Washboard Music Festival, Logan, Ohio This festival, June 13 to 15, celebrates the humble washboard, the percussive instrument that keeps time for many a jug or jazz or zydeco band.
The one person I did entertain quite fully was myself: I enjoyed my own playing, whatever the instrument, and that kept me returning to it.
The star of the show, though, is a tireless bowed-instrument solo that keeps up its pace for almost the entirety of the track's duration it may take a couple of listens for you to follow of all its movements.
And though dexterous and melodic use is made of piano, strings and wind and brass instruments, the sound that keeps coming to the fore is that of a drum, beaten slowly, with ominous insistence.
Nor did you need to know that the Weather Service takes its measurements at Belvedere Castle, where it keeps the instruments that track the weather in Manhattan.
Astronauts installed two new instruments, repaired two others, and replaced gyroscopes that keep the telescope pointed in the right direction and batteries that provide power.
Yet Goldman kept creating more derivative instruments that required a counterparty to bet in favor of the market.
Perhaps the same spirit that keeps period instrument orchestras flourishing has granted an unusually long life to the theremin, the spooky-sounding electronic instrument invented by Leon Theremin in the 1920's.
Others eventually run out of fuel – or, in the case of the Spitzer space telescope, the coolant that keeps its infrared instruments in working order.
