The Rubin Museum’s series Spiral Music once again presented transcendent sounds in the playing of Max ZT on the dulcimer and Sam Sadigursky on the flute last evening (9/14/11).
Max ZT may indeed be lauded as the “Jim Hendrix of Hammered Dulcimer,” but in the playing we heard, the transcendent overshown the fiery and the improvisatory sounds led, but didn’t hammer on our psyches. This was the duo’s first collaboration, and we hope that we will more.
Following the music, the Rubin’s film series presented To Be A Buddhist Nun, the New York Premiere of "In the Shadow of Buddha". Shot by Heather Kessinger, the film took us to the seldom-seen world of Buddhist nuns in Tibet and refugees in Ladakh, a region in northernmost India.
Most of the nuns were old, wrinkled and with missing or deformed teeth, visual images seldom seen on movie screens. Although shown with prayer wheels or in services, or with prayer wheels, in their words the nuns lamented their lack of education and their second-class status in this Buddhist tradition. “A woman who has been a nun for 100 years must bow to a man who has been a monk for only one day”.
