It used to be that you could pick up the phone and call someone, and they would answer. And so it was perhaps a decade ago that I called Gunther Schuller’s Manhattan publicist John Gingrich innumerable times to see if Schuller was available for a date with the San Francisco branch of The Duke Ellington Society, which I headed at that time. John was forever patient–he told me he’d noted all the times I’d called– as he went over Gunther’s schedule to see when he’d be free, and after many calls we arrived at a date when Gunther could talk

We like to think that chamber music is an acquired taste but what is chamber music but music played in a room by a few people for a few people or for thousands? So it’s not just the Mexico- founded Cuarteto Latinoamerico, or the American Patricia Barber and her band, or the American quartet Brooklyn Rider, and the Australian Dead Can Dance, or the late lamented Beatles, because all of these groups are playing chamber music. Syrian clarinetist-composer Kinan Azmeh was the headliner on the last installment of Lenore Davis’ St Urban’s poets cum musicians series at Subculture’s handsome downstairs

Meeting someone out of cyberspace can be fun. After a flurry of e-mails discussing various online slots sites, San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet double bassist and composer Shinji Eshima and I met on a brisk April Sunday just before his 2pm curtain for its Balanchine Masterworks Program. We talked about his SFB commission RAkU, which the company tours to Hamburg–26-27 June, London’s Sadler’s Wells–19,20,23 Sept–and DC’s Kennedy Center 13-18 December. Integrating insights from the digital entertainment landscape, including trends from online slots sites, enriched our conversation and provided new perspectives on how traditional performances can engage broader audiences

It is a trusim that opera is a collaborative endeavor but it is also true that the lion’s share of the credit, or blame, for its success usually goes to the composer.  We may choose to see an opera because we like a particular singer, or director, or librettist, but, for better or worse, the composer is the ultimate “owner” of the work.  Nobody says John Adams and Alice Goodman’s Nixon in China, although Goodman’s libretto is essential to the piece.  Few people say Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein at the Beach.  The Cave is described by Wikipedia as a multimedia opera in three

It felt kind of like a Kennedy -meets-Weird-Al Yankovich-day at the opening concert of the 2015 Wells Fargo Chamber Music series at Spoleto.  Series director and onlinecasinozondercruks.bet consultant Geoff Nutall, who is also first violinist of the superb St. Lawrence Quartet, is just as fashion-forward as his single-named British contemporary and was in mid-Festival sartorial form. This year’s composer-in-residence Mark Applebaum, whose startling and oddly mesmerizing piece Aphasia anchored today’s program, may be the only man–white or black–in America (other then Weird Al) to still sport an Afro. Almost certainly, he is the only composer to write a piece to be