Last week, the CBC announced that the CBC Radio Orchestra, a fixture in Canadian musical life for 70 years, would give its final concert in November. This is a sign that: 1) Classical music has failed to engage the attention of younger listeners and has become irrelevant to the lives of most people. This is mainly the fault of dreary programming and unimaginative presentation by unenlightened gatekeepers; 2) Yet another depressing sign that Canada is becoming more like the United States–a pop culturized, winner-take-all society in which competition for attention is fueled solely by ratings and money. 3) Something else?
Read moreAlex Ross has a splendid piece titled Inextinguishable about Carl Nielsen in the New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker) this week. I must confess that I had not paid a lot of attention to Nielsen until Alex tagged him as “most underrated” in the comments section here a couple of years. Since then, a series of wonderful new recordings–including the opera Maskarade and Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR’s recording of Nielsen’s orchestral works–have been released by the Danish national recording label Dacapo I have found myself playing them every few days for months now and I always hear something fresh and new. I owe
Read moreGrowing up in a podunk, nil-culture, border-ish town in Washington State, half of my classical education came by way of drifty, static-filled, late-night AM listening to the CBC. Not only work by Stravinsky, Boulez, and Xenakis, but a whole raft of amazingly strong Canadian composers: R. Murray Schafer, John Rea, Claude Vivier and the like. Many of these recordings were CBC productions, and were something that gave me an early admiration of our northern neighbor’s commitment to the arts. But now comes word that the CBC may be essentially shuttering its recording production; what little may remain will likely be committed
Read moreDance is always about music, and music is, more often than not, about dance. But how does dance animate music, and music animate dance? This seemed to be the central question when I caught Program 1 of the San Francisco Ballet’s 75th anniversary season at the War Memorial Opera House February 9th. Classical ballet and modern dance sometimes plays against and even ignores the music’s rhythmic structure which would never happen in the deservedly popular Dancing With The Stars. But we rightly or wrongly cut the highbrow forms a bit more slack. Virgil Thomson’s music for SF Ballet’s founding choreographer
Read more“Deze naam zegt jullie allicht niks, Marco Antonio woont nu nog in Gent, maar verhuist binnenkort naar Deinze. Als solist voor kamer- en orkestmuziek heeft Marco Mazzini internationaal opgetreden in volgende toonaangevende plaatsen : Carnegie Hall (New York), Tama Center (Tokyo), Paleis voor Schone Kunsten (Brussel), Bijloke concertzaal (België) en in het Conservatorium van Parijs.” Terrific article about our amigo Marco Antonio Mazzini in Deinzeonline. Alas, it appears to be in a foreign language but the pictures are nice and the video is splendid: [youtube]y33fTZJyVlo[/youtube]
Read moreCongratulations are in order to Joan Tower and our friends at Naxos for nearly running the table on the classical music goodies in last night’s Grammy love fest. Tower’s Made in America (Leonard Slatkin, conductor; Nashville Symphony Orchestra) won Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. I think it sounds like something written in 1939 which shows you what I know. Record of the year and song of the year (Rehab) went to the sad junkie from London with the unsightly tattoos. Regretably, it will probably be her last.
Read moreAndrew Cyr writes: Hi Jerry, I just wanted to give you a heads up about a couple of things: Avner Dorman, the composer we just cut an album with (in editing mode now), had some incredible news in Germany, which I think is potentially worthy of a post. His new percussion concerto was just premiered in Hamburg a few weeks ago, and was just added in a rare surprise programming shift, with Munich Symphony — when was the last time you heard an American symphony do something like that! Check out the press release, which I received from his publisher,
Read moreWho’s going to see Elmer Gantry at Montclair later this week? Want to write a review for us? No money but an incredible amount of love, peace and understanding (and what’s so funny about that?) and the next 10 Mozart CDs companies send me by mistake. Marvin is doing the world premiere of the Alan Hovhaness concerto Shambala, for violin, sitar and orchestra, originally composed for Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, on his Classical Discoveries radio program on January 30 during the 9 am EST hour. As usual, you can listen to it on the web at WPRB in Princeton. The broadcast marks the February 14th release of the
Read moreYet another one, via Carson Cooman: Elias Tanenbaum, composer, teacher and long-time New Rochelle resident died on Thursday after a long illness. He composed over 140 works in all idioms, including music for concert, jazz, theater, television, ballet and electronic and computer music. His music has been performed extensively throughout this country, Europe and Japan and recordings of his music can be found on Albany, New World, MMC and other labels. Mr. Tanenbaum was the Founding Director of the Electronic Computer Music Studio at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and he was a member of the
Read moreGiven the inexplicable stature of our little S21 community, it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that we should do something useful. I’ve chatted with a few of the regulars and gotten some good ideas but I thought I would open up the discussion to everybody. Here’s what we have so far: 1) another Sequenza21 concert like the very successful one we had a couple of years ago. We’d raise a little money from readers and I would shake down…ur, trade a few record companies some free advertising for dollars. My feeling is that if we go the concert route, we
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