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ELIZABETHTOWN, PA (10/13/2011)(readMedia)– the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) granted $2,500 to Elizabethtown Public Library (EPL) to support programs featuring the documentary “Louisa may Alcott: the Woman Behind little Women” and the companion biography of the same name. Elizabethtown College partnered with Bethleen Bradford, ELP Outreach Services Coordinator, project coordinator and author of the grant, to bring these events to the community and provided additional funding for author Harriet Reisen’s visit to Elizabethtown.

Thirty selected libraries will present programs focused on Alcott, her body of work and her era. the libraries enlist a lead project scholar with expertise in 19th-century American history or literature to help present and plan programs. Dr. Kimberly VanEsveld Adams, associate professor of English at Elizabethtown College, is the EPL scholar.

The grant programming is structured around the award-winning documentary by Harriet Reisen and Nancy Porter, “Louisa may Alcott: the Woman Behind little Women.” Though Louisa may Alcott is best known as the author of children’s stories, “Little Women,” “Little Men” and “Jo’s Boys,” as well as “An Old-Fashioned Girl” and “Eight Cousins,” the author began her career writing thrillers or gothic tales under the pen name a.M. Barnard.

Alcott also wrote “grown-up” novels – “Hospital Sketches,” about service as a Civil War nurse; “Work: a Story of Experience,” a novel about a young woman’s struggle to find employment; and “Transcendental Wild Oats,” a dark but funny story about disastrous utopian community called Fruitlands.

A screening of the film “Louisa may Alcott: the Woman Behind little Women” takes place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in Brinser Lecture Room in Steinman Hall at Elizabethtown College. the documentary, by Nancy Porter and Alcott biographer Harriet Reisen, was originally broadcast on the PBS series “American Masters.” Parking for the film is available on College Avenue and Alpha Drive and in the Leffler Chapel and Performance Center parking lot.

Biographer Reisen will be on the Elizabethtown College campus at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, to speak on “Louisa may Alcott: the Woman Behind little Women.” Discussion of the biography includes clips from the documentary and takes place in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center. Discover what makes Alcott a woman for all ages. there is no registration for this program sponsored by Elizabethtown Public Library, Office of the Provost, the English Department and the Women and Gender Studies program.

Additional Alcott programs include:

• “Alcott’s Pen, Prose, Men, and Martyrs: Louisa may Alcott’s Civil War Saga,” with Jean-Paul Benowitz, assistant director of Academic Advising and adjunct professor of History, at Elizabethtown College. at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 29, in Elizabethtown Public Library Auditorium, lower level, 10 S. Market St., Benowitz explores how Alcott’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction and literature was largely influenced by the Civil War and the men in her life. Benowitz discloses how, first and foremost, Alcott’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, and his associates, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Theodore Parker, William Ellery Channing, and William Lloyd Garrison and her teachers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne, shaped her world view. Preregister for this program. Space is limited.
• “Gothic: Louisa may Alcott’s Thrillers,” a talk by Dr. Kimberly VanEsveld Adams, associate professor of English at Elizabethtown College, and Meghan FitzGerald, an Alcott enthusiast and author of an upcoming book about the writer, takes place at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1, in Brinser Lecture Room, Steinman Hall, at Elizabethtown College. Adams and FitzGerald will discuss Alcott’s thrillers, written under a pen name to support her family. Discover the Alcott works you probably never read. often called Gothic literature, these are the works Louisa described as “blood and thunder” stories. Preregister for this event.
• “Corsets, (Un)employment, Education: Louisa may Alcott and All Kinds of Reforms” with Dr. Kimberly VanEsveld Adams, associate professor of English, explores Alcott’s reform agendas and the impact she had among her contemporaries and throughout history. the program begins at 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, in Bucher Meetinghouse, Young Center for Anabaptists and Pietist Studies, at Elizabethtown College. Registration is requested.

All Louisa may Alcott events are free and open to the public. They are part of the programming organized by Elizabethtown Public Library, funded by an ALA/NEH grant with generous support from the Elizabethtown College Provost’s Office.

To register for any of the Louisa may Alcott programs, contact Elizabethtown Public Library at 717-367-7467 or online. Contact: Kimberly Adams, associate professor of English at Elizabethtown College, at 717-361-1230 or , or Bethleen Bradford, Outreach Services Coordinator at Elizabethtown Public Library, at 717-367-7467, ext. 28, or .

More program information is available on the Elizabethtown Public Library website.

Read about additional events at Elizabethtown College.

Elizabethtown College, in south-central Pennsylvania, is a private coed institution offering more than four dozen liberal arts, fine and performing arts, science and engineering, business, communications and education degrees. Through personal attention, creative inspiration and academic challenge, Elizabethtown College students are encouraged to expand their intellectual curiosity and are given the opportunity to become a bigger part of the world through experiential learning-research, internships and study abroad. Elizabethtown College’s overall commitment to Educate for Service is fulfilled as students are taught intellectually, socially, aesthetically and ethically for lives of service and leadership.

Visit etown.edu for more information about Elizabethtown College.

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Elizabethtown College

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With Ramsbottom Festival just around the corner, Young Knives’ Tom speaks to Skiddle about festivals, the ‘pop’ industry and why he’s glad Kurt Cobain never had a Twitter.

In a few weeks time you will be playing Ramsbottom Festival. as a band, do you enjoy festival season?

Yeah definitely! Its gets you in front of a whole bunch that wouldn’t necessarily come to watch your gig if you were playing somewhere if they didn’t know who you were, so they would probably never ordinarily watch your show. At a festival they’re there and cant run away. It’s weird as well, as sometimes you get a good reaction and people are loving it and then you occasionally have those people who don’t really like you and are just stood there leaning on the barrier looking bored, waiting for the next band to come on. But yeah, I like festivals.

The last time we spoke to you was just before Kendal Calling. How did that go, and what other festivals have you played since?

Kendal Calling was good actually. We’ve not done that one before; it’s a nice little festival. It’s well laid out and not totally crammed. I went to one in London recently and it was so packed full of people. they must have sold as many tickets as humanly possible. It’s nice to do ones that are punter friendly. T in the Park isn’t very punter friendly. It’s as if its set up just to make as much money as possible. You can’t take water or food into the site. the smaller ones that people are doing now are far better as you don’t feel like your getting scammed.

You’ve obviously played lots of festivals. are there any that you would like to play that you haven’t played yet?

Some of the European ones. We’ve done a bit of stuff in Europe but this year we haven’t – nobody seems to have wanted us! some of those out there look really good, like Benicassim and Pukkelpop, although that has been a bit of a nightmare recently.

So you’ve been in the music scene for over 13 years. what do you think was a turning point in Young Knives’ career? when did people start to take notice?

It was sort of a gradual thing really. It sounds kind of boring but it was mostly about getting people interested enough to want to represent you either record company wise, management wise or even just spreading the word for you. You can’t really do it alone. It was all word of mouth really, weather its fans or local radio, so it was a gradual process. there were certain things that happened that were pivotal moments. when we signed up to a management company first time round and we had someone on our side doing things for us and talking to record companies. although it doesn’t sound very exciting, it was kind of pivotal in a way.

Well it was only quite recently that the social networking side of things took off, whereas when you started out there wasn’t really any of that. Do you think it was much harder back then?

I don’t think it affected us that much. now with the Facebook, MySpace and Twitters – everybody’s got one. There’s nothing sort of special about it. when we were first playing, MySpace came out and people were saying to sign up. then suddenly loads of people were on it because it was somewhere you could listen to bands and not pay any money, but then it eventually ran its course as a new and exciting phenomenon.

Do you think social media promotion has got a bit too much now?

Well there’s just too much to see now isn’t there? I mean it’s great when you hear of a band and you want to know what they sound like – there’s a whole myriad of places you can go to hear them and that’s great because that never used to be available. You would have to get a copy of a tape off your friend back in the day.

It obviously affects people who would have gone and bought a single as they are not doing that anymore. I think the main thing that’s a bit depressing about it is that there’s no mystery surrounding anybody in a band. We’ve got a Twitter and a Facebook and people are just constantly messaging you and stuff. I sometimes think I don’t want to be sat on here and be saying ‘yeah, I’m just having a cheese and ham sandwich’ etc… If I would have sat there when I was a kid reading tweets from Kurt Cobain saying ‘just having a wee’ it would have ruined it for me. He wouldn’t have been that magical, unapproachable figure.

In a way I suppose it’s good with the kind of celebrity thing. People think celebrities are special and live in another world, and it does blow that out of the water when your reading someone like Lily Allen’s constant tweeting and wittering.

Do you think bands are losing the more personal touch with fans now?

Yeah, but there’s good and bad. some have really personal things going on, and some bands have a really close fan base. British Sea Power always do a lot for their fans. then there’s the other side of things that are really naff like helping them to fund another album, I’m not down with that. We keep getting asked about it. some people say you get a copy of the album at the end of it, which is fair enough, that’s fine. But some almost feel as if your being scammed. they do things like ‘we’ll come round to your house and make you dinner’ or ‘we will draw you a picture’ and that kind of stuff, and you think ‘what a scam’.

Have you found that the industry has changed in its attitude towards ‘guitar bands’? There’s been a big influx of more electronic bands in recent years. has this had an effect?

Yeah definitely. If there are guitar bands around they are not being shown in the media as much or signed to labels. It’s more of a pop industry, even hip hop is becoming part of the pop industry. I find you will get people who were round a few years ago and doing something really cutting edge, like Dizzee Rascal’s first album; that was real grime and raw, but he got gradually more commercial.

You have people like Tinie Tempah who is sold to you by a record company as something really cutting edge and underground, like Dizzee Rascal was a few years ago, but it’s just a pop track with a hip-hoppy image, which is just rubbish.

Well his record company are the same people who look after Kylie and Ellie Goulding, which is probably a completely separate bracket than what he originally wanted to break through in.

Yeah, and Ellie Goulding is one of those people who is sold to you like that too. You have the PR company selling you this underground artist who’s writing is genius, unique and groundbreaking but she’s just pop shit.

Hmm, the industry doesn’t seem to be as black and white as it once was. everyone seems to be merging into the mainstream to survive.

I think that’s mainly to do with the record companies who are losing a lot of money in recent years and they’re just trying to keep everything they bring out much more commercial. labels who helped new bands get off the ground, well you don’t really hear much about them anymore, as they don’t really have any money to help bands with advertising. I mean, there are things out there but you just don’t really seem to hear about them. You used to hear about bands on 6music but even that has become more commercial, almost without really noticing. People who would have got the odd play never seem to really be on there, which is sad. although mark Riley is one that still does things…

Have you stumbled across any bands while you have been touring recently that you think we should keep an eye out for?

I watched a band called Toy the other day. they have been supporting the Horrors recently. Do you remember Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong? well it’s them minus the lead singer, I don’t know what’s happened to him, but they’ve all grown their hair and doing kind of doom rock now, which is really weird because it’s completely different – but actually works quite well.

Ornamants From the Silver Arcade is your most recent album. as a band, what is your strategy behind writing a new album?

A bit of everything really. sometimes we sit around and do them together, some songs we do on our own. Things start out sometimes when we’re messing around and making noises and you think it would make a good B-Side, but later think ‘actually that’s a pretty good A-side’. I think the last one we sort of had a vision for. We made a decision to go for a specific, more immediate sound. now the new one we are just starting is a bit darker.

I was just about to ask you what’s next. are you going to go for a darker sound?

Yeah! Loud. dark. Heavy maybe…?

Are you going through your ‘gothic stage’? are you going to grow your hair and dye it black?

(Laughs) We’re not going Emo or anything, just a bit more gutsy really. Our other song was quite pop actually, which was great fun to do, but we’ve done that and wanting to go in the opposite direction really.

Where do you get your inspiration from for making new music? Just everyday things, or are you one of those ‘pained musicians’ that go into a dark room and write page and page about how your feeling?

(Laughs) Not really, it’s more everyday stuff really. one of us will have an initial idea and throw it out, and we try this or that. Usually they are just ‘in-jokes’ between the band and we write a track that nobody else will probably get the meaning of. A bit of everything really. It doesn’t come very easy for us so we tend to do it together. every now and again you get a song that kind of writes itself and you can write it all in an hour, but with most of the stuff we will have a chorus that we will make up and add words around it. sometimes we struggle a little bit, but we keep going until we get something good. the lyrics are the hardest bit for us sometimes.

Do you find it easy to make the music as opposed to the lyrics then?

Yeah, well the thing is we always come up with the music first. sometimes the lyrics are good and read like good poetry but when you sing them to the lyrics they come across as quite naff and try hard. You sort of want it to feel effortless, so when people listen to them it doesn’t sound like you’ve been thinking too hard about them. You want it to sound like it all fits together perfectly.

What can we expect from you at Ramsbottom Festival? will you be playing some new tracks?

We are going to play some stuff of the latest album. From the one we’re writing at the minute we’ve got one track… maybe we’ll do it. Maybe we will, maybe we wont.

I think you should…

It might be a bit weird at a festival though. I think at a gig it would be alright because you’ve got more fans there, but at a festival… I suppose there’s more people who will hear it.

Take a risk, play a new one…

Alright then, alright then! (Laughs)

Catch Young Knives at Ramsbottom Festival on Saturday 17th July. Tickets for Ramsbottom Festival are available below. 

Interview: Jo Waddington

Genres: Symphonic Metal / Gothic Rock / Neoclassical dark WaveMembers: Yue – Drums, Iah – Guitar, Sin – Bass, Selene – Keys, Ishtar – VocalsAlbum Release date: August 6th 2011Publishing Label: inner Circle ProductionsCountry: PhilippinesComposed & Arranged by Selina MoonMix & mastering: Macoy Manuel

During the last five years or so the rise of symphonic metal, particularly those with female lead vocals has seen a stratospheric rise in popularity. You have bands like Nightwish, Within Temptation, Evanescence trailblazing a path to allow lesser bands to steal some of the credit if not the same amount of radio airtime or chart success. certainly the genre has matured greatly over the last 10 years or so. however when I analyzed this a little closer I noticed not too many of the better ones have come from the usual hot-spots of the UK or the US. Instead they hail from the likes of Holland, Finland & Sweden to name but a few. It seems our northern cousins have this genre licked!

So I didn’t really expect to find something similar on the local level but yet again the majors, (tsk, tsk asleep again!), have missed a gem of a band that refuses to follow the tried and tested indie rock route, instead nailing their color firmly to the mast of all things symphonic metal.

The band I am talking about is of course Ode To LaLuna.

These guys have been rocking for a while now but it’s only last month they put together their album and it seems the work has paid off. It would be scary what they could do if they had a full symphonic orchestra backing them. one only has to go back to when Cradle of Filth made the big step up in 2003 with the Sony backing and produced Damnation and a Day in 2003 to remember what they were capable of given the right backing. In the same sense, though stylistically different, Ode to LaLuna remind me of a Gothic version of the Filth circa 2003; lying in wait showing real glimpses of potential and craft in their debut album release – Moonbreak.

Ode To LaLuna of course don’t sound too much like the Filth, which would be some feat but what we do have is a prime slice of some great atmospheric Gothic and neoclassical work which grows on you big time. for those with a longer memory I would say there is even a hint of Depeche Mode at their darker rockier stage of their long careers. Selina Moon, the keyboardist and arranger for the band pretty much knows what direction this band is going in. the guitar work is heavy and impressive though never straying away from the core intricate melodies and in doing so the band sound tight and professional – playing with a purpose and passion.

The album itself is sung in a mix of English and Tagalog in equal confident measures throughout its 13 track long playlist with each one overloaded on tones of atmosphere and some canny switches now and then to a more organic and intimate acoustic vocal phrases and tracks.

The vocals remind me more of Anette Olzon than say Sharon den Adel, less operatic, more rock but with great presence and a sense of the dramatic. Ishtar’s presence and range is strong without being pitchy or resorting to shouting and given the desired scale of the sound of this album in terms of atmosphere and tone the vocals needed to be. Credit must got to Selina and Macoy for the excellent arrangements and mixing to ensure each instrument is given enough room to breathe. In someways it reminds me of a heavy more guitar laden Sisters of Mercy circa Floodlands (1988) with the driving beat and choir like background vocals.

One great example of the power of Filipino musicality is Angel, the second to last track. after 11 tracks of pounding Gothic rock with huge hooks and riffs, Angel really demonstrates another side which may have got lost if everything else was similar. the light splash of Spanish guitar is a great touch leading into some fantastic solo work. It’s one of the more commercial songs but at the same time you can tell a lot of work and thought was put into this track and it really benefits. I actually think this could be a great album closer. look again at the lead intro of track number 6, Haunt with more beautiful acoustic and piano work intro that keeps building and building. when the band hits the melody everything seems to just gel perfectly.

Those searching on you tube will find also the lead carrier single, Bloodrain which is track number 8 on the album. excellent driving rhythm which doesn’t let up from start to finish, it is unashamedly big and bombastic and everything just soars right until the last few taps of the piano.

And the strings and drums they never let up; some great pounding rhythm in many of the tracks with Kadiliman perhaps being one of my favorites showing off the rock side of the band both in bass and guitar after another big Gothic style opening.

The one constant through each song is the intricate arrangements put together. I really have to take my hat off to the band for this. Money or not you cant take the craftsmanship away and these guys have a sense for the dramatic without ever sounding over the top. Selina’s mastery of the keyboard is just excellent in this respect, whether setting the tone or slowing or speeding up the work, it is a big driver in how the album flows and how it is steered. As a fellow pianist I can appreciate that big time.

So where do they go from here? As Iah stated on the inside of the cover ” the best foundation of music will always be passion and heart”. never a truer word said. Once again majors you might want to wake up and take a second look at what you are missing on the local scene. not everyone wants to the latest rendition of the Eraserheads. Some people really dig their metal and a lot of people are going to dig Ode to LaLuna. if you like your metal chock full of atmosphere and driving guitars, if you enjoy a strong dose of big hooks then you need to listen to this. There is some real potential in this album.

If you want to find out more about the band or buy the album you can visit them on facebook.com/odetolaluna and drop the guys a message – they always reply!