One of our greatest musical thinkers in these last fifty years, Leonard B. Meyer has passed away. His series of books from 1956 onwards are still avidly bought, read and discussed in 2007, and that’s no mean feat. Some of his work was pioneering, some spookily prescient, and a lot of it has stuck in this […]

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recieved at the Canadian Eletroacoustic mail-list:
PRESS RELEASE
The composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at his home in Kuerten-Kettenberg and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kuerten.
He composed 362 individually performable works. The works which were composed until 1969 are published by Universal Edition in Vienna, and all works since then […]

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My father-in-law, Alfred Russell, died a few weeks ago. He was an amazing painter and a really eccentric person. He was one of the hottest Paris/New York abstractionist painters in the 40’s and 50’s. Ad Reinhardt was the best man at his wedding; he got Rothko his first teaching job; was […]

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Okay, he stayed too long at the fair.  The idea of a 60-year-old, 400-pound man playing a starving artist failed to suspend disbelief.  The three tenors crap was execrable.  He probably inspired Andrea Bocelli.
But, once upon a time, there was this voice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CC9U43BFio

Alex Ross, Steve Smith, Marcus Maroney, Charles T. Downey, Tim Mangan, Marc Geelhoed, Opera Chic

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Mstislav Rostropovich died this morning in Moscow.  He was 80 and suffered from intestinal cancer.  Tim Page has an appreciation here.
Updates:  Alex Ross, Charles T. Downey, Guardian Tributes, Marc Geelhoed, Bruce Hodges, Pliable, Kenneth Woods, Steve Hicken, Jessica Duchen, Scott Spiegelberg, Jeremy Eichler

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Vienna born conductor and composer Peter Paul Fuchs died in Greensboro, North Carolina on March 28 aged 90. For an appreciation of his music by John McLaughlin Williams follow An Overgrown Path. 

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Mark Turner said it best, as reported by Do the Math:
Fuck those motherfuckers who don’t give it up for Michael Brecker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRFMG5C2PPA

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