Gordon Wright, a conductor who championed obscure composers and made music across the chilly climes of Alaska as founder of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, was found dead on Wednesday on the porch of his cabin in Indian, Alaska. He was 72. [more] In the autumn of her life, decades after she had last performed in public, the British pianist Joyce Hatto was rediscovered by a small group of musicians and critics who contended that her recordings of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and others ranked alongside those of the 20th century’s most exceptional virtuosos…But now Ms. Hatto’s reputation for excellence and originality

On Sunday, Argentinean composer Osvaldo Golijov won two 2007 Grammy awards—Best Opera Recording and Best Contemporary Classical Composition—for his opera, Ainadamar (Fountain Of Tears) starring soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with conductor Robert Spano. In August of last year, WGBH  Classics in the Morning host Cathy Fuller sat down with Golijov at his home in Brookline, MA and discussed this award winning opera, his first. This exclusive, in-depth interview—complete with excerpts from the moving opera—can be heard online at wgbh.org/osvaldo. Ainadamer tells the story of dramatist Federico García Lorca and his muse, Catalan stage actress Margarita Xirgu (in

We’re having an ice storm in the Center of the Universe this morning.  Good day to be old and vested although it’s not really the thrill you think it’s going to be.  Especially the old part. The last time Master Salvage and I took a meeting in the S21 Starbucks HQ the subject of guilty pleasures came up.  You know what I mean, Steve and Eydie, Karen Carpenter, Alvin and the Chipmunks.  But, applied to non-pop music.  David confessed that there were parts of certain Michael Nyman pieces that sound pretty darn good.  I owned up to an affection for Hovhaness.  Now, it’s your turn. 

Composer Ann Millikan sent us a note yesterday.  Please let it be known: The great Quapaw-Cherokee composer Louis Ballard passed just around midnight at his home in Santa Fe, NM.  He was 75.  He was a dear man, and will be missed.  

Gian Carlo Menotti died today at a hospital in Monaco. He was 95.  In the days before television became a total waste of time, NBC commissioned him to write the first opera specifically for the new medium.  For many years, Amahl and the Night Visitors was played every year at Christmas and it introduced millions of people, including me, to the idea of opera.  I haven’t heard it for years and thus have no adult opinion of whether it is good or not but it was a very good thing for NBC and Menotti to have done.