With an impressive list of international concert triumphs to his credit, violinist Endre Balogh has performed as soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra, Frankfurt Symphony, and Basel Symphony as well as several other European ensembles. In the United States he has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the orchestras of Washington D.C., Seattle, Denver, Dallas, and Honolulu to name just a few. In the course of his career he has worked with such eminent conductors as Zubin Mehta, Edo de Waart, James de Priest, Lawrence Foster, Milton Katims, and Christoph von Dohnányi. He was the youngest First Prize winner in the history of the prestigious Merriweather Post Competition. Endre has had several concert tours of the United States and Europe, which have included live televised recitals in Amsterdam and taped performances for the BBC. He is an accomplished Chamber Music performer and toured throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe with the Pacific Trio for nearly 30 years. He has also played with such luminaries as Vladimir Horowitz and Leonard Pennario as well as in the acclaimed series of 1993 chamber concerts, "André Watts and Friends." He performs frequently with his friend and colleague James Smith, Chairman of the Classical Guitar Department at USC. Over the years they have amassed a unique repertoire consisting of original and arranged works for violin and guitar. Lately he has joined forces with cellist Dennis Karmazyn, violist Steven Gordon, and pianist Genevieve Lee to perform Piano Trios and Quartets.
"We were under the spell of a formidably brilliant artist." (The London Times) "Poise and assurance, technical precision, tonal refinement and personal charm." (New York Times)
"Dazzling technique and great gusts of temperament...eloquent master of his instrument." (Los Angeles Times)
In 2004, after severely curtailing his touring concert schedule in order to spend more time with his children, Endre rapidly began to hone his passion for photography. It wasn't long before he was winning top awards in contests and his unique aesthetic vision and reputation for consistently beautiful work soon earned him an enviable reputation among his photographic colleagues. His photos are prominently displayed in the collections of several connoisseurs of fine photographic arts. In 2007, a solo exhibition of 47 of his photos ran for three months at the Karpeles Museum in Santa Barbara. His photo "Egg On Glass" was chosen from nearly 3000 entries from 40 countries to be displayed among 87 others in the prestigious "Art of Digital" International Exhibition - 2007. Additionally, he has been commissioned to create commercial graphics projects. Most notably, after being hired to provide the solo violin tracks for a CD of new music, the composer asked Endre to also create the cover art. The resulting design for "A World Unseen - Music by David Sudaley" was described as "by far the most beautiful album cover we've ever seen!" by the publishers. His work can be seen at endresphotos.com.
Endre Balogh
Artists: Another ‘Entitlement’ Group
by Endre BaloghI must admit that when I first heard about the National Endowment for the Arts conference call to enlist the arts community in propagandizing the White House’s agenda, I was a little mystified as to why it was so controversial. After all, the NEA, through its funding choices, has been actively undermining American values for many years. Way back in 1986 we were treated to the scandal of Andres Serrano getting $15,000 from the NEA for his mediocre photo of a plastic crucifix in his own urine – “Piss Christ.” That is just one of a myriad of egregious examples of NEA funding going to support dubious “art” that functions solely to corrode the fabric of civilized society.
Sure, the NEA gives money to major established arts organizations – symphonies, ballet companies, repertory theater groups, and the like — but that is how they maintain their veneer of staid respectability, all the while promulgating their Leftist, nihilistic agenda through their smaller grants. For example, I know a truly great American artist, Harry Carmean, who, among his other credits, was the Chairman of the Fine Arts Department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and taught there for 43 years. He applied for NEA grants repeatedly to help fund his work but was rejected each time because his paintings were deemed “not edgy enough.” Translation: he actually possesses artistic talent, skill, and discipline, which he uses to create beauty instead of pseudo-artistic, politicized claptrap. We all know he would have had a far better chance of getting a grant out of the subjective and ideologically driven apparatchiks at the NEA had he used dog feces to paint images of female genitalia. (more…)
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Behind the Scenes: School Kids Sing Praises to Obama
by Endre BaloghBy now many of you have seen the creepy video of the schoolchildren at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, NJ chanting praises to Barack Hussein Obama, complete with miniature Third Reich style arm salutes. The amusingly terse response (clearly delivered through clenched teeth) that the School District offered once they realized they had been caught red-handed indoctrinating children with Leftist ideology, only underscores the obvious fact that those people know full well that their programming methods cannot withstand scrutiny and must be kept well-hidden, lest their tactics become widely known.
Of course, we only got to see the culmination of what must have been a much longer lesson plan extolling the myriad shining virtues of Barack Hussein Obama. What happened just before the video starts?
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Teacher: Good morning, boys, girls, and those of you who haven’t decided yet. Today, I want to talk to you about the United States and what a great country we live in. Raise your hands and tell me why you think we live in a great country. Yes, Tyler?
Tyler: Because we have freedom?
Teacher: No, that’s not why. Brianna? (more…)
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ObamaCare: Facts are Stubborn Things
by Endre BaloghThe White House Blog on Tuesday, August 4th titles an entry “Facts Are Stubborn Things.” In it is posted a video of Linda Douglass, the Communications Director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, trying to diffuse criticism of the Obama Health Care takeover by showing two clips of President Obama re-stating his oft-heard yet irrelevant contention that the new Health Care “Reform” bill will not take away the health care options of anyone who likes his or her current provider. Of course, facts are stubborn things, and the facts (read: common sense) stubbornly refuse to support Obama’s talking point.
Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics knows that what he is saying is patently false. The moment the government nationalizes medical insurance, it will undercut all other insurers since the Government doesn’t need to make a profit, whereas insurers do. Employers, always mindful of their bottom line, will immediately transfer over to the Government plan and all ability of the insured to choose their provider will be lost. The resultant overload of the government system will force the rationing of health care services. Soon, the other insurers will be forced out of business and Voilà!, we will have arrived at the goal, previously stated by the President and others like Barney Frank, of a single-payer, Government-run system–just like the failing, overburdened socialized medicine systems of Canada and England. (more…)
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Act of War: North Korea Holds American Hostages
by Endre BaloghThe tin-pot dictator, Kim Jong-Il (who has turned his entire country into a Communist Gulag) has snatched a couple of American journalists, dragging them across the border from China to be tried on trumped-up spy charges and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. Here is how the North Korean news agency reported it: “The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor.” Isn’t that a great line, “Reform through labor…”? Given that almost everyone in North Korea is already starving, I suspect that Euna Lee and Laura Ling are not likely to survive twelve years of “reforming” big rocks into gravel.
At the same time, dictator Kim Jong-Il rattles his puny saber and threatens that if any of his ships carrying nuclear materials to other rogue nations are stopped on the high seas, he will consider it an “act of war.” Well, gee… There was a time not too long ago when the kidnapping of American nationals would have, in itself, been considered an “act of war.” I imagine that had Teddy Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan been at the helm when Kim Jong-Il took two American nationals hostage, the response would be quite different. More likely it would have gone along the lines of: “You have 24 hours to return our citizens before we start obliterating your military bases – one every hour until the hostages are set free. If we run out of military bases and you still continue to hold them then, unfortunately, we’ll have to start on your cities. Have a nice day.” Then, like any good parent, we would follow through with our pledge. (more…)
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Will the Last Terrorist to Leave Gitmo Please Turn Out the Lights?
by Endre BaloghLast week, Congress soundly rejected (at least for now) President Obama’s ill-conceived idea to precipitously close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Although there is not a shred of real evidence to indicate that the facility at Gitmo is anything other than the best run and most high-tech facility available to house the vicious monsters incarcerated there, a lot of liberal Democrats feel that it should be closed – just because. It’s amusing to read left-wing blog articles like this one at the Huffington Post, that report with all seriousness that Democrats are mystified about how it’s possible that a Democrat controlled Congress and Presidency can’t mange to gather enough votes to fund the closure of Gitmo. Well, maybe it’s because closing Gitmo is just a really bad idea!
Anyone who has read Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu’s fascinating and meticulously documented book “Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind The Myths Of Guantanamo Bay” easily understands the merits of keeping Gitmo open. In fact, Lieutenant Colonel Cucullu makes a compelling case for expanding Gitmo so as to house convicted terrorists like Jose Padilla and Zacharias Moussaoui, (currently in maximum security prisons here in the US) since they are privy to a vast trove of vital intelligence information, presently unavailable because convicts in American prisons cannot be interrogated. (more…)
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The Perfect Gift
by Endre BaloghPresident and Michelle Obama have just visited the Queen of England. Of course, such a State visit demands a gift befitting her royal status and our First Couple has deftly fulfilled that lofty obligation with something that so exemplifies the greatness of America, it surely made Her Royal Highness swoon with delight. Yes, the Obama messianic magnanimity is not fettered by mere earthly limitations and the gift he presented her rivals in grandeur and thoughtfulness to the finest Faberge Egg. It is exactly what the Queen has been dreaming of possessing from the moment she saw candidate Obama deliver his blindingly brilliant speech to the massed multitudes in Berlin.
Ah yes… I can see it now… bedtime at Buckingham Palace… The Queen emerges from her powder room after her nightly ablutions and gently pads across the oriental carpet in her pink, fuzzy slippers to the edge of her royal bed. She calls to her maidservant, “Fatima, my dear, before I retire would you fetch me my video iPod? Not the old one, but the new one I just got from Barry and Michelle.” “Of course, your Highness,” she replies, quickly exiting the Royal Suite. Moments later Fatima returns, reverently cradling the radiant object in her hands. Tenderly taking it from her, the Queen puts in the royal iPod ear buds. Then, Fatima helps her out of her slippers and into the massive bed, making sure that the goose-down pillows are properly fluffed. Finally, Fatima places the Royal night-cap on the Queen’s head, and, as the Queen snuggles further into her down comforter, Fatima bids her a pleasant “Good night.” (more…)
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Narcissist On Wire
by Endre BaloghEven before it won this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary I was curious to see “Man On Wire.” Movies so often reflect the zeitgeist of the time that a lot can be learned from trying to divine what makes a film speak to its audience.
If you haven’t seen it, “Man On Wire” is an engrossing documentary about the French wirewalker, Philippe Petit who, on August 7, 1974, spent about forty-five minutes balancing on a wire illegally stretched between the two World Trade Center towers. Much of the film is put together out of home movies that Petit, his girlfriend Annie Allix, and a variety of cohorts made of themselves during the six years they plotted and trained for their crime. That’s the first indication that something is very much morally awry with Petit and his pals. Talented circus performer that he may be, Petit fancies himself to be such a “great artiste” that his narcissistic desire to defy death while demonstrating his skill trumps all protestations. He merits his obsession to be so important, that it all had to be documented for posterity. There are numerous episodes showing his friends, desperately trying to talk him out of his insane scheme, and even some thirty years later one of his co-conspirators breaks down in tears recalling the stress from the possibility that he might have been complicit in his friend’s death. Nevertheless, Petit’s insufferable self-importance sweeps away all their objections. (more…)
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Review: Torn From The Flag
by Endre Balogh
My parents were both born in Hungary but immigrated to the States in the early 1950’s. Although I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I speak fluent Hungarian and grew up playing the violin at various Hungarian events commemorating the 1956 Hungarian Revolution or fundraising for Hungarian Freedom Fighters. The photos I saw as a child of heroic Hungarians struggling against their vicious Soviet oppressors burned themselves into my consciousness and I attribute much of my visceral hatred for Communism and its related political doctrines to those searing images. Many of my friends and their families were drawn from among the 100,000 Hungarians who fled their beloved homeland once all hope for lasting freedom was crushed. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was even interviewed a number of times by Radio Free Europe, so I proudly claim a nearly infinitesimal grain of credit for helping to hasten the collapse of the “Evil Empire.” (more…)
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OPM – The Socialist Drug of Choice
by Endre BaloghWhen it comes to the wit and wisdom of Karl Marx, it’s likely that his most quoted statement is, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” The perverse irony in that quote is that all of Marx’s pseudo-scientific philosophical and sociological musings are so antithetical to common sense and basic human nature, that in order to believe them one must take a leap of faith far greater than any required for belief in a religious dogma. Certainly, George Orwell had Marx in mind when he famously quipped, “There are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Marx wasn’t stupid, though, and surely recognized that in order to get his magical notions widely embraced, people would have to give up their traditional ideas of religiosity, since it is difficult if not impossible to maintain a belief in two, utterly conflicting religious faiths at the same time. Tragically, the true believers who swallowed the toxic claptrap Marx advanced have brought far more misery and brutality into the world than all the fundamentalist religious faiths of history combined. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (to name a few of the most egregious examples), all held at their sociopolitical core the same pseudo-religious tenets that Marx proposed, and the staggering amount of death and torture those monsters precipitate dwarf, by several orders of magnitude, the suffering resultant from any religious beliefs. ( I know, some who are ignorant of history will object and say that Nazism and Fascism were Right-Wing movements. To them, I suggest they read Jonah Goldberg’s seminal book “Liberal Fascism” to learn the truth. The word Nazi was an acronym stemming from the German name for the National Socialist Party!) (more…)
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The Artist and the Entertainer: Or How Narcissism Has Taken Over the Entertainment Industry
by Endre BaloghSeveral years ago, after I emerged from the fog of knee-jerk Liberalism that envelops most of the entertainment business, I began to wonder why it was that so many of my colleagues remained mired in the magical thinking that so often seems to characterize the Left. After all, many of my colleagues were reasonable, kind, and intelligent people. Among my friends, were musicians, actors, photographers, and writers – all of whom were highly creative and dedicated to their craft yet, as is typical of those on the Left, they couldn’t be swayed by facts if those facts contradicted the prevailing winds of Liberal dogma. So, the big question emerged: why is the entertainment industry so disproportionately skewed to the Left?
I soon decided that some of it could be explained by the pervasive insularity that characterizes the creative community. Musicians hang out with other musicians, actors, with actors, etc. And it quickly became apparent that despite the grandiose pretensions that entertainers maintain about being free thinkers, the incestuous idea-swapping of Liberal slogans was the easiest way to stay in the “club” and not have to waste too much creative juice on real societal problem solving. (more…)
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Hollywood’s Peculiar Relationship to Profit
by Endre BaloghAs a classical musician, I can claim a certain connection with the Hollywood creative industry as I’ve performed the solo violin tracks for a number of film projects. At the same time, I remain enough of an outsider that I can also claim a to be a dispassionate observer or, better yet, a somewhat savvy consumer of Hollywood’s product.
With that introduction mind, I want to bring up a question that has puzzled me for some time. Why does the Hollywood entertainment industry continually place products into the public domain that are virtually guaranteed to fail?
Of course, you could never get the movers and shakers that inhabit the studios and offices of the “entertainment capital” to admit that that’s what they do. In response, they always unleash a smokescreen of assorted rationalizations having to do with “artistic” rights or the lack of sophistication of the audience. They may simply ignore the issue entirely, since like-minded “artistes” are busy praising them for their unbounded “courage.” The Orwellian self-congratulation hits its frenzied climax each awards season as honors are bestowed on films that are, at best, ignored and at worst, are simply repellent to the general audience. I recently had a conversation with a very well known actor friend who was dumbfounded by my statement that “No one watches the Academy Awards any more.” Since he attends them every year, he couldn’t imagine how I could utter such a blasphemy. Yet, he had to nod his head in resigned agreement when I explained that most people don’t want to see the types of films Hollywood is putting out any longer, so why should they be interested in watching narcissists hand awards to one another.
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