Thanks for stopping by. My name is John Patrick and Attitude LLC is the name of my company. My activities include writing, speaking, and board service. I am fortunate to have quite a few affiliations and I get to work with people from whom I am constantly learning. Prior to “e-tirement”, I was vice president of Internet Technology at IBM Corporation. Nearly everything I have ever said or written is here at patrickWeb or in my book, Net Attitude. The patrickWeb blog contains more than 1,000 posts. I hope you enjoy reading some of them. Get the email version of patrickWeb if you prefer. Find me on Facebook. Follow me on twitter. You can also find me in Wikipedia.

Genesys XVIII

The 17th Annual Genesys Partners Venture Dinner — Gen XVII– Monday night at the Union League Club in New York attracted more than 100 venture capitalists, investors, journalists, entrepreneurs, and industry executives. As always, Jim Kollegger — CEO of Genesys Partners and one of the pioneers of the information industry — was an elegant master of ceremonies. He introduced the various sponsors, next day panelists for the SIIA Conference, several startup CEO’s, and a few of us who have been around the block a few times, each to make some comments.

Like a broken record, I offered the normal upbeat view of the future of the Internet but prefaced my remarks by asserting that we are only 10% of the way there. In other words, of all the things that could be done on the Internet that would save us time and make our lives better, only 10% of them are there. It may sound low but consider retail e-commerce. Although there has been continuous and steady growth of retail e-commerce it still represents just 4% of total retail (as of the end of October). Why isn’t it 25% or more? Much is written about that here at patrickWeb but the short version is that there are still a lot of lame web sites. “Click here for the location of our nearest dealer where you can visit” or “call to buy the product you just found” or “Click here to download this form and fax it to us”. And of course there are the ubiquitous clipboards at doctor offices where we take a pen and provide a lot of information information that they already have.

I described one man’s view of the evolution of the Internet including the seven characteristics below. This parsed way of looking at the Internet has served me well for quite a few years. The things going on under each area continuously change and Jim asks me once a year to do a thumbnail sketch of my latest thinking.

Fast
Broadband in the U.S. is not a pretty story compared to other parts of the world. We are second after China in number of broadband users, but 28th in the world in number of broadband users as a percentage of our population. The problem is that there are too many lobbyists and the FCC is a political organization. The new FCC head is a very smart guy with venture and business experience. He totally gets it. The only problem is that AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have more lawyers than he does. Meanwhile France is offering 100 megabit access for $90 per month and WiFi throughout the country. Thanks to the telco lobby, many states have banned the offering of WiFi by municipal entities. Every citizen in Greenland has Internet access. We have 31,000 post offices.

Always On

WiFi is part of the fabric of the world. The big shift is streaming of data — not just tweets, but data from *things*. Bridges, toll booths, traffic lights, buildings, cars, and health monitoring devices attached to people. Hospital physicians will soon be adjusting the drip rate on infusion pumps in the hospital from their office based on real-time data from the patient. The WiFi infusion pumps enable hospital administrators to know where the pumps are (they never have enough of them) and which ones need maintenance. The creation of data is staggering. Of all the data in the world, 90% of it was created in the last two years. YouTube receives 60 hours of new video every hour. Wikipedia has 4 million articles and 8,000 editors.

Everywhere
There are one billion computers (including tablets), one billion cars, 1.5 billion televisions, and 2 billion Internet users. Small numbers compared to cell phones — 5.2 billion paid subscribers. The Internet used to be where your PC is, now it is where you are.  Most of the cell phones are dumb but soon most of them will be smart and they will all have Internet access. The mobile web is unfolding and is taking part in creating data in addition to consuming it through streaming. When you take a picture on your iPhone, it goes into the photostream and from there to iCloud and from there to all of your other devices.  

Natural
Social networking has become fundamental to all aspects of our economy and society. Integration of social networking with a full range of web applications will evolve to become the primary means of collaboration. The emerging issue is that many people are a bit liberal with sharing their every movement — what they are eating, listening to, where they are headed, their current latitude and longitude, and where they slept last night. They are not thinking that some day they may run for office or interview for a job. OpenSocial is an important new standard that will enable social media apps that work across all of the social media sites. The Europeans may legislate it, but regardless, a capability is needed to be able to remove things from the social media.

Intelligent
The Semantic Web is the next big turn of the crank but the crank is moving slowly. Most web pages have links but do not have context. In other words the words on the page do not necessarily mean anything — but they could. If a web page said “Join us for a concert by The Eagles at Kimmel Center in Philadelphia next Tuesday” that set of words could have a lot of context. Clicking on it could add the concert to your calendar, knowing what “next Tuesday” means. It would also know exactly where the Kimmel Center is and that The Eagles is a performing group that performs a particular genre and your music player would receive a list of suggestions of music they have recorded or links to live concerts under way at the moment. This is the tip of the iceberg. The semantic web will lead us to a point where most of the interactions of web pages will be between computers not between computers and people. The biggest growth of intelligence is occurring in the field of analytics. Exabytes of data are being stored. Analytics will enable businesses to make sense of it, model their business and continuously adapt to what is going on. IBM’s Watson took on humans on the Jeopardy Show, but what is more interesting is the ability for a primary care physician to call and get a recomendation based on patient data they describe to Watson. Within a couple of seconds Watson will be able to review all medical information in the world and make a useful suggestion. Business Intelligence and analytics are poised to enable new insight into the mounds of data that are being accumulated.

Easy
Technology isn’t the easiest thing at times. There are many dimensions to “easy” but one good example is the Nintendo Wii. At a local senior center, members find the Wii to be their exercise coach. It is not just for kids! The iPhone and iPad have shown how easy it can be to get applications on a handheld computer. Amazon has done the same with the Kindle. Most companies still don’t get the idea that the Internet is about power to the people. If you can’t make it simple, people won’t buy it. Cloud computing has become the mainstay for me and for millions. The convenience and reliability of the clouds is compelling. Add Dropbox and you have a completely replicated set of data, wherever you are and with whatever device you may be using. How about TV? Three remotes — BlueRay, Cable box, and TV — include 151 buttons. Even a savvy child could not possibly master this impossible user interface. Boxee TV has produced a good model of the future of TV, but I suspect that an upcoming Apple TV will be what finally provides the needed regime change.

Trusted
This is the big one. Will we trust the Internet? Security technology is available to achieve much higher levels of security than presently deployed both at enterprise and consumer levels. It is a constant battle and requires significant budgets and a lot of talented people to maintain the needed security. The bigger issue will be privacy. (Stay tuned for the Firefox “do not track” feature). Banks have our personal information and they are using it. Healthcare insurers have more information about our health than our doctors do. Nevertheless, there is much to be optimistic about when it comes to electronic medical records. Perhaps 25% of doctors and hospitals use them but they are not easily interchangeable and accessible. This will change over the next few years as the government adds dollar incentives to make it happen. The result will be better quality of care, better outcomes, and fewer errors. And, fewer clipboards.

On Wednesday I gave a talk about the Future of the Internet and Healthcare at the SIIA Conference. The presentation can be found here.

Other patrickWeb conference related stories

Tags: broadband, fcc, future, health, health care, Healthcare, IBM, internet, ipad, iPhone, jeopardy, john patrick, Mobile, opera, siia, social media, supercomputer, union league, WiFi

Big Data

The storage capacities of laptop and desktop computers has been growing rapidly, but the growth may not be fast enough. According to IBM, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. Perhaps quintillions of bytes are not meaningful to most of us, but it is the growth rate that is staggering — 90% of all the data in the world has been created in the last two years. Where does all the data come from? Data comes from everywhere: from sensors used to gather climate information, physiological readings taken 1,000 times per second from a patient, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and cell phone GPS coordinates to name just a few. Collectively, the phenomenon is called “big data”. (See  IBM Big data and information integration for smarter computing).

Note: Data is plural. The singular term is datum. Should we say data is or data are? There are many views on which is right.

 IBM describes big data as spanning three dimensions: Variety, Velocity and Volume.  Variety refers to the fact that big data extends beyond structured data like we might find in a spread sheet. It includes unstructured data such as text documents, email, audio and video recordings, click streams from the web, log files that record financial and business transactions, and much more. Velocity of data refers to the fact that data can be time-sensitive such as bid and ask data in a financial market or physiological data that affect the lives of patients. In these cases, historical data is interesting but real-time data is critical. The third parameter is volume. IBM says that big data comes in one size: large. Organizations are flooded with data — terabytes, petabytes, or even yottabytes.

Big data is a challenge in various technical ways, but more importantly, it is an opportunity to find insight in new and emerging types of data and to answer questions that, in the past, were not possible to analyze effectively. Data that has been hidden can be surfaced and acted upon. The result can be a more agile organization or in the case of health care, better outcomes for patients.  Picture a hospital neonatal environment where a plethora of medical monitors connected to babies are used to alert hospital staff to potential health problems before patients develop clinical signs of infection or other issues. There are breakthroughs on the horizon for how this will be done. Today the instrumentation generates huge amounts of information — up to 1,000 readings per second — which is summarized into one reading every 30 to 60 minutes. The information is stored for up to 72 hours and is then discarded. If the stream of data could be captured, stored and analyzed in real-time there could be a huge opportunity to improve the quality of care for special-care babies.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Ontario, Canada developed such a vision and is acted on it. Dr. Carolyn McGregor, Canada research chair in health informatics at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology visited researchers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center who are working on a new stream-computing platform to support healthcare analytics. A three-way collaboration was established, with each group bringing a unique perspective — the hospital focus on patient care, the university’s ideas for using the data stream, and IBM providing the advanced analysis software and information technology expertise needed to turn the vision into reality. The result of the collaboration was Project Artemis which pairs IBM scientists with clinicians and`researchers to explore how emerging technologies can solve real-world business problems, in this case developing a highly flexible platform that aims to help physicians make better, faster decisions regarding patient care for a wide range of conditions. At the Children’s hospital the focus is real-time detection of the onset of nosocomial infection (often called hospital-acquired infection). Regulatory, ethical, privacy, and safety issues were addressed and then two infant beds were instrumented and connected to the system for data collection. The team then created an algorithm that deciphered the streaming data. By establishing the impact of moving a baby or changing its diaper, those things can be filtered out to help spot the telltale signs of nosocomial infection.

Dr. Andrew James, staff neonatologist, at the Hospital for Sick Children is optimistic that as they learn more they will be able to account for variations in individual patients and eventually be able to integrate data inputs such as lab results and observational notes. In the future, any condition that can be detected through subtle changes in the underlying data streams can be the target of the system’s early-warning capabilities. It is likely that sensors attached to or even implanted in the body will allow monitoring of important conditions from home or anywhere. Big data has the potential to improve the health of patients whever they may be.

Other healthcare-related stories on patrickWeb

Tags: analytics, big data, health, Healthcare, hospital, IBM, monitoring, neonatal

Atoms by the Dozen

IBM has just made a huge advance in atomic-scale magnetic memory. The MacBook I am typing this story on stores one bit of data in about 1 million atoms. With IBM’s new atomic-scale magnetic memory, 12 is the new million. The nanotechnology breakthrough will lead to storage that is 100 times more dense than today’s hard disk drives. IBM said that an entire music and movie collection could fit on a charm-sized pendant you wear around your neck. Hard drives have continually improved in storage and cost, but the current technology is running into physical limitations. Scientists at IBM Research have been working  at the atomic scale for decades, but only recently has it advanced to the point that it looks like their work will produce the ultimate memory chips of the future. Operating at incredibly cold temperatures, the IBM researchers have been able to manipulate 12 atoms into what they describe as a stable magnetic storage unit. Once a manufacturing technique is devised, putting many millions of atoms together will result in a highly energy-efficient, no-moving-parts, storage system capable of changing the way we think of information. For many people, today’s storage capacity is more than adequate, but the deluge of data from video, GPS locations, sensors, and social media interactions will demand significantly more storage capacity in the near future.  IBM says that everyday we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. The rate of increasing data creation is so fast that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.

 Smaller Magnetic Materials Push Boundaries of Nanotechnology – from the New York Times
 YouTube video of IBM physicist explaining the new breakthrough

Tags: antiferromagnetic, atom, IBM, nano, nanotechnology, research

Aviation Rekindled

My interest in aviation began when I was stationed at MacDill Air Force base in 1970. My private pilot license was issued 1/15/1971, a mere forty years ago. A commerical license followed in 1976 and then an instrument rating in 1977. After moving to Connecticut in 1981, the flying days were over. The topic of aviation was rekindled by Nick Nash, a summer intern at IBM shortly after we had formed the Internet Division of the company 15 years ago. Nick went on to get a degree, magna cum laude, at Harvard. He is now a Vice President at General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm. Nick was an excellent communicator and he asked me one day if he could do an interview on the subject of aviation. Nick titled the interview “I really prefer having an engine!”

Ten years later, I got very interested in aviation once again when the Elipse 500 was announced. The Eclipse was the first of a new class of aircraft called the Very Light Jet (VLJ). With a number of breakthroughs in aviation technology, the Eclipse promised to offer a dramatically more affordable business model for jet aircraft. The small six-seat business jet is powered by two lightweight Pratt & Whitney Canada PW610F turbofan engines. Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in 2008. A new company was formed recently and they are building a new version of the aircraft, to be called the Eclipse 550, with planned deliveries in 2013.

Another VLJ was announced in 2006 — the Embraer Phenom 100 — developed by Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. The Phenom was much more appealing than the Eclipse — significantly more space, larger windows, and great performance. My partners at Executive Jet Partners LLC (EJP) and I ordered a Phenom in 2006 and just over three year later, I went to Brazil to bring it back to Connecticut. It was quite an adventure. See the full story here.

EJP is a private company owned by three retired executives in Connecticut who have a love of aviation.  Two of the three are private pilots and all three love to fly.  EJP took ownership of the Embraer Phenom 100 executive jet in October 2009.  The Phenom has six seats – two for the pilots and four for passengers. It is certified by the FAA for single-pilot operation, but most passengers are more comfortable with two pilots up front. It can fly 1,365 miles non-stop at 41,000 feet altitude at an airspeed of  435 mph. Like many aircraft owners, EJP makes the Phenom available for charter when the partners are not using it. We hope to make a business out of aviation charter. To make that happen requires a good partner who is an expert in managing aircraft. Enter Corporate Flight Management (CFM). CFM is a private Smyrna, Tennessee company that manages aircraft; provides marketing, dispatch, and scheduling; coordinates maintenance; and provides pilot services. (See the CFM blogs for some interesting aviation commentary). CFM pilots are experienced professionals and are trained and certified in the aircraft that they fly. CFM has a division based in Danbury, Connecticut and currently has seven airplanes in their fleet, two of which are Phenom 100s. See the entire CFM fleet here.

Chartering a private aircraft is not inexpensive, but it is incredibly convenient.  When sharing the cost among multiple passengers, the cost approaches first class airfare.  One of the many advantages of private aviation is that the aircraft can take off and land at thousands of airports not serviced by the airlines.  For example, if you have a business or a personal reason to go from Danbury, Connecticut to Springfield, Illinois, there are no direct flights. A connecting flight through O’hare in Chicago departs Laguardia at 6 AM and gets into Springfield at 9:18.  If you live in Danbury, you would have to leave home at 3:30 AM. The available return flights take four hours or more. One flight leaves at 12:15 PM (which leaves you about an hour for your visit) or at 6:20 PM, arriving into Laguardia at midnight and getting home almost 24 hours from when you got up. A charter flight can depart directly from Danbury at 7:15 AM and arrive in Springfiled at 9:15 AM. You can arrive at the Danbury Airport at 7:05 and be in the air at 7:15 AM. You can take whatever baggage you want and use your laptop from takeoff to landing. Without even mentioning amenities, the best part is the return flight. It would be scheduled whenever you choose to depart. You can bring as much baggage as you want and be productive for your entire flight. The cost would be significantly higher than a commercial flight, but the convenience is incomparable.

Charter is not for everyone. It is incredibly convenient albeit very expensive. But if you want to splurge for that special vacation in Florida, Canada, or the Bahamas, or if you have a business trip where productivity and your time are valuable, then charter is worth considering. When it comes to passengers on a charter, you can have the plane to yourself, or bring three to seven others (depending on what kind of plane you charter) with you at no additional cost — you charter an airplane, not a seat. An interesting approach to sharing is at Social Flights – a startup company that is using the power of the Internet to enable like-minded travelers to find each other and share the cost of a charter. If you have questions about a charter or want to get a no-charge quote for a flight, contact CFM  at 615-220-1761, or e-mail them at charter.dispatchers@flycfm.com. If you just want to chat further about any of this, feel free to contact me at john@executivejetpartners.com.

Tags: Aviation, brazil, charter, embraer, flying, phenom

e-shipping

All the retailers are trying to become e-tailers so that Amazon doesn’t take all their business from them. They have a very long way to go to get with the program. Amazon has been honing their web presence for 16 years and they have it down to a science — and to putting the customer first. Seems everything they do makes sense. Amazon Prime, for example, is fantastic. Some of the things aspiring e-tailers do make no sense. My wife ordered a pair of gloves for one of our daughters-in-law. The unbreakable product arrived in a box that could have contained a suitcase or a television. The unbreakable unscratchable gloves were surrounded by enough packing material to handle a few table settings worth of dishes. Go figure.

Tags: amazon, e-tailers, online retail, prime shipping

Kindle Update

Thanks to Mary Keough, over at IBM, for reading my post and correcting me on the weight of the Kindle Touch. I was thinking of the new $79 Kindle when I said six ounces. I weighed four devices this morning to make sure I got this right. Here is what I found.

I have to admit that I am vascillating a bit between the Kindle and the Kindel Touch. They are both very light and a pleasure to read on. The touch screen is nice, but the simple buttons on the Kindle create a certainty about your intentions. When I swipe, sometimes I go back a page to make sure I had not swiped two pages. With the Kindle, a click is always “a” click. All the Kindle devices are great, and I suspect the Fire will keep getting better with software updates and follow-on models.

Mary asked about the advertising and quetioned whether it is worth the extra $30 on the Kindle or $40 on the Touch to get the device “without special offers”. My opinion is that it is not worth the extra money. The special offers appear as a screen saver when you stop reading. They are totally unobtrusive. You can easily not even notice them. If you want to look more closely and are interested in something being offered, you can go for it. Speaking of reading, the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was really great (see Apple at Grand Central Terminal). I am now reading Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett. I have read most of his books, and this one too is really good so far. 

 Other patrickWeb stories related to the Kindle

Tags: amazon, apple, fall of giants, fire, founders hall, ipad, iPhone, isaacson, ken follett, Kindle, kindle fire, kindle touch, steve jobs

Kindle Fire – Part 2

On September 28, Amazon announced three new Kindles — a $79 Kindle, the $99 Kindle Touch, and the $199 Android-based color touch screen Kindle Fire tablet. Technology pundits have criticized the Kindle Fire’s touch screen and various aspects of the user interface (see Daily Report: Kindle Fire Attracts Critics, and Buyers – NYTimes.com). I have observed the shortcomings also, but I think the device has a market niche that will be well served — people who like to read books. At $199, it is less than half the cost of an iPad. Amazon will relentlessly promote the Fire on its site and is rumored to be nearly ready to provide software updates for better performance and improved user interface.

I remain a believer in purpose-built devices. The iPad is great for documents, weather, stocks, surfing the web, and reading books at the kitchen counter. The Kindle Fire is great for reading books. That is what it does best. It can also do most everything the iPad can, but not everything. I don’t see myself giving a slide presentation with a projector and the Fire. I don’t plan to put 40 gigtabytes of dropbox folders containing all my data on the Fire. The Fire is great for reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie. It is basically a media player. You can do many tablet computing tasks, but that is not what it is best at. The device I like the best for reading books is the new Kindle Touch. It weighs six ounces and has no moving parts. Turning pages and setting bookmarks is as easy as a touch. You can change the font size to the optimum and read comfortably for long periods of time wherever you may be — incuding outdoors in the sun, which you can do with an iPad. If I am at the kitchen counter and want to read for ten minutes, I launch the Kindle app on the iPad and it automatically takes me to wherever I left off on the Fire or iPhone or wherever I last read — a seamless experience. So many gadgets, so little time! I plan to donate the entry-model Kindle to the senior center.

Tags: amazon, apple, fire, founders hall, ipad, iPhone, Kindle, kindle fire, kindle touch

Why You Should Embrace Your Company’s Heretics

CNNMoney’s Fortune published a story last week called Why You Should Embrace Your Company’s Heretics. The story was written by Polly LaBarre. I have not talked to Polly for ten years but we did attended a number of the same conferences back then. This new story described my evangelism of the Internet and she said some complimentary things. The story is accurate, but I never thought of myself as a heretic. One fellow board member who read the story sent me a note saying he thought heretics were burned at the stake. Back in 2006, Polly and Bill Taylor, founding editor of Fast Company Magazine, wrote a book called Mavericks at Work where they described 50 “mavericks”. I was one of them, but had not yet been promoted or demoted (not sure which it would be) to “heretic”. I was labeled with the term “rebel” by Gary Hamel in his Waking Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue that appeared in the Harvard Business Review in April 2001. A few months before that, Fast Company magazine published an interview I did with Polly where we talked about technology futures (see Think Ahead: John Patrick). The only heretic I can think of is ”Homer the Heretic” — an episode of The Simpsons‘, which originally aired in 1992.

Tags: CNNMoney, Fast Company, Fortune, Fortune Magazine, Harvard Business Review, heretic, IBM, john patrick

Apple at Grand Central Terminal

It was a coincidence that I had a board meeting in New York City yesterday, on the day that Apple was opening it’s fifth retail store there. The store opening was planned for 10 AM with collector teeshirts to be given to the first 4,000 visitors. I arrived at Grand Central Station from Connecticut at 8 AM and there was already a line of 2,500 people. When I returned to the train station at 2PM, the shirts had been gone for two hours. I was one of the many thousands who visited the store, which will have 315 employees. Some day my grandchildren’s grandchilren will tell friends that their Pop Pop was there on opening day.  The Wall Street Journal reported that more people visit an Apple store each quarter than visit Disney’s four biggest theme parks in a year. It was quite a site to be there yesterday. I took some pictures but the one’s in the WSJ are much better. There is a short video done by Engadget that is worth looking at (see  Apple just arrived at Grand Central Terminal, we hop aboard video).

After visiting the new Apple store, I could not help but think about Steve Jobs. He will be revered for many generations as a great innovator and business leader. After you read his biography by Walter Isaacson, you will also respect this great biographer. I met Walter in 1996 just before he became editor of Time Magazine and I was greatly impressed with his embrace of the Internet. He came to IBM with some colleagues and we brainstormed about how the publisher might take advantage of the Web. None of us really knew the right strategy at the time, and unfortunately, the publishing industry still has not figured it out. Industry by industry, it was Steve Jobs who showed the way.

Steve Jobs – by Walter Isaacson is already the biggest selling biography of all times.  Jobs not only authorized the biography but gave Isaacson access to his home, his family, and his innermost thoughts over a two-year period leading up to just before his death. Great biographers write about great people. Isaacson’s books about Benjamin Franklin and Einstein were great but much harder for me to read. The Jobs biography read more smoothly in part because I could identify directly with the technology issues so aptly described in the book. I know or have met many of the characters in the book. Although not a technologist, Isaacson did a gret job in desscribing the technolgy issues in layman terms. He offered an insight that will help many readers better understand the impact and potential of technology.

The basic premise of the Steve Jobs philosophy was to create a simplified and integrated experience for the consumer. Critics say that the integration of iMacs, iPods, iPads, etc. with iTunes and Mac OSX represents a monopolistic strategy. After reading the biography, I suspect most people will be convinced that it was an intense desire to make things easier has been the driver. Jobs would say that products and profits are both important, but elegant and simplified products are most important. It was the intense drive and focus of Steve Jobs that made such products available to the mass market and catapulted Apple to become the most valuable company in the world. 

I continue to believe that the Amazon Kindle is the best platform for reading books, but I read the Steve Jobs biography on the iPad. 

Tags: apple, ipad, isaacon, steve jobs

Johannes Brahms

The Variations on a Theme of Haydn by Johannes Brahms was good, the Suite from The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was excellent , but the Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 2 was fantastic. His second symphony was composed by Brahms, the German compser,  during a visit to Austria during the summer of 1877. The composition was short compared to the reported fifteen years it took Brahms to complete his First Symphony. The second symphony was scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and a strings section. The Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra is 70+ in size and performed the symphony with great aplomb. It was the best orchestral sound I can recall hearing from the RSO in the three decades I have been listening to them. Maestro Steichen was masterful and articulated every detail of the Brahams composition. We are fortunate to have such a great orchestra in our community.

Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1833, 42 years after Mozart had passed away. He lived to be 64, much longer than normal at the time, and he was interred next to Beethoven and Schubert, two composers he greatly admired. I find it interesting that Brahms met with Wagner in Vienna and they listened to each others music. Among his works were the Hungarian Dances, four symponies, a half-dozen great piano sonatas, including the Ave Maria. I love music of all kinds, but on Sundays I listen only to classical music. I am grateful for Pandora which lets me select from so many excellent streaming channels. Today I listed to Boston Baroque.

Tags: brahms, classical music, germany, Ridgefield, symphony