Chopin with Cherries
Maja Trochimczyk
- Location
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Birthday
- December 30
- Title
- President
- Company
- Moonrise Press / lulu.com
- Bio
- As an author of four scholarly books and hundreds of articles and book chapters, I'm well established in the music history world, with two main specializations: Polish music of the 19th and 20th centuries, and 20th-century contemporary music (Andriessen, Brant, Lutoslawski, and others). More about that aspect of my life may be found on my website. Here, I'm primarily a poet. An avid reader of poetry since my Polish childhood, I started writing in English. The flexibility, richness and focus of this language never cease to amaze me! I like illustrating my poetry books with photographs, taken mostly in my garden and neighborhood of Southern California. In 2006, I decided to share my work at public readings and in journals, chapbooks, and books. Here, I'd like to share my delight in Chopin's music and poetry...
MY RECENT POSTS
- Chopin's Revolutionary Etude
in a California Jail
April 05, 2012 02:00AM - On Kocyan Playing Chopin and
Liszt
March 13, 2012 09:54PM - Chopin's Valentines and His
Letters
February 14, 2012 02:25AM - Postcards from Paris and
Chopin in Pasadena
February 10, 2012 02:54AM - Chopin, Taffeta, and Dance
December 20, 2011 07:26PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Thanks for the comment.
I played some music and
brought quite
a few pictures
(Im…”
March 12, 2011 02:31AM
Maja Trochimczyk's Links
Chopin's Revolutionary Etude in a California Jail
On March 26, 2012, I started a new adventure - teaching
a class on art and ethics to inmates of Pitchess Detention Center
in Castaic, CA. I designed my four-part class as lessons in
connecting feelings to thoughts, to teach virtues by using artwork,
music, and poetry - a full range… Read full post »
On Kocyan Playing Chopin and Liszt
When I first saw Polish pianist Wojciech Kocyan on the concert stage about twenty years ago, I felt he looked just like Fryderyk Chopin: frail, with longish dark-blond hair, sensitive, and sophisticated. Here was a pianist with great emotional and musical intelligence, a refined technique, and subdue… Read full post »
Chopin's Valentines and His Letters
The association of Chopin's music with romance and love
stories of all sorts is so profound that it is hard to imagine how
mundane and trivial many of his own letters really were. He poured
his heart in his music, and did not have to do it on the page.
Instead,… Read full post »
Postcards from Paris and Chopin in Pasadena
Hilda Weiss and Wayne Lindberg of Poetry LA have
recently visited Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, to record Featured
Reader Just Kibbe and local poets. As one of the co-hosts of
the reading, I was recorded as well.
I presented my Three Postcards
from Paris which will appear in Quill and… Read full post »
Chopin, Taffeta, and Dance
In America, December is the holiday season. Houses are decorated starting on December 1 and each weekend brings at least four party invitations, luncheons, dinners, and Christmas carols sing-alongs. By the second week of January all of it will be thrown out or packed away and the… Read full post »
On Szymanowska and Chopin in Paris
Who was Maria Szymanowska? We know her name as a
predecessor of Chopin; he was studying in Warsaw when she performed
there in 1827. Born in 1789 in Warszaw, Szymanowska’s came
from the family of Wołowskis, but used her
husband’s name professionally, during her European… Read full post »
The Last Wish, the Last Day - October 17, 1849
The curiosity about Chopin's death appears almost morbid
today, when the cult of fitness and health has placed all disabled
and sick on the margins of society. As Franz Liszt writes in his
biography of Chopin, the hagiography, rather, setting the tone for
the legend of the feeble, tortured bod… Read full post »
Celebrating Maria Szymanowska in Paris
The year 2011 has been declared the Milosz Year,
celebrating the Nobel-Prize-winning poet, and the Szymanowska Year,
commemorating one of the first and most influential women composers
of the romantic period.Moonday, Chopin and Paderewski
Among the multitude of poetry events and publications
this summer you may find a Poets' Picnic in Benicia, California
(August 6, 2011), the Poem Homes Project organized by Benicia's
Poet Laureate, Ronna Leon (ongoing through the summer), the Moonday
West and Moonday East readings in Pacific Pa… Read full post »
On Chopin and Film
The failure of actors and directors to adequately
portray a "genius" composer - be it Beethoven, Mozart or Chopin -
speaks to the richness of our collective imagination that creates a
mental image of the composer of such complexity and sophistication
that it becomes virtually impossible to mat… Read full post »
Cherished Chopin & Poets Cafe
My October 2010 interview for Poets Cafe (KPFK 90.7FM)
found its permanent home on the website of Timothy Green, editor of
Rattle who graciously supports KPFK's initiative to
document poetry life in Los Angeles.
Lois P. Jones, an amazing, spiritual, insightful, and incredibly
talented poet (I… Read full post »
On Letter-writing and the Intimate Chopin
Is the art of letter-writing dead? How little would we know about the lives of people long gone if not for their letters, or diaries and letters... Many of them had a chance to sift and sort, deciding which letters to keep and which to burn, creating their own portrait for… Read full post »
Poet Sharon Chmielarz on Chopin
At the end of February, a wonderful poet Sharon
Chmielarz visited Southern California for a tour of poetry
readings, including appearances at Ventura, Pasadena, La Canada,
and Tujunga. She read her erotic poetry in Ventura and poems
inspired by the art of painter Stephen Lindsteadt, not about… Read full post »
Poet Sharon Chmielarz on Chopin
At the end of February, a wonderful poet Sharon
Chmielarz visited Southern California for a tour of poetry
readings, including appearances at Ventura, Pasadena, La Canada,
and Tujunga. She read her erotic poetry in Ventura and poems
inspired by the art of painter Stephen Lindsteadt, not about… Read full post »
Chopin for Children in Pacoima
On March 4, 2011, during the national "Read Across America"
celebration, Chopin with Cherries found its way to Pacoima
Charter Elementary School in Pacoima, California. As a volunteer
reader, I decided to introduce California children (most of whom
were Latino, speaking English as a second lan… Read full post »
Chopin in Colorado with Ben Humphrey
The last 2010 group reading from the Chopin with Cherries anthology took place at the November 2010 Chopin & Paderewski Conference at the Loyola University Chicago.
A lively and lovely group of poets gathered, including guests from Chicago who listened to visiting poets from around th…
Happy New Year 2011!
Our Chopin adventure is coming to a close, with the festivities of the Chopin Year largely completed. In January 2011 at the Polish American Historical Association's Annual Meeting held in Boston, Mass., I will read a paper based, in part, on poetry and illustrations from Chopin with Cherries. The to… Read full post »
Christmas and New Year's Wishes
Everyone loves "Chopin with Cherries" - even Lech Walesa! He came
to California for a brief, unofficial visit, on behalf of his
foundation, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Solidarity
movement. There were lectures and receptions and an opportunity to
present him with a copy
… Read full post »
Górecki, Chopin, and the Mountains
In the summer of 1997, I traveled to the mountain town
of Zakopane, in Podhale (the Foothills) area of Tatra Mountains, to
persuade Henryk Mikolaj Górecki to come to Los Angeles for a
residency at the University of Southern California, called the
Górecki Autumn. He conducted… Read full post »
Chopin Songs by Marta Wryk and Adam Kosmieja
The month of October in the Chopin Year "belongs" to Chopin. His death anniversary is on October 17. On October 10, 2010, the Modjeska Club (modjeskaclub@blogspot.com) hosted two wonderful young musicians from New York, students from the Manhattan School of Music, already engaged in a vari…
Chopin's Death, Mortality and Halloween
October in America is filled with the excitement of
Halloween. Now, that’s a strange celebration! People dress up
as zombies. They scatter eyeballs, skeletons, and torn, bloody
limbs around their houses. They convert their gardens into
makeshift graveyards… All to scare deat… Read full post »Mark Tardi about Chopin
One of the poets published in the anthology, Chopin
with Cherries, Mark Tardi, sent me his answers to a set of
four questions I intended to ask of all the poets who wrote about
Chopin. The questions and answers are below.1. What is your earliest or most… Read full post »
Chopin Songs in South Pasadena, 10/10/10
The
wonderful and colorful Polish Festival Los Angeles
(September 25-26, 2010) had its share of Chopin's music and poetry,
thanks to Karolina Naziemiec who invited us, poets Mira Mataric,
Susan Rogers, and Lois P. Jones, and over 10 amazing pianists, from
age four, to… Chopin in Venice and at the Polish Fest LA
The third installment in the ongoing series of events
dedicated to poetry inspired by Chopin's music took place on
September 12, 2010, at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in
Venice, California. It was yet another version of poetry and music,
changed by the presence of different poetic… Poetic Chopin at Beyond Baroque, 9/12/10
Time to hear Chopin and poetry again! The next reading from Chopin with Cherries is scheduled for Sunday, September 12, 2010, 3 p.m. at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA 90291-4805. Admission, benefiting Beyond Baroque, is $7.00 for general public… Read full post »
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com