Emerging from Elliott Carter’s “What Next?” for me paralleled uncannily the experience of the characters onstage, all of whom have just endured “some kind of accident” whose significance and impact, however powerful, remain baffling. Details from the libretto and the set design suggest a multi-car collision has occured, and, amid the wreckage, the victims intermittently soliloquize about their plight and attempt to comfort each other, though all — physically, at least — are unhurt. But an absurd, profound interpersonal disconnect ultimately predominates, and the opera ends with a pair of oddly fastidious road workers who, after they clear the debris,

The great American Musicologist H. Wiley Hitchcock died early on Wednesday morning (December 5, 2007) after a long illness.  Hitchcock started his career in musicology studying French and Italian Baroque music, and then transitioned into American music, editing the New Grove Dictionary of American Music and a series of 11 textbooks (writing the volume on American music himself), and publishing extensively on Charles Ives.  He served as director of the American Musicological Society from 1990 to 1992, and spent most of his career teaching at Brooklyn College. Frank Oteri interviewed him for NewMusicBox in 2002, and at the end of the interview he

Don’t miss this piece in last Sunday’s LA Times about recording engineers for classical music.  As the author, Constance Meyer, says, popular music engineers and producers are often famous in their own right, but most people can’t name a single classical music engineer or producer.   “Yet just as in rock ‘n’ roll or hip-hop, the engineer for such music — who is often, though not always, the producer as well — is the person who makes or breaks an audio performance.”  Meyer goes on to profile Max Wilcox, Da-Hong Seetoo, Fred Vogler, and Armin Steiner, and to describe a bit of how

Our revivified Monday Evening Concerts opened its second season of its new life last night.  This was an evening of MEC as we had been hoping for.  The program gave us music we wanted:  stimulating and sometimes challenging music; some new composers and new music, along with some to link to earlier times; music performed by very talented musicians; music in a hall with good sound; music to make us feel glad we had come.  And almost 300 of us came out Zipper Hall at Colburn School to hear and enjoy. The new and most challenging music was in the

It’s that time of year again when critics make lists.  The New York Times musical luminaries have made their choices which include, by the way, a couple of items on my list which I’ll be revealing in these very digital environs in due course.  First, however, I thought we should do a community list.  What were your favorite new music releases in 2007?  Oh, hell, let’s make it favorite live performances too.