The Boston Symphony premiered Elliot Carter’s Horn Concerto over the weekend and will debut a piano concerto (already completed) next year. And, there’s a five-day festival planned for Tanglewood this summer. At 98, Carter is proving that the key to a glorious career is to live a very long time, hold onto to your chops, and be friends with James Levine. Which is not to imply that Carter is not very good; he’s just very good in a way that I find a bit too abstract and cold to love. My favorite old dude these days is Ned Rorem, who is often overshadowed by more famous contemporaries and dismissed
Read moreThe Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) has just become the latest classical music organization to launch its own CD label. BMOP Sound will debut in January 2008 and will be devoted exclusively to new music recordings, many of them pieces commissioned by BMOP. BMOP Sound is scheduled to release five world premiere CDs at the start of 2008: John Harbison’s Ulysses; Michael Gandolfi’s Y2K Compliant; Gunther Schuller’s Journey Into Jazz featuring Gunther Schuller (narrator); Lee Hyla’s Lives of the Saints, featuring Mary Nessinger (mezzo-soprano); and Charles Fussell’s Wilde, featuring Sanford Sylvan (baritone). With 28 more recording projects in the works, the company
Read moreI’d read about the dastardly act a while back, but Ethelbert Nevin over at La Folia has some amusing speculation in his “Top 12 Reasons Why Somebody Broke into a Warehouse and Stole Hundreds of Luigi Nono CDs“. You’ll have to go there to read them all, but I do like “Featured orchestral musicians afraid col legno will adopt Radiohead’s business model”, “col legno’s sets of Rihm string quartets were too heavy”, and “Joyce Hatto discovered playing trautonium on Isola 3“.
Read moreLooks like Washington Post music critic Tim Page got himself into a heap of trouble for referring to crack addict Marion Berry as a “crack addict” in an e-mail message.
Read moreIf you’ve been wondering who is responsible for dumbing down American musical culture, it’s people like Ronen Givony and me. Givony, as many of you know, is the mini-Sol Hurok who is responsible for New York’s priceless Wordless Music series. Like me, Givony is not a composer or musician or even someone who reads music. But, also like me, he loves new music and wants to help nurture and promote the talented people who do. The web has given us both platforms to indulge our desire to do so. According to Andrew Keen, that makes us the worst kind of
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing musicians that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online: Julie Harting (b. 1957 — US, NYC) The talk is always “Oh that Schoenberg, making this artificial system that nobody really gets or feels!”… Except there are a few people like Julie: When I was 7 or 8, I found a miniature violin in my father’s closet, because he played violin when he was a kid. I also found a book called
Read moreIf you haven’t read Galen’s rather lengthy piece called Imprecations and Exhortations: A Rather Lengthy Defense of Richard Taruskin over in the Composers Forum, you should do so immediately. I’ve been taking a short nap for the past couple of days and just go around to it and it’s very thoughtful and very good. (I say that because on my first day of journalism school as Horace Greeley and I were checking in, our first prof said “Never say ‘very.’ If you must, write ‘damn’ instead.”) Damned fine work, Galen.
Read moreTranslating pop music into more ambitious musical forms is a risky business that sometimes produces surprising results. Who would have guessed, for example, that Twyla Tharp’s recycling of Billy Joel’s songs to tell the central story of the Sixties generation would be such a compelling and moving theatrical experience–an effect greatly heightened by having those songs reproduced note by note on stage by the world’s best tribute band. Once you’ve seen it, you’re forced to admit that Joel (who you might have previously taken lightly, as I did) writes really intelligent songs that display a wide and deep musical versatility. It’s one of those ‘aha’ moments like seeing Fleetwood Mac and realizing
Read moreThe big news today is that NPR and 12 NPR Member stations are launching NPR Music, a free, comprehensive multimedia music discovery Web site, that features on-air and online content aggregated from NPR and the participating stations as well as original-to-NPR Music materials such as interviews, reviews, blogs and live performances. The press release goes on to note that specific sections of the site are dedicated to rock/pop/folk, classical, jazz/blues, world and urban music. In each genre, program and subject area, users can explore NPR’s and the stations’ renowned music journalism; intimate interviews and studio sessions with artists and bands;
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