Sequenza21

There’s been a certain amount of breathless reportage about a new study linking personality and musical taste done by Adrian North at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. It’s hard to be sure where things went awry, but by the time the media got a hold of the results they were badly exaggerated. The BBC, for instance, says the research “suggested classical music fans were shy, while heavy metal aficionados were gentle and at ease with themselves.” North himself, interviewed by the BBC, makes similarly bold claims: “If you know a person’s music preference you can tell what kind of

Sonny Rollins, aka the Saxophone Colossus, turns 78 today. Check out the multimedia celebration at his web site.  This year’s focus is on his fans, his web visitors, his greatest inspiration, Coleman Hawkins, and an extraordinary new recording. Sonny doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  The year began with his 50th Anniversary Carnegie Hall concert. He’s been around the world, all over the US, Europe, and Asia (Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia). Next month, two new releases celebrate his remarkable creativity, Sonny Rollins in Vienne, his first DVD, and a compilation of live performances, Road Shows, Volume 1.

Watching the gritty HBO series called Generation Kill about a platoon of young Marines at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, it struck me again how ambivalent music’s relationship to warfare really is.  Sure, one end of the music-as-weapon spectrum runs through the high-brow pacifism of Britten and Michael Tippet and the I ain’t a’marchin’ anymore populism of Phil Ochs.  All we are saying is give peace a chance. But on the other end lives the beat of tribal drums and primitive rhythms; the ritualistic mix of noise and fire and spirits that sends warriors off on a blood-letting

One of the threads of this year’s Proms is a survey of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his death.   On August 26, which was the actual date of his death, the survey climaxed with an all-Vaughan Williams concert by the BBC Symphony, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.   The first work on the concert, the justly celebrated Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis; its performance, although maybe not exactly peremptory, was certainly restrained and cool, rather than as impassioned as one might have wished it to be.    It was followed by the

It’s been three years since the human and moral disaster that was Hurricane Katrina overran New Orleans and uncovered an ugly blight on America’s soul.   To help make sure that nobody forgets, New Amsterdam Records will release a digital version of Ted Hearne’s powerful work Katrina Ballads on August 29. “It is my hope that setting primary-source texts from the devastating week in 2005 when Katrina hit will help us keep this time active in our memory, challenging us to cut through the spin that followed, and bringing us closer to an understanding of the true aftermath,” Hearne says.  “New

Among the focuses of the Proms this summer are the centennials of Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiaen and the eightieth birthday of Karlheinz Stockhausen (due to his death in 2007, the celebration of his birthday was fused with a commemoration of his life’s work). Although the first night concert included the first performance of a Proms commission from Carter, the piano piece Caténaires, he is only represented by three other works, the Oboe Concerto, Night Fantasies, and Soundings, as opposed to eighteen works of Messiaen, several of them, including the opera St. Francis of Assisi, to be played on September