious inability to empathize with her Japanese mother.
Repression of women in Japanese and American societies: The very first story in the anthology, “The High Heeled Shoes,” foregrounds the issue of male tyranny over women’s bodies and minds, in the dual forms of sexual harassment and social expectations on women to be passive. For example, the story makes a feminist critique of Mahatma Gandhi’s advice to be pacifistic in the face of violence. “The High Heeled Shoes” deals with sexual harassment across ethnic lines. Other stories in the collection deal with gender roles and female repression in the context of Japanese culture. Several stories deal with the disappointments of marriage. The long-suffering wife is a recurring character, figuring as martyrs in stories like “Seventeen Syllables,” “Yoneko’s Earthquake,” and “The Brown House.” As a counterpoint, men are most often portrayed as cruel husbands or deadbeat fathers.
Ambiguous interactions between ethnic communities in America: Yamamoto depicts America as a complex network of different ethnicities, made even more complicated by the prejudices and hierarchies created by each ethnic group. Her stories present various interactions between Japanese and Anglo-American, Japanese and Mexican, Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Filipino, Japanese and African-American, even between Japanese and Eskimo. Several of these interactions emphasize cultural misunderstanding and hostility, for example American hostility towards the Japanese after World War II. Other stories portray ethnic interaction as positive, productive, and meaningful to the parties involved. “The Eskimo Connection” tracks the unusual friendship between a Japanese author and an aspiring Eskimo writer corresponding from prison. Sometimes Yamamoto creates surprising twists based on unexpected moments of empathy or misunderstanding between two groups. In “The Brown House,” a black man’s interaction with a Japanese family is an occasion for cooperation and gratitude, but also for prejudice (“a kurombo!”).

[edit] Adaptations

The 1991 American Playhouse special Hot Summer Winds, was directed by Emiko Omori and was based upon two of Yamamoto's stories, "Seventeen Syllables" and "Yoneko's Earthquake."^[9]

Legacy

Hisaye Yamamoto received acclaim for her work almost from the very beginning of her career. She was, as King-Kok Cheung noted, “one of the first Japanese American writers to gain national recognition after the war, when anti-Japanese sentiment was still rampant.”^[10] Although she herself resisted being rigidly characterized as a voice for Japanese or Asian groups (“I don’t think you can write aiming at a specifically Asian-American audience if you want to write freely”^[11]), she was considered one of the premier Asian-American authors.
Awards and Fellowships

• 2010: Asian American Writers Workshop's Lifetime Achievement Award ^[12]
• 1988: Association for Asian American Studies's Award for Literature for Seventeen Syllables ^[4]
• 1986: Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement ^[1]
• 1952: "Yoneko's Earthquake" named one of Best American Short Stories ^[1]
• Early 1950s: Declined a Stanford University Writing Fellowship in order to pursue social work ^[1]
• 1950-51: John Hay Whitney Foundation Opportunity Fellowship ^[1]

Secondary sources

• Cheung, King-Kok. "Hisaye Yamamoto b. 1921." The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. E, 5th Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin company, 2006: 2162-3.
• ---. "Introduction," in Hisaye Yamamoto, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001): ix-xxiii.
• ---. "Hisaye Yamomoto and Wakako Yamauchi." IN: Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000:343-82.
• ---. "Reading between the Syllables: Hisaye Yamamoto's Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories." IN: Maitino, and Peck, Teaching American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P; 1996: 313-25.
• ---. "The Dream in Flames: Hisaye Yamamoto, Multiculturalism, and the Los Angeles Uprising." IN: Bucknell Review: A Scholarly Journal of Letters, Arts and Sciences, 1995; 39 (1): 118-30.
• ---. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
• ---. "Thrice Muted Tale: Interplay of Art and Politics in Hisaye Yamamoto's 'The Legend of Miss Sasagawara'." MELUS, 1991-1992 Fall; 17 (3): 109-25.
• ---. "Double-Telling: Intertextual Silence in Hisaye Yamamoto's Fiction." American Literary History, 1991 Summer; 3 (2): 277-93.
• Crow, Charles L. "A MELUS Interview: Hisaye Yamamoto." MELUS 14.1 (Spring 1987): 73-84.
• ---. "The Issei Father in the Fiction of Hisaye Yamamoto." IN: Truchlar, Für eine offene Literaturwissenschaft: Erkundungen und Eroprobungen am Beispiel US-amerikanischer Texte/Opening Up Literary Criticism: Essays on American Prose and Poetry. Salzburg: Neugebauer; 1986: 34-40.
• ---. "Home and Transcendence in Los Angeles Fiction." IN: Fine, Los Angeles in Fiction: A Collection of Original Essays. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P; 1984:189-205.
• Yogi, Stan. "Rebels and Heroines: Subversive Narratives in the Stories of Wakako Yamauchi and Hisaye Yamamoto." IN: Lim, and Ling, Reading the Literatures of Asian America. Philadelphia: Temple UP; 1992: 131-50.
• ---. "Legacies Revealed: Uncovering Buried Plots in the Stories of Hisaye Yamamoto." Studies in American Fiction, 1989 Autumn; 17 (2): 169-181.

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Milton Babbitt, American composer died he was , 94.

Milton Byron Babbitt  was an American composer died he was , 94.. He was particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.

(May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011)

Biography

Babbitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Barkin & Brody 2001), to Albert E. Babbitt and Sarah Potamkin. He was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, and began studying the violin when he was 4 but soon switched to clarinet and saxophone. Early in his life he was attracted to jazz and theater music. He was making his own arrangements of popular songs at 7, and when he was 13, he won a local songwriting contest.

Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and it was mathematics that Babbitt intended to study when he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1931. However, he soon left and went to New York University instead, where he studied music with Philip James and Marion Bauer. There he became interested in the music of the composers of the Second Viennese School, and went on to write a number of articles on twelve tone music including the first description of combinatoriality and a serial "time-point" technique. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from New York University College of Arts and Science in 1935 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, he studied under Roger Sessions, first privately and then later at Princeton University. At the University he joined the music faculty in 1938 and received one of Princeton's first Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1942 (Barkin & Brody 2001). During the Second World War Babbitt divided his time between mathematical research in Washington, DC, and Princeton, where he became a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945 (Barkin & Brody 2001).
In 1948, Babbitt joined Princeton University's music faculty and in 1973, became a member of the faculty at the Juilliard School in New York. Among his more notable former students are music theorists David Lewin and John Rahn, composers Donald Martino, Laura Karpman, Tobias Picker, Paul Lansky, and John Melby, the theatre composer Stephen Sondheim, and the jazz guitarist and composer Stanley Jordan.
In 1958, Babbitt achieved unsought notoriety through an article in the popular magazine High Fidelity (Babbitt 1958). His title for the article, "The Composer as Specialist", was changed, without his knowledge or consent, to "Who Cares if You Listen?" More than 30 years later, he commented that, because of that "offensively vulgar title", he was "still ... far more likely to be known as the author of 'Who Cares if You Listen?' than as the composer of music to which you may or may not care to listen" (Babbitt 1991, 17).
Babbitt later became interested in electronic music. He was hired by RCA as consultant composer to work with their RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (known since 1996 as the Columbia University Computer Music Center), and in 1961 produced his Composition for Synthesizer. Babbitt was less interested in producing new timbres than in the rhythmic precision he could achieve using the Mark II synthesizer, a degree of precision previously unobtainable in live performances (Barkin & Brody 2001).
Babbitt continued to write both electronic music and music for conventional musical instruments, often combining the two. Philomel (1964), for example, was written for soprano and a synthesized accompaniment (including the recorded and manipulated voice of Bethany Beardslee, for whom the piece was composed) stored on magnetic tape.
Milton Babbitt died in Princeton, New Jersey on January 29, 2011 at the age of 94 (Kozinn 2011).

Honors and awards

• He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1965.
• In 1982, the Pulitzer Prize board awarded a "special citation to Milton Babbitt for his life's work as a distinguished and seminal American composer" (Columbia University 1991, 70).
• From 1985 until his death he served as the Chairman of the BMI Student Composer Awards, the international competition for young classical composers.
• In 1986, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
• In 1988, he received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for music composition.
• In 2000, he was inducted as a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international, professional music fraternity (Klafeta and Beckner 2009; Anon. 2000).

Articles

• (1955). "Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition". The Score and I.M.A. Magazine 12:53–61.
• (1958). "Who Cares if You Listen?". High Fidelity (February). [Babbitt called this article "The Composer as Specialist." The original title was changed without his knowledge or permission by an editor at High Fidelity.]
• (1960). "Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants," Musical Quarterly 46/2.
• (1961). "Set Structure as Compositional Determinant," Journal of Music Theory 5/1.
• (1965). "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory," College Music Symposium 5.
• (1972). "Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory as Contemporary Intellectual History", Perspectives in Musicology: The Inaugural Lectures of the Ph. D. Program in Music at the City University of New York.
• (1987) Words About Music: The Madison Lectures, edited by Stephen Dembski and Joseph Straus. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
• (1992) [written 1946] "The Function of Set Structure in the 12-tone system." PhD Dissertation, Princeton University.
• (2003). The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, edited by Stephen Peles, Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, Joseph Straus. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

List of compositions

• 1935 Generatrix for orchestra (unfinished)
• 1939–41 String Trio
• 1940 Composition for String Orchestra (unfinished)
• 1941 Symphony (unfinished)
• 1941 Music for the Mass I for mixed chorus
• 1942 Music for the Mass II for mixed chorus
• 1946 Fabulous Voyage (musical, libretto by Richard Koch)
• 1946 Three Theatrical Songs for voice and piano (taken from Fabulous Voyage)
• 1947 Three Compositions for Piano
• 1948 Composition for Four Instruments
• 1948 String Quartet No. 1 (withdrawn)
• 1948 Composition for Twelve Instruments
• 1949 Into the Good Ground film music (withdrawn)
• 1950 Composition for Viola and Piano
• 1951 The Widow’s Lament in Springtime for soprano and piano
• 1951 Du for soprano and piano, August Stramm
• 1953 Woodwind Quartet [[1]]
• 1954 String Quartet No. 2
• 1954 Vision and Prayer for soprano and piano
• 1955 Two Sonnets for baritone, clarinet, viola, and cello, two poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
• 1956 Duet for piano
• 1956 Semi-Simple Variations for piano
• 1957 All Set for alto sax, tenor sax, trp, trb, cb, pno, vib, percussion
• 1957 Partitions for piano
• 1960 Sounds and Words for soprano and piano
• 1960 Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments
• 1961 Composition for Synthesizer
• 1961 Vision and Prayer for soprano and synthesized tape, setting of a poem by Dylan Thomas

Second Period

• 1964 Philomel for soprano, recorded soprano, synthesized tape, setting of a poem by John Hollander
• 1964 Ensembles for Synthesizer
• 1965 Relata I for orchestra
• 1966 Post-Partitions for piano
• 1966 Sextets for violin and piano
• 1967 Correspondences for string orchestra and synthesized tape
• 1968 Relata II for orchestra
• 1968–69 Four Canons for SA
• 1969 Phonemena for soprano and piano
• 1970 String Quartet No. 3
• 1970 String Quartet No. 4
• 1971 Occasional Variations for synthesized tape
• 1972 Tableaux for piano
• 1974 Arie da capo for five instrumentalists
• 1975 Reflections for piano and synthesized tape
• 1975 Phonemena for soprano and synthesized tape
• 1976 Concerti for violin, small orchestra, synthesized tape
• 1977 A Solo Requiem for soprano and two pianos
• 1977 Minute Waltz (or 3/4 ± 1/8) for piano
• 1977 Playing for Time for piano
• 1978 My Ends Are My Beginnings for solo clarinet
• 1978 My Complements to Roger for piano
• 1978 More Phonemena for twelve-part chorus
• 1979 An Elizabethan Sextette for six-part women’s chorus
• 1979 Images for saxophonist and synthesized tape
• 1979 Paraphrases for ten instrumentalists
• 1980 Dual for cello and piano

Third Period

• 1981 Ars Combinatoria for small orchestra
• 1981 Don for four-hand piano
• 1982 The Head of the Bed for soprano and four instruments
• 1982 String Quartet No.5
• 1982 Melismata for solo violin
• 1982 About Time for piano
• 1983 Canonical Form for piano
• 1983 Groupwise for flautist and four instruments
• 1984 Four Play for four players
• 1984 It Takes Twelve to Tango for piano
• 1984 Sheer Pluck (composition for guitar)
• 1985 Concerto for piano and orchestra
• 1985 Lagniappe for piano
• 1986 Transfigured Notes for string orchestra
• 1986 The Joy of More Sextets for piano and violin
• 1987 Three Cultivated Choruses for four-part chorus
• 1987 Fanfare for double brass sextet
• 1987 Overtime for piano
• 1987 Souper for speaker and ensemble
• 1987 Homily for snare drum
• 1987 Whirled Series for saxophone and piano
• 1988 In His Own Words for speaker and piano
• 1988 The Virginal Book for contralto and piano, setting of a poem by John Hollander
• 1988 Beaten Paths for solo marimba
• 1988 Glosses for Boys’ Choir
• 1988 The Crowded Air for eleven instruments
• 1989 Consortini for five players
• 1989 Play It Again, Sam for solo viola
• 1989 Emblems (Ars Emblematica), for piano
• 1989 Soli e duettini for two guitars
• 1989 Soli e duettini for flute and guitar
• 1990 Soli e duettini for violin and viola
• 1990 Envoi for four hands, piano
• 1991 Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude for piano
• 1991 Four Cavalier Settings for tenor and guitar
• 1991 Mehr "Du” for soprano, viola and piano
• 1991 None but the Lonely Flute for solo flute
• 1992 Septet, But Equal
• 1992 Counterparts for brass quintet
• 1993 Around the Horn for solo horn
• 1993 Quatrains for soprano and two clarinets
• 1993 Fanfare for All for brass quintet
• 1993 String Quartet No. 6
• 1994 Triad for viola, clarinet, and piano
• 1994 No Longer Very Clear for soprano and four instruments, setting of a poem by John Ashbery
• 1994 Tutte le corde for piano
• 1994 Arrivals and Departures for two violins
• 1994 Accompanied Recitative for soprano sax and piano
• 1995 Manifold Music for organ
• 1995 Bicenguinguagenary Fanfare for brass quintet
• 1995 Quartet for piano and string trio
• 1996 Quintet for clarinet and string quartet
• 1996 Danci for solo guitar
• 1996 When Shall We Three Meet Again? for flute, clarinet and vibraphone
• 1998 Piano Concerto No. 2
• 1998 The Old Order Changeth for piano
• 1999 Composition for One Instrument for celesta
• 1999 Allegro Penseroso for piano
• 1999 Concerto Piccolino for vibraphone
• 2000 Little Goes a Long Way for violin and piano
• 2000 Pantuns for soprano and piano
• 2002 From the Psalter soprano and string orchestra
• 2002 Now Evening after Evening for soprano and piano, setting of a poem by Derek Walcott
• 2003 Swan Song No. 1 for flute, oboe, violin, cello, and two guitars
• 2003 A Waltzer in the House for soprano and vibraphone, setting of a poem by Stanley Kunitz
• 2004 Concerti for Orchestra, for James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
• 2004 Autobiography of the Eye for soprano and cello, setting of a poem by Paul Auster
• 2005–6 More Melismata for solo cello
• 2006 An Encore for violin & piano

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José Llopis Corona, Spanish footballer died he was , 92.

José Llopis Corona known in his time as a footballer as José Corona, Pepe Corona or simply Corona  is a former Spanish football Left back.


(June 4, 1918 – January 29, 2011)

Football career

He played for Hércules CF from 1941 to 1943 and Real Madrid C.F. from 1943 to 1948. He played a total of 116 matches in La Liga for Real Madrid, scoring 7 times, and another 37 matches in Copa del Rey, scoring twice.
He was the only survivor of Real Madrid, 14 December 1947,^{[clarification needed]} played the opening match of the then-New Chamartin Stadium (later Santiago Bernabeu stadium) against Os Belenenses of Portugal, who finished with a 3-1 victory.^[1]

Titles

• 2 Copa del Rey

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Bruce Jackson, American audio engineer, died from a plane crash he was , 62.

Bruce Jackson  was an Australian audio engineer who co-founded JANDS, an Australian audio, lighting and staging company died from a plane crash he was , 62.. He joined American touring audio engineer Roy Clair and mixed concert stage monitors for Elvis Presley in the 1970s. With Clair, Jackson designed audio electronics including a custom mixing console. Beginning in 1978, Jackson toured as Bruce Springsteen's band engineer for a decade, using Clair sound systems. A business interest in Fairlight CMI in Sydney introduced Jackson to digital audio, and he subsequently founded Apogee Electronics in Santa Monica, California where he was living. After selling his share of Apogee, Jackson co-founded with Roy and Tony Clair a joint venture which produced the Clair iO, a loudspeaker management system for control of complex concert sound systems. Jackson turned the venture commercial with the help of Dave McGrath's Lake Technology. Dolby Laboratories bought the technology and formed Dolby Lake with Jackson as vice president, then in 2009 Lab.gruppen acquired the brand. Jackson was honored with the Parnelli Innovator Award in 2005.
While still a partner at Apogee, Jackson began touring with Barbra Streisand, mixing concert sound and serving as sound designer from 1993 to 2007. With two other audio engineers he received an Emmy Award for sound design and sound mixing on Streisand's TV special Barbra: The Concert.^[1] Jackson worked on sound design for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney^[2] and served as audio director for the opening and closing ceremonies.^[3][4] He performed the same role in Doha, Qatar, at the 2006 Asian Games and in Vancouver, Canada, at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

(3 June 1948 – 29 January 2011)

JANDS

Jackson first expressed an interest in electronics at age 13 when he set up a basement workbench and small lab under his parents' mansion in Point Piper, a seacoast suburb east of Sydney in the district of Vaucluse, New South Wales.^[5] (The mansion, "Altona", is one of Australia's most expensive homes.^[5][6]) While at Vaucluse Boys' High School, Jackson was discovered by investigators of the Postmaster-General's Department, along with a group of his electronics-minded schoolmates, operating a too-powerful AM transmitter—a pirate radio station which the boys powered up after school, tuned to the highest end of the commercial AM band.^[5] The boys did not know that their tube transmitter and very long, very efficient antenna were so well crafted that their unlicensed signal was broadcasting all over Sydney.^[7]
At age 17 or 18, Jackson and one of the boys, Phil Storey, became partners in business. They used their surname initials to form the company name: J&S Research Electronics.^[4][7] The partnership's largest customer, Roger Foley, doing business as Ellis D Fogg,^[8] a producer of psychedelic lighting effects, refused to write out the full company name and instead wrote JandS on his checks. The company changed its name to JANDS in response.^[7] After moving the company from Point Piper to Rose Bay, JANDS made "whatever the hell they felt like", according to Jackson: lighting equipment, guitar amplifiers and public address system components such as column loudspeakers.^[5] He described how, with so many American servicemen stationed in Vietnam spending their recreation time in Sydney, Australian bands and clubs were doing well: "the live music scene was jumping, and we were busy".^[8] JANDS' successful rental business paid for the design of new gear.^[5] After two years, Jackson quarreled with Storey and left the company.^[2] Later, JANDS grew "to become Australia's largest sound and lighting company."^[4]

Clair Brothers

Jackson first met Roy Clair at a Sydney stop in a world tour by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1969 or 1970, the concert held at Randwick Racecourse.^[5] Clair had brought his unusually large American concert sound system to Australia and Jackson was curious to hear it, and to see how the big black 'W' bins were designed. He and a friend sneaked into the concert and spoke with Clair, asking "a whole stack of questions".^[5] Clair decided to leave his sound system in Jackson's hands for a series of Johnny Cash tour dates coming up in some six months, rather than shipping all the gear home to the USA and back in between.^[3] Jackson stored the system and then mixed the Cash tour across Australia. Afterward, Clair invited Jackson to visit him in Lititz, Pennsylvania.^[3] Following a trip to London, Jackson stopped in at Clair Brothers and stayed to live in Pennsylvania.^[3]
Jackson assisted Clair Brothers by teaming with Ron Borthwick to design a mixing console that folded up into its own road case, a proprietary model used by Clair for some 12 years of top tours.^[9] The console used novel plasma bargraph meters which displayed both average and peak sound level, combining the characteristics of fast peak meters and slower VU meters.^[10] Clair built 10 of the consoles, the first live sound console to incorporate parametric equalization.^[4]

Elvis Presley

Working for Clair Brothers, Jackson toured with Elvis Presley, mixing monitors while independent engineer Bill Porter mixed front of house (FOH) for the audience. Clair supplied all the audio gear; Jackson designed a powerful stage monitor system for Presley's show.^[11] To make more room for audience seating, he also used a sound reinforcement system that was not mounted on scaffolding but hung with steel chain above the audience from overhead beams, using chain hoists rigged upside down to raise the loudspeakers from the floor—a now-common method used by licensed riggers.^[2][4] Jackson has said that he made a number of concert recordings during this period, all unreleased.^[3]
The earliest of these Clair-supported dates did not have a dedicated monitor engineer—monitors were mixed from FOH by Porter, assisted by Jackson. Jackson noticed that Presley's performance was very much dependent on how easily he was able to hear himself from the monitor speakers. Jackson said, "some nights would work well and others would be a total train wreck."^[5] He advocated for a separate monitor mixing position at the side of the stage and after overcoming resistance to the concept was given this dedicated position.^[5] Asked whether he thus invented the role of concert monitor engineer, Jackson replied, "no ...its time had come."^[5]
Jackson had to deal with Presley's absence from rehearsals at Graceland and concert soundchecks. The singer would usually show up at the concert venue at the last minute, walk out on stage and start to sing, having never heard the sound system. Presley sometimes turned to the side of the stage to ask Jackson to make changes, and a few times he stopped the show to have Jackson come out and stand center stage and listen carefully to the monitors while Presley sang to 20,000 people.^[5] One night in Fort Worth, Texas, Presley led the audience in singing "Happy Birthday to You" in honor of the engineer's birthday—an "amazing, and very embarrassing" occasion for Jackson.^[5] Jackson can be seen at his side-stage mix position in Presley's 1977 "CBS Special" TV show. At Presley's final performance on 26 June 1977, he said "I would like to thank my sound engineer: Bruce Jackson from Australia."^[3]
Touring with Presley was like no other assignment. Presley and his entourage traveled in four or five jets to the next tour stop: one for Elvis and his closest colleagues, one for the band, one for Colonel Tom Parker (Presley's manager), one for concessions and crew, and a Learjet used by RCA Records management who would fly ahead of everyone else.^[5] For two weeks during June and July 1973, Elvis flew on an all-black DC-9 airliner with a Playboy logo on the tail; the aircraft was named Big Bunny. Jackson said he and the other Elvis-chosen passengers were served food and drinks by elite Playboy Bunnies called "Jet Bunnies".^[3]
Parker managed the concert tours for Presley, and exerted a strong influence. Jackson quit his job while on tour after he was "pushed too far" by Parker, according to Roy Clair.^[12] Presley apologized to Jackson, and he rejoined the tour as an independent engineer, answering only to Presley.^[12] Jackson mixed hundreds of concerts for the singer, who called him "Bruce the Goose"^[13]—a working life filled with strange hours, hard physical labor and constant traveling.^[5] In August 1977 he was in Portland, Maine setting up at the next Presley engagement when he heard he had died.^[9]

Independent engineer

Bruce Springsteen

As an independent engineer, Jackson signed a contract to work directly for Bruce Springsteen, on concert tours supported by Clair. Jackson mixed Springsteen on four major tours from 1978 to 1988, and is credited as engineer on the album Live/1975–85. The tours include Darkness, The River, Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love Express. Prior to each tour, Springsteen and the E-Street Band practiced at Clair Brothers in Lititz to check out new sound system components and lighting effects, and to give crew members a chance to work out the technical details. Jackson mixed the rehearsals and concerts on the folding console he designed for Clair. Springsteen called him "BJ".^[5]
Right away, Jackson noticed that Springsteen was a very particular critic of his own concert sound. At every new venue, Springsteen would take "BJ" around to various seats in the concert venue, sitting in every section, even the last row of seats, and listen to the E-Street Band play.^[14][15][16] He asked Jackson why the sound was not so good far away as it was up close, and if the audio crew could do anything about it. Jackson said, "we can do a lot about it", and worked with Clair to design a ring of delay loudspeakers positioned closer to the farthest seats to augment the high frequencies lost over distance by sound waves traveling through air.^[17] This made the hi-hat sound more "crisp and clean", with higher quality sound in the back row than previously experienced in such large venues.^[17] Throughout Jackson's years with him, Springsteen maintained his interest in delivering high quality sound to every seat, and the solutions grew in size and complexity until by 1984 there were eight rings of delays set up for the largest venues.^[17]

In 1985 for the Born in the U.S.A. tour, Jackson arrived at a "checkerboard" configuration of loudspeakers which were supplied with nominal left and right stereo signals, the signals connected throughout the sound system in an alternating pattern of vertical lines of eight loudspeakers each, giving the audience a semblance of stereo imaging otherwise impractical on such a large scale.^[18] A reporter from Popular Mechanics described the 160 main and 40 auxiliary loudspeakers typically used at a large arena or stadium. Jackson set the main loudspeakers 54 feet (16 m) high on scaffolding, each enclosure holding two 18-inch low-frequency cone drivers, four 10-inch mid-frequency cone drivers, two high-mid compression drivers and two high-frequency compression drivers. The auxiliary zones covered audience areas which wrapped around to the sides of the stage. The 200 loudspeakers were driven by 96 amplifier channels capable of putting out a total of 380,000 watts.^[18] The tour was said to have drawn "unusual critical acclaim for crispness and distortion-free performances."^[18] Jackson was nominated for a TEC Award as 1985's best sound reinforcement engineer but Gene Clair received the honor.^[19]
Jackson worked closely with individual musicians in Springsteen's band to help them achieve the sound they wanted. Keyboard player Danny Federici received attention from John Stilwell and Jackson who collaborated in modifying his cut-down Hammond B-3 organ. Clarence Clemons came to Jackson with his ideas about microphones; subsequently, the sound of his saxophones was picked up by a device invented jointly by Clemons and Jackson. Bassist Garry Tallent described the elements of his bass rig to a reporter then summed up its overall effect by saying, "the rest is up to God and Bruce Jackson."^[20]
Jackson was close to Presley, but the two men were not near in age. Springsteen was closer to Jackson's age and the two got along as friends, the singer giving a Jeep off-road vehicle as a gift in thanks for his contribution to successful concerts. Jackson said of the Jeep that he sold it after tiring of "bouncing around the place in it."^[21] In 1988, Jackson quit touring at the birth of his son Lindsey.^[17] He settled in Santa Monica, California, to concentrate on audio electronics ideas.

Barbra Streisand

Jackson was working as an entrepreneur in digital audio electronics in 1993 when Barbra Streisand's producer asked him to mix her first concert tour in decades.^[2] Jackson signed on partly because he was assured he could do anything to make her concert sound as good as possible. Jackson determined that huge concert venues such as Wembley Stadium and Madison Square Garden would be carpeted for Streisand, and that expensive heavy drapes would be hung at the walls to damp sound reflections. After discovering that Streisand did not like to listen to any stage monitors made after the 1960s, he designed a stage wedge which used soft dome drivers for midrange and for high frequencies rather than the more powerful compression drivers in common use after the 1970s.^[17] As well, the main sound system Jackson specified was a new design by Clair Brothers, a proprietary line array system called the I4.^[17] Streisand was not willing to wear in-ear monitors but the band was fitted with them, to reduce stage wash and make the band's instruments stand out better individually in the mix.^[17] The stage monitors, line array and extravagant acoustic treatments were a hit with Streisand, who said of Jackson that he was "the best sound engineer in the world."^[2]
Streisand employed Jackson's mixing talents on her 1995 TV special called Barbra: The Concert. Along with Ed Greene and Bob La Masney who worked on post-production mixing, he received an Emmy Award for sound design and the mixing of the live show.^[1] Jackson designed the sound for Streisand's 1999–2000 Timeless: Live in Concert Tour, and he mixed the New Year's Eve concert 31 December 1999 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. He mixed Streisand's appearances in Sydney and Melbourne in March 2000,^[17] connecting the large backing choir's sound mix by optical fibre from a nearby polo field where the choir was stationed. The fibre connection was Jackson's real-world test of a similar setup planned to be used for the Summer Olympics six months later.^[22]
Jackson mixed Streisand's U.S. and world tours in 2006 and 2007, using a Digidesign Venue digital mixing console at FOH for its smaller footprint (allowing more audience seats) and its plug-in audio effects. As well, the Venue mixing system was chosen for its integration with Pro Tools, to make 128-channel hard disk recordings of the concerts directly from the three Digidesign consoles: one to mix strings, one to mix brass, reeds and percussion, and one under Jackson's control out in the audience, with Streisand's microphone inputs and stems from the other consoles.^[23] The recordings made in New York City and Washington, D.C. were remixed into the album Live In Concert 2006—Jackson was listed as sound designer.^[24] Sharing sound designer and FOH mixing duties with Chris Carlton, Jackson made certain that the custom soft dome monitor wedges were positioned correctly aiming up from under the stage to cover everywhere Streisand might walk.^[25] Clair Brothers supplied 18 Dolby Lake Processors for the tour, the majority used by Jackson to tune the main sound system, and the rest for control of monitor wedges used by Streisand and by the supporting artist, Il Divo.^[26] For Streisand's voice, Jackson auditioned several wireless microphones and ended up using a Sennheiser SKM 5200 transmitter equipped with a Neumann KK 105 S supercardioid capsule. He used the vocal microphone to test the sound system from different locations around the arena.^[27] When the tour hit the UK and continental Europe, Jackson changed from a Neumann to a Røde Microphones capsule, custom made to his requirements; one that Røde called the "Jackson Special".^[28] Jackson used Millennia microphone preamps for any microphone that was required to be sent to multiple mixing consoles, such as at Madison Square Garden where cable runs to the recording trucks were 800 feet (240 m) long, so that the microphone would not be loaded down and changed in its tone quality.^[29]

Other artists

In addition to Presley, Springsteen and Streisand, Jackson mixed concert sound for Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart and the Faces, Barry White, Jefferson Airplane, Ozzy Osbourne, Carly Simon, Three Dog Night, The Jackson 5, Cat Stevens, Glenn Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Procol Harum and Lou Reed.^[3][21][30] During 1983 when Springsteen was not touring, Jackson mixed sound for Stevie Nicks on The Wild Heart Tour, June to November 1983. Fourteen years later he mixed for Fleetwood Mac during their live performances recorded in Burbank for MTV, released as the album The Dance.^[31]

World events

In 1998, Jackson was contacted by Ric Birch of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) to mix sound for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. Jackson felt that his skills would be put to best use as organizer and audio director rather than as one man behind a mixing console.^[22] He put together a team of audio professionals as well as an equipment design composed of digital nodes linked with optic fibre to transport digital audio around the largest venues without attenuation or ground hum. To wire the spectacle which played to 110,000 people in attendance and some 3 billion distant viewers around the world, redundant systems were connected throughout so that a single failure point could not halt the show.^[22] To complete the assignment, Jackson said one of the main factors was working within budget, which was not unlimited as it had been with Streisand.^[17] He served as audio director for the opening ceremony on 15 September and the closing ceremony on 1 October.^[4] Before the event, he told a reporter, "I have a well rehearsed crew in place and there is every reason to expect it to go well."^[22]
In December 2006, Jackson served as audio director at the 15th Asian Games, held in Doha, Qatar.^[9][32] The main loudspeakers for the opening and closing ceremonies were the KUDO model from L-ACOUSTICS.^[32] Jackson found that extreme heat and occasional downpours did not adversely affect the Optocore fibre audio connections around the largest venues. Digital audio was passed to a combination of Lake Contour and Dolby Lake Processors.^[33]
Following his success in Sydney, Jackson was tapped to direct the audio design and production at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he directed the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony.^[34] His sound design for BC Place Stadium did not have loudspeakers at ground level aimed up at the seating areas—Jackson determined that this approach would produce too much uncontrolled reverberation from sound waves bouncing off the ceiling. Instead, he configured two rings of loudspeakers hung from the ceiling 100 ft (30 m) above the ground, aimed downward. The inner ring held 8 arrays each composed of 12 Clair i3 line array speakers and the outer ring held 12 arrays of 7 Clair i3 line array speakers, augmented by 16 subwoofers. The lot was powered by 160 Lab.gruppen amplifiers which were also hung from the ceiling, and were networked via Dante in a triple-redundant configuration. Two DiGiCo D5 digital mixing consoles served as main and backup for the main audience sound, and two Yamaha PM1Ds handled main and backup duties for monitor mixing. Other equipment included dual-redundant Optocore fibre connections, two Dolby Lake Processors, and time code generated by two pairs of Fairlights which also handled audio cues timed to the action on the field.^[35]
Jackson directed sound for the 2010 Shanghai Expo opening ceremony, held on 30 April 2010.^[21] He used four Fairlight digital audio systems to replay music cues, connected to Studer routing and distribution gear which supplied signal to Soundcraft digital mixers and an analogue mixer. Some 64 kilometres (40 mi) of fibre optic cable in a dual-redundant star topology connected 72 amplifier racks along both sides of the Huangpu River. Each amp rack held a BSS Audio loudspeaker controller and multiple Crown International amplifiers, pushing audio signal to more than 400 JBL loudspeakers.^[36]

Digital audio

Beginning in 1979 between Springsteen tour dates, Jackson crisscrossed the U.S. promoting the Fairlight CMI, a digital sampler made by fellow Australians Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie. (Ryrie grew up in Point Piper next to Jackson's house.) The earliest Fairlights were prohibitively expensive, and their 24 kHz sampling rate was not considered high enough for audio mastering, but Jackson found that musicians immediately discovered how useful the Fairlight was for composition. Rick Wakeman explored the sampler, as did Tony Bongiovi, founder of the Power Station recording studio in New York City. There, Springsteen was shown the sampler and said, "Ah yeah, BJ that's great, but what am I gonna do with it?"^[5]
None of Jackson's prospects bought one in the first year. He had better luck with Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Geordie Hormel who bought two for $27,500 each.^[5] Wonder, who had recently recorded Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" using a Computer Music Melodian sampler, paid for his Fairlight by signing a personal check with his thumbprint. He then convinced Jackson to mix sound for a tour he was undertaking in support of Secret Life of Plants.^[5] Jackson's close association with Fairlight made him intimately aware of the limitations of early digital audio, "weaknesses" such as noise and inharmonic distortion.^[5]
During an April 1985 Springsteen tour leg in Japan, Jackson first listened to Compact Discs played on a CD player connected to his concert sound system, and he did not like what he heard.^[5] He felt that there were problems with the implementation of both recording and playback at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz, problems that could be fixed if they could be identified.

Apogee Electronics

After finishing Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. tour, Jackson expressed his ideas about possible improvements to digital audio in a conversation with Christof Heidelberger, a designer of digital audio electronics, and Betty Bennett, the president of Soundcraft's U.S. division. Jackson, Bennett and Heidelberger formed Apogee Electronics in December 1985 (announced in the 23 November issue of Billboard^[37]) and started investigating 44 kHz digital audio circuits for audible problems. They found that "textbook filters" which were unnecessarily steep were protecting the CD player output from high levels of 20 kHz signals, an exceedingly unlikely occurrence in music.^[5] Jackson determined that Apogee could improve the sound of CDs if the low-pass filters used in the recording process were made less steep, for less phase shift throughout the hearing range.^[5] The small company produced better anti-aliasing filters for recording equipment.^[38] Initially operating out of his garage, Jackson served as the company's owner and president, and Bennett headed up sales.^[39] They demonstrated their first product at the Audio Engineering Society's 81st convention held in Los Angeles in November 1986: the 944 Series low-dispersion, linear phase, active low-pass filter, intended to replace existing filters on multi-track digital tape recorders such as the Sony PCM-3324.^[38] After a slow start, the firm sold 30,000 of the filters: "a great success."^[5] The 944 earned a TEC Award in 1988, the first of many such awards for Apogee.^[40]

Apogee's branding was largely Jackson's doing. Bennett said in 2005 that the company's decision to sell purple-colored products was one of Jackson's ideas: "He has a good eye for design, and we wanted to distinguish ourselves from the all-black rack gear that everybody had at that point."^[38] Jackson encouraged a lighting designer from Clair Brothers to sketch a company logo on a cocktail napkin over dinner one evening, and that was immediately made the Apogee logo.^[38]
In 1994, Jackson spoke to a Billboard reporter about digital audio. Described as Apogee's president and chief engineer, he said, "digital is finally living up to the warm, natural sound of analog that we know and love."^[41] A decade later, he warned against the belief that bigger specification numbers guarantee better sound quality. He noted that 192 kHz sampling rate was often cited as being better than 96 kHz because of it being twice as fast "when in reality there's a whole bunch of other influencing factors responsible for any audible improvements."^[5]
Jackson and his wife divorced in the mid-1990s and he sold his share of Apogee to finance the divorce settlement.^[9] Company co-founder Bennett stepped up as CEO.^[38]

Loudspeaker management system

After leaving Apogee, Jackson entered into a joint venture with Clair Brothers to design a digital loudspeaker controller for control of complex concert sound systems. Jackson estimated that the project would cost $800,000 in U.S. dollars, but it ended up costing Clair more than $2M.^[5] From the same garage in which he started Apogee, Jackson developed the proprietary Clair iO: a two-input, six-output digital audio matrix with opto-isolated output circuits. An essential element of the system was its ability to be controlled by wireless touchpad by an audio engineer walking around to various seating sections in a concert venue, to tailor the system's response more precisely.^[42]

Jackson then joined with Dave McGrath of Lake Technology to produce a commercial version of the controller, the Lake Contour, essentially the same hardware but with different software. McGrath and Jackson acquired Clair Technologies LLC, the earlier joint venture.^[9] In turn, Dolby Laboratories bought Lake in 2004, Jackson staying with the product line to become vice president of the live sound division at Dolby, and by 2005 the loudspeaker controller was being used by seven of the ten top concert tours; 3,000 units had been built.^[9] Jackson moved back to Sydney in 2005 with Terri—his third wife—and their children,^[9] but in November he returned to the U.S. to accept his Parnelli Innovator Award. In 2006, the digital audio product was redesigned and introduced as the Dolby Lake Processor,^[10] capable of 4-in, 12-out operation as a loudspeaker crossover; 8-in, 8-out operation as a system equalizer; or a combination of 2 crossovers and 4 equalizers—the whole integrated with Smaart audio analysis software.^[43] A collaboration between Dolby and Swedish audio electronics company Lab.gruppen was announced in 2007; Jackson's technology would be incorporated into Lab.gruppen's Powered Loudspeaker Management (PLM) system.^[44] Two years later, Lab.gruppen acquired the Lake brand for further development of the PLM and other product lines. John Carey of Dolby said, "As we pass the live sound torch to Lab.gruppen we are confident that they will continue to innovate and evolve the technology and brand many have grown to love in this industry."^[45]

Pilot

Jackson was an avid pilot, licensed to fly from early adulthood. He flew often, for pleasure, one of the few concert audio engineers who did.^[46] In the 1970s between Presley concert dates, Jackson flew the singer's personal jet airliner, a converted Convair 880 named Lisa Marie after Presley's daughter.^[46] For Presley's band rehearsals at Graceland, Jackson would fly some 800 miles (1,300 km) from Lititz to Memphis with the back of a small plane loaded with assorted mic stands, cables and monitor loudspeakers. The band would rehearse for a bit in Graceland's racquetball court, then hang out in the Jungle Room waiting for Presley who rarely came downstairs.^[5]
A small aircraft owner, at one time Jackson operated a 1975 Grumman American AA-5B Tiger. In 1979 he sold it to his lighting company friend, Tait Towers founder Michael Tait, to pay for an earlier purchase of a more powerful aircraft, a new Mooney M20J that he registered 7 December 1978.^[2][47] Jackson used the M20J to carry Fairlight samplers across the U.S. to demonstrate them to studios and musicians, once flying from New York to Los Angeles in 15 hours after he heard Herbie Hancock was interested.^[5] Interviewed in 2005 at his Sydney office, Jackson said he missed his "little plane" terribly, that it was kept in a hangar for his use whenever he visited California,^[5] surrounded by dusty boxes of audio gear and stored memorabilia.^[21] He said he had considered flying it from California to Australia but his wife was "not too keen on the idea."^[5]
Jackson was interested in aviation developments. In mid-2010 he flew himself and a friend to Mojave Air and Space Port to see Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise, a sub-orbital spacecraft being glide-tested.^[21]

[edit] Death

Jackson landed his Mooney at Furnace Creek Airport (the lowest elevation airstrip in North America) near the visitor center of Death Valley National Park early in the afternoon of 29 January 2011.^[48][49] He had no flight plan filed. Following a brief stop he took off in clear, sunny weather bound for Santa Monica, but a few minutes later he crashed and died about 6.5 miles (11 km) south of the airfield in a dry lake bed.^[2][49] The wreckage was discovered by park rangers on the morning of 31 January, and was later examined by investigators who did not determine a cause for the accident.^[49] Jackson was survived by his third wife, Terri, their daughter Brianna, and Aja, Jackson's stepdaughter. Jackson was also survived by his second wife, Ruth Davis, and their son Lindsey and daughter Alex.^[2] He was also survived by his first wife Margaret who he married when they were in their teens. She met him at the University of New South Wales, was with him when he started Jands, and accompanied him to the U.S. when he went to work for Clair.
A memorial celebration of Jackson's life was held 25 February at the Sydney Opera House.^[46] Some 500 attendees listened to remembrances and anecdotes from family members and from business colleagues such as Roy Clair and David McGrath. Prerecorded videos were played, sent from Springsteen, the band U2,^[13] Streisand and her manager Martin Erlichman, and members of Fleetwood Mac.^[12]

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