Behzod Abduraimov, at People’s Symphony Concerts

Your correspondent has been attending People’s Symphony Concerts for well-nigh 25 years, and one of the many attendant pleasures is seeing emerging masters before they become household names.

Such a pleasure was on hand last Saturday while watching pianist Behzod Abduraimov in a concert that could only be called magical.

Born in Tashkent in 1990 Behzod began to play the piano at the age of five. He was a pupil of Tamara Popovich at the Uspensky State Central Lyceum in Tashkent, and studied with Stanislav Ioudenitch at the International Center for Music at Park University, Kansas City, where he is now Artist in Residence.

Clad in a simple black shirt and slacks, Abduraimov opened with Four Impromptus for Piano, D. 935 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), a performance of wonderful subtlety and delicacy.  His playing went from lightly (indeed, liltingly) melodic to melancholy and back with effortless transition.  The Impromptus are a challenge to even the most accomplished player, and Abduraimov played with all the sensitivity of a man three times his age.

He followed with the Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S. 514, by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), a performance filled with drama and passion.  Abduraimov did not play the piano as much as he assaulted it … providing the dual pleasure of listening and watching the performance.  A showman as much as a musician, Abduraimov understand the body language of great playing, and the crowd rose to loud and rapturous applause at the end of the piece.

Abduraimov concluded with Pictures at an Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881).  Here is, of course, a splendid showcase for the young pianist’s many talents.  Mussorgsky guides the listener through a series of painting, each eliciting separate and distinctive emotions.  It is a great test of virtuosity, and Abduraimov rose to the occasion splendidly.  This is surely a great talent who will leave his mark on the classical music world.

A word now about Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, founded in 1900 by the conductor Franz Arens to bring the world’s finest music to students and workers for minimum prices.  That winter, more than 7,000 people swarmed Cooper Union to hear Arens, the son of an immigrant farmer, conduct his series of five Peoples' Symphony Concerts.  Subscriptions for the five concerts ranged from $.25 to $1.25 and single tickets went for as little as $0.10 each.

Arens himself started out a poor student in Europe who had been too broke to attend many concerts.  When Arens returned to New York, he was determined to find a way to bring music to students, teachers, workers, and others unable to pay standard ticket prices.  Since those early years, hundreds of thousands of Peoples' Symphony Concerts audience members have heard the world's foremost concert artists and ensembles at the lowest admission prices of any major series in the country.

During many years of attending, Your Correspondent heard such masters as Richard Goode, Garrick Ohlsson, and Marc-Andre Hamelin.  There are three concert series, two taking place on Saturday evenings at the spacious (and newly-renovated) theater at Washington Irving High School in Gramercy Park, and one on Sunday afternoons at Town Hall in midtown Manhattan.

Many of my readers support the New York Metropolitan Opera, WQXR and/or Tanglewood, but few seem to know this wonderful resource for people who are serious about music.

There are still tickets available for this season; visit http://pscny.org  or call (212) 586-4680 for more information.  

Egyptian Craft Sale at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

We just got word from WQXR.FM’s classical music hostess (and Jade Sphinx reader) Nimet Habachy that the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church is hosting a sale of Egyptian crafts to help Egypt’s Moqattam community.  The sale will be held May 6, 7, and 8, from Noon till 8:00 PM at the Church, located at the Christian Education Center (lower level), 7 West 55^th Street, New York. 

These sales are essential if Egypt's Moqattam community is to continue to survive.  The schools and the recycling project that sustains the Moqattam continue to give hope to the young women and their families ravaged by the recent revolution. 

“As the Egyptian Revolution enters its third year, it has become clear that the sales of goods made in Egypt and sold in New York and elsewhere keep this project not only alive, but expanding,” Habachy told your correspondent.  “Many girls and women and their children are waiting to enter the two schools in Moqattam, and the sale of new quilts, rugs, bags, place mats and paper products from Cairo will fund this initiative.  We are so proud of the achievement of these young women who work so hard, and who manage to create beauty in such difficult circumstances. By joining us in this project, you help many poor women in this very poor country to a better life.”

The Moqattam hills near Cairo’s Citadel is the home of the Zabbaleen people.  This community produces many of the Egyptian craft items that are purchased by us here in the West.  Ongoing violence, demonstrations and curfews have restricted normal activity, and Cairenes are not venturing out to purchase the cottage-industry goods produced by the Zabbaleen people, and their survival has become dependent on the sales of their goods in the US.

The Zabbaleen supported themselves for generations by collecting trash door-to-door from the residents of Cairo for nearly no charge. Notably, the Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect, whereas most Western garbage collecting companies can only recycle 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect.  Living conditions for the Zabbaleen are very poor, as they live amid the trash they sort in their village, and with the pigs to which they feed their organic waste.

As trade for these simple people withers away, the Zabbaleen will suffer – the efforts to advance hygiene and literacy in the community will languish and the two schools which have been established will disappear.

We here at The Jade Sphinx attended the last sale and returned with a bag-full of goodies.  This event is recommended to those who want to support a worthy cause, and find beautiful, hand-made things at an affordable price.  

The Moqattam Craft Sale at Calvary-St. George To Help Innocents Caught in the Egyptian Revolution

Every year at Christmastime, we reflect on those who are the most needy and how best to help them.  Part of the spirit of the holiday is not just giving gifts to friends and family, but providing for those in distant lands who perhaps need our help the most.

It is difficult for many of us here in the United States to realize the poverty can sometimes be the product of social upheaval, political unrest, or government mismanagement.  A look at the international news demonstrates that much of the world is in a state of flux, and that the most vulnerable – women, children, the poor or the uneducated – are usually the first victims.

I recently received word from Nimet Habachy, a host on WQXR, New York’s premier classical music radio station, of conditions in Egypt.  The revolution there continues to wreak havoc in the lives of the poorest of the poor – especially in the community in the Moqattam hills near Cairo’s Citadel.  This community produces many of the carpets, quilts, bags, rugs and paper goods that are purchased by us here in the West.  Ongoing violence, demonstrations and curfews have restricted normal activity, and Cairenes are not venturing out to purchase the cottage-industry goods produced by the Zabbaleen people, and their survival has become dependent on the sales of their goods in the US.

For generations, the Zabbaleen supported themselves by collecting trash door-to-door from the residents of Cairo for nearly no charge. Notably, the Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect, whereas most Western garbage collecting companies can only recycle 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect.  Living conditions for the Zabbaleen are very poor, as they live amid the trash they sort in their village, and with the pigs to which they feed their organic waste.

As trade for these simple people withers away, the Zabbaleen will suffer – the efforts to advance hygiene and literacy in the community will languish and the two schools which have been established will disappear.

Education has been crucial to the advance of the Zabbaleen women and children – one school teaches literacy and provides job-skills training, and the other cares for the workers’ children, leaving them free to produce to the goods that so many New Yorkers have come to appreciate.

To help bring relief to the Zabbaleen people, Calvary-St. George’s Church will hold its annual sale of Zabbaleen crafts.  The Zabbaleen produce beautiful materials, following a deeply-entrenched tradition of artisans and craftsmen.  The sale runs from Wednesday, December 11 through Friday, December 13, from Noon till 8:00 PM, and Saturday, December 14, from 11:00 AM till 6:00 PM. 

“It is remarkable in this season of giving in a glittering New York City to be able to give to the poorest of the poor by buying the cottage industry products of a trash-collecting community in far away Cairo Egypt,” Habachy told your correspondent.

Calvary-St. George’s Church is located at 61 Gramercy Park North, at 21^st Street between Park and Lexington Avenues.  I will be there – and hope you will, too.

Rise of the Guardians Opens Today

It is not often that an animated film is as thematically rich, filled with fully-rounded characters and as frankly moving as Rise of the Guardians, opening today and based on William Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood series.  While many (if not most) animated films at least achieve a level of sentiment through forced or cheaply manipulative means, Rise presents a level of richness and complexity that is seldom found even in today’s adult film fare.  Rise presents issues of love and loss, life and death, the persistence of memory, the power of belief and the measure of identity; for all of its high spirits and freewheeling shenanigans, there is also a surprising vein of melancholy.  It is a film not to be missed, one that can be savored by both children and adults alike, albeit for different reasons.

The Guardians – both the books and film – represent a dramatic change in Joyce’s oeuvre.  Over the past decades the scope of his stories and the emotional weight of his work have increased in heft and urgency.  Joyce’s early work was often pitched in a minor key – problems, when they existed at all, were usually expelled by an afternoon with friends or by dancing the hokey pokey.  However, life and time have left their mark on the artist, and he has become engaged with larger scale questions, such as the nature of sorrow, the pursuit of happiness and their balance in the lives of both children and adults.

If this sounds weighty for a children’s movie, you haven’t been paying attention.  Joyce’s long-term concern has always been the very alchemy of happiness, how it functions and how it survives.  His is a unique contemporary voice in that he is devoid of irony, sweet in his sincerity, delighted by his passions and fueled by its sense of wonder.

Rise of the Guardians is an independent entity from Joyce’s current, ongoing Guardians of Childhood series.  The book chronicles how the great figures of children’s folklore – Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Sandman, among others – band together under the guidance of the Man in the Moon to protect the children of the Earth.  Rise takes place several hundreds of years after the book series, with the Guardians already in place and working as a (somewhat argumentative) team.

Rise is told from the point of view of a new character, Jack Frost, the spirit of winter, who is recruited by the Guardians to join their number in a renewed battled against Pitch – also known as the Boogeyman.  It can be regarded as the final origin story for the Guardians, and the starting point for a series of animated adventures.  (One hopes.)  The screenplay, by David Lindsay-Abaire, skillfully mixes comedy and pathos, as well as action scenes and intimate moments that linger in the memory. 

Rise boasts a charming score by Alexandre Desplat, and a closing song performed by soprano Renee Fleming.  Already, the filmmakers win points for creating an animated fantasy that does not include jarring (and ugly) rap and hip hop numbers, fart jokes and puerile pop cultural references.  In an era of animated films that date badly scant months after they are released, Rise will be entertaining children for decades to come.

Rise features a host of spectacular voice performances, starting with Alec Baldwin as Santa Claus.  Baldwin plays the jolly old elf with a heavy Russian accent (as described by Joyce in the books), and seems to be having so much fun, one wonders if he paid Dreamworks in order to do it.  In what is perhaps a nod to his role as announcer for the New York Philharmonic on WNYC, he often uses the names of Russian composers instead of expletives – most wonderfully thundering “Rimsky Korsakov!” when falling down. 

Hugh Jackman is an amusing, brawling Easter Bunny – a significant change of the character from Joyce’s books.  Where Joyce presents the Bunny as something of a furry Mr. Spock, Jackman’s Bunny is a smart-talking Australian tough guy in constant competition against Baldwin’s Santa.  Their backbiting rivalry is one of the chief joys of the film.

Isla Fisher gives voice to the Tooth Fairy, a role written as sweeter and less formidable than her book counterpart.  This works wonderfully well in the context of the film, her warm accessibility balances the more antic vocalizations of Baldwin and Jackman.

However, the two finest performances in the film belong to Chris Pine as Jack Frost and Jude Law as Pitch.   Pine plays Frost with both an edgy insouciance and a wounded melancholy.  Frost is the spirit of winter, but has no memory of his past or sense of purpose.  Worse still, unlike other Guardians, people cannot see him.  Because children do not believe in him with the same fever as Santa or the Bunny, he is incorporeal and invisible.  There is a moment about midway through the film when he can be seen by a child for the first time that had your correspondent blubbering into coat sleeve – it’s a fine performance that is beautifully animated.

Law as Pitch comes very close to stealing the film – it is simply the best vocal performance in an animated film since Peter O’Toole in Ratatouille.  Law shows remarkable vocal range – sinister, seductive, anguished and afraid.  The filmmakers also changed the visual conception of Pitch from that of the novels for the better: he is quite baroque in Joyce’s books, and in the film he is long and sleek in a flowing robe.  Horse-faced with tiny, yet evil looking teeth and a passel of evil stallions (literally night-mares), Pitch is a remarkable creation.

Of course, there are quibbles.  Rise is directed with energy by Peter Ramsey, but one cannot help but think that under the baton of someone like Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton or Steven Spielberg, what now glows would actually shimmer. The action is, to an aged viewer like myself, sometimes too frenetic by half, and I wish that the art direction mirrored Joyce’s earlier books (like his masterful Santa Calls), but these are all minor carps.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the film is the Frost-Pitch duality.  Both suffer the same problem: they are largely invisible because fewer and fewer children believe in them.  While Frost is wounded by this, his natural inclination is to meet the situation with a sense of fun; Pitch to terrify children into belief.  What Lindsay-Abaire’s screenplay does so beautifully is realize that the existential pain is nearly the same for both.  In his monologues, Pitch is nearly as sympathetic as he is menacing, and Law manages to milk that emotional current beautifully.

Finally, the film also seems to be an assertion of the fundamental tenant of Joyce’s overarching philosophy: that high spirits, a sense of fun and a touch of panache is enough to keep even the darkest spirits at bay.  Let’s hope he’s right.

Rise of the Guardians is the perfect holiday film and comes highly recommended.

Fred Plotkin of Operavore: Inaugural Speaker at Salon Thursdays at the Dahesh

To launch the Salon Thursdays series of free lectures at the Dahesh Museum of Art Gift Shop, curators selected one of the most learned and engaging fine arts critics and scholars in New York today, Fred Plotkin.  His presentation, Aida: One Woman, Two Nations, and Verdi’s Egyptomania, will take place at 6:30 PM on October 4^th at the Dahesh Gift Shop at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York.  People interested in attending can call the shop at 212.759.0606, or visit online at http://www.minimusdesign.com/dma/.  If you have an interest in Verdi, opera, or all things Egyptian, this is a must-see event.

Plotkin is familiar to radio listeners for his intermission features during the New York Metropolitan Opera international radio broadcasts, where he does audio essays, intermission features and is a popular guest on the Met's Opera Quiz. His seminars at the Metropolitan Opera Guild are always sold out and he has lectured about opera for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BAM, the Smithsonian, the Morgan Library, the Los Angeles Opera, the Wagner Society of Southern California, the Salzburg Festival and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Plotkin is also the author of the best-selling Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera and Classical Music 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Classical Music, which has also enjoyed a vogue in both the UK and China. 

Readers who are avid WQXR listeners can also read Plotkin’s entertaining and informative blog, Operavore, which can be found at: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/people/fred-plotkin/.  It is highly recommended.

Fred Plotkin took a few moments out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions prior to his lecture this week.

I’ve heard you say that Giuseppe Verdi was one of the most significant figures of the 19^th Century art world in Italy.  Why is that?

I would say that Verdi was the most significant cultural figure in Italy in the 19th Century. His life spanned from 1813-1901 and, though he grew up in a rural setting, he immersed himself in literature and music on his own. With his great genius, rigorous discipline and fiery though compassionate temperament, he saw his art as a vehicle for communicating his principles while never compromising the sheer visceral pleasure that his operas (really, music dramas) provided at the time and still do.

Can you tell us a little bit about how and why Aida was commissioned?

By the time Aïda was commissioned, he was in his mid 50s, the richest and most successful composer in the world. He had not written an opera for several years and could pick and choose his subjects. The commission came from the Khedive of Egypt to coincide with the opening of the Suez Canal and the Cairo Opera House. Ultimately, Rigoletto was the opening opera but Aïda did have its world premiere there. I believe that Verdi viewed Aïda as an opera that was meant for Italians to see and wrote it with them in mind. That will be part of the subject of my talk at the Dahesh Museum.

You have said that Aida is a profoundly political work.  In what way?

Aïda is about how private passions collide with public service. In addition, just because one nation can dominate another militarily, it does not mean that the occupied nation has been conquered on the deepest level. The title character in this opera may be a slave in one country but she does not forget that she is the princess of another. Even the conquerors (the Egyptians in this case) come to realize that their might can only go so far.

How has this work been interpreted – and reinterpreted – over the years?

In countless ways! Perhaps too many. I saw a production in Europe in which the Egyptians were Nazis and the Ethiopians were the oppressed Jews. This completely missed the point of the opera and trivialized the horrors visited upon Jews, gays, Gypsies and others during the Holocaust. I believe, with all operas, that superimposing a concept on an opera only diminishes that work. It is more important for musicians and stage directors to really apply themselves to understanding the intentions and aesthetics of composers and librettists and find inspiration from them.

Can you tell us a little bit about Operavore?  How did it come about?

I was approached by WQXR, America’s iconic classical music radio station, in the winter of 2011 to be a writer for their new blog about opera, then known as WQX-Aria. This was part of the station’s plan to expand its reach and connection with listeners (who are intensely knowledgeable and loyal) and to also create topics for discussion. In short order, the station added an Operavore feed in which you can listen to opera all the time streamed on www.wqxr.org. I was happy to sign on, with the proviso that I not do reviewing because I know so many people in the opera field. Instead, my two articles a week cover a wide range of issues that have opera as a common link. So I might write about singing, teaching opera, production design, politics, sex, food, wine, conducting, finances, and the five senses, all in relation to opera. I do one article a month as part of a series I call Planet Opera, in which I write about one city and its relationship to opera. These have included the more predictable places (Milan, Vienna, Barcelona) but also unusual but significant spots such as Ghent, Genoa and Dublin. Next up is Cincinnati.

Finally, do you have any projects in the pipeline you would like to share with our readers?

I lead a very popular series at the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò of NYU (24 West 12th Street) called “Adventures in Italian Opera” that is free and open to the public. In it, I am joined by great practitioners of Italian opera who come and talk--meaningfully, not superficially--about how they do what they do. This season’s dates are Oct 24 (Remembering Richard Tucker); Nov 9 (David Alden on directing Un Ballo in Maschera); Dec 3 (tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, star of La Clemenza di Tito and La Rondine); Feb 26 (Celebrating Giuseppe Verdi on his bicentennial); Mar 12 (José Cura on performing Otello); Apr 30 (Fabio Luisi, principal conductor of The Metropolitan Opera).

Many thanks to Fred Plotkin – we will be speaking with him again in the future!

The Dahesh Museum Launches Salon Thursdays, Offering Free Lectures at Their New Downtown New York Gift Shop

Last week your correspondent was invited to the grand opening of the new gift shop of the Dahesh Museum of Art, located at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York.  For the past several years the Dahesh has been a museum without walls, as significant portions of this important collection have traveled the world in various shows and exhibitions.  In conjunction with the new store location, the Dahesh has completely revamped their Web site, and readers are urged to visit it to learn about the collection and travelling shows: http://www.daheshmuseum.org.

The new space is also the location of an upcoming series called Salon Thursdays, where leading scholars of the arts will provide free programs starting at 6:30 PM.  For further details, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.  The initial series of Salon Thursdays include:

October 4: Aida: One Woman, Two Nations, and Verdi’s Egyptomania, presented by Fred Plotkin, celebrated author, scholar and blogger on all things opera.  His blog, Operavore (http://www.wqxr.org/#!/people/fred-plotkin/) is highly recommended to anyone interested in Opera and Classical Music.

November 1: Jean-Frederic Waldeck: A Nineteenth-Century Artist Painting Exotic Mexico, presented by Esther Pasztory, Professor of Pre-Columbian Art History at Columbia University, who will discuss the life and work of this quirky Orientalist who went to Mexico and made the ancient Aztecs vivid in an entirely modern way.

December 6: Making Their Mark: Drawing by Academic Artists in the Nineteenth Century, presented by Dr. David Farmer, Director of Exhibitions at the Dahesh, which will explore the role of drawing in the development of those artists who trained in the academies and ateliers of Europe and America in the 19^th Century.

The new store is a treat for aesthetes of all stripes, including beautiful things for the home, reproduction prints and posters, and an impressive collection of scholarly books on the Classical tradition.  More importantly, the offices of the Dahesh are now in one location, allowing museum administrators to better work together on travelling shows and creating a tentpole in Hudson Square to possibly reopen the museum downtown.

Your correspondent is a great believer in the Dahesh and its mission.  It is the only institution in the United States devoted to academic art of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  The curators and scholars there have worked tirelessly to reassert the work of Europe’s academic tradition in the broader context of European and American 19^th Century art.  They have managed to do this elegantly, despite the dismissal of academics chocking on a shallow, Post Modernist aesthetic, and a rapacious art market suspicious of actual beauty.  The genesis of the collection was assembled by Salim Moussa Achi (1909-1948), who envisioned a museum of academic European art.  Perhaps one day the dream will become a reality once again.

Tomorrow we will share a few words with Fred Plotkin, first speaker in the Salon Thursdays series and blogger at Operavore.

Tempest Tossed

Last night the Julliard School, along with actors Richard Clifford and Monica Raymund, performed selected readings from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, accompanied by 17^th century songs and instrumental pieces.  WQXR, an oasis in a culturally retrenching New York, provided live streaming of the event.  (If you missed it last night, it will be repeated on the WQXR Web site, wqxr.org, Sunday, June 26^th, at 4:00 p.m.)

The great reason to have tuned in (or to tune in on Sunday) was that Sir Derek Jacobi joined the company to read Prospero.  This is obviously the summer of Jacobi for lucky New Yorkers; in addition to his magnificent Lear at BAM, lucky Gothamites had the opportunity to meet him at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine last week, or watch him perform in last night’s staged reading.

Sadly, last night’s reading of The Tempest was surely the least of these events.  Jacobi, as usual, was brilliant as the exiled magician of Shakespeare’s greatest play.  It’s just that the surrounding mediocrity did little to support the great man.

I knew we were in trouble when Richard Clifford, who directed and adapted the production, opened the evening by coming onstage and explaining how he adapted Shakespeare.  Clifford came across as so horrifically unctuous, so vulgarly “artistic,” that the evening had trouble recovering from its own introduction.  (Clifford did not quite open with, “greetings culture lovers and doily sniffers,” but it sure was close.)  It is this unintentional camp that often prevents people from embracing the fine arts.  Clifford is a fairly wretched actor, to boot.  His Caliban was a more reminiscent of Snidely Whiplash than that tormented creation; he could give cartoons a bad name.

He was abetted by Monica Raymund, playing the major female parts of Ariel and Miranda.  She failed at both.  Countertenor David Daniels, baritone Bob McDonald and Juilliard415, the school’s student historical performance group, were also in the cast.   They left no impression on me whatsoever.

The Juilliard benefit reading employed Shakespeare’s text from a 1674 staging of The Tempest as well as other period works; the composers included Matthew Locke, John Banister, Pelham Humfrey, Georg Frideric Handel and Antonino Reggio.  Amazingly, they managed to fit all of this into a brief 90 minutes.

Enough with the bad (and heaven knows there was enough of it) and on with the good.  No, make that great.  Though only a staged reading, Jacobi’s Prospero was a marvel.  Because Prospero includes some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful language, it has become the custom for actors to sing the part.  Sir John Gielgud was the most egregious offender is this respect, but his beautiful voice made it a forgivable sin.  Frank Langella, one of our finest North American classical actors, mostly sang the part during his New York run (with a fabulous B. D. Wong as Caliban); Patrick Stewart, playing Prospero in New York’s Central Park and later Broadway managed to avoid this trap.

But Jacobi absented the over-sweetness so common in the part during last night’s reading.  Jacobi delineated the full man: wizard, dreamer, victim, avenger, and redeemer.  He is certainly among the small handful of brilliant classical actors working today, and for the brief snippets we were afforded his Prospero, everything else was forgivable.

A few words now about WQXR.  It’s amazing that New York, one of the great cultural centers of the free world, has only one radio station dedicated to classical music.  It was previously owned by the New York Times, but the newspaper unloaded the station last year as a cost-saving measure.  It has been a public station ever since, and relies on the generosity of its listeners.  I urge my readers to listen – and to give – to WQXR.  It’s 105.9 on the dial, but can be heard online at www.wqxr.org.  The playlist is often magnificent, and most of the on-air personalities easy-to-take.  Anyone involved in the arts should make time to get aquatinted with this wonderful resource.