Should that be Dargel in briefs?
Read moreDuring the summer the music programming stays pretty much with the established and conventional, if not with the outright light and popular. I missed about the only performance of contemporary music at the Bowl, and the programming of the concerts by the lawn of the Huntington Gardens by the Southwest Chamber musicians was much more traditional than usual so that the one real treat was Elissa Johnston singing the Berio “Folk Songs” as part of a delightful program of Debussy supplemented by Lou Harrison and the Berio songs. But now we’re ready to have more music of today. Arranging our calendars
Read more“Music should either touch your soul or make you dance,” Michael Abels says, and though he admits there is a lot of music out there that doesn’t do either, those should be the goals. “I always ask my students ‘what is the purpose of your music?’ You can’t create it unless you know what you want it to do.” Abels, 45, is a Los Angeles-based composer and educator who heads the Music Program at the progressive New Roads School in Santa Monica, a private K-12 school that–upscale zip code, notwithstanding–has a very diverse student population, with nearly half of the students on scholarship. For Abels, that’s one of the
Read moreI’ve been paying some bills for the past couple for the past couple of days and haven’t had a chance to update much. While I’m still catching up, why don’t we do a followup to our great music fiction list–the essential non-fiction books about music. Perhaps, we could have a beginner’s or popular list and an advanced list. Who’s got something?
Read moreLast week I went to Corey Dargel’s new postmodern cabaret show “Removable Parts,” and it was excellent. I call it “postmodern cabaret” because I’m not sure what else to call it—it was a series of songs on the theme of voluntary amputation, and they were performed by Corey and Kathleen Supové who performed in character as a sort of dysfunctional cabaret act. The songs were delightful—intelligently composed and quirky, moving in fits and starts, building up grooves and then taking them apart, stealing from and recontextualizing various pop, rock, and classical idioms. The lyrics and dialogue were witty, treading that
Read moreReview in yesterday’s NYT of a novel called The Spanish Bow by a Chicago-born, Alaska-domiciled writer with the unlikely name of Andromeda Romano-Law. The teaser is this: “In a dusty, turn-of-the-century Catalan village, the bequest of a cello bow sets young Feliu Delargo on the unlikely path of becoming a musician.” Reminds me that I don’t think we’ve done a list of novels in which music, or musical instruments, have played a key role. I’ll start the list with the distinctly unfriendly to the little people Annie Proulx’s Accordian Crimes. Who’s next?
Read moreThe season is underway in New York and, as usual, there are a number of promising looking performances coming up. Here are a few things to look for: Margaret Garner, Richard Danielpour’s operatic collaboration with Toni Morrison, is in mid-run at City Opera and, judging from the ads, there are plenty of seats to be had. I can’t quite stir myself enough to drag up there and sit through an evening of misery about a runaway slave who murders her daughter rather than have her captured. Doesn’t stop me from having an opinion, though. Morrison is too sanctimonious and self-important by half and
Read moreOur regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online: Virgil Moorefield (b. 1956 — US) With not only an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in composition from Princeton, but a B.A. and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Columbia (with a bit of Juilliard thrown in), you might expect some “high-concept” mixing with the music in Virgil Moorefield’s work, and so there is. But Virgil has a powerful weapon for keeping that ivory tower from becoming
Read moreWhen he went to work for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center a few years ago, Ronen Givony knew very little about classical music. Not himself a musician, but a passionate music fan, his tastes inclined to Indie-rock. He listened to Radiohead, David Byrne, Björk, and other, more obscure eclectics. At CMS he discovered classical music and was quickly smitten by old fogies like Bach, Mendelssohn, and Ligeti. Seeing his fellow Indie fans as a natural audience for classical music, he proposed a series of joint rock/classical concerts at Lincoln Center. He now works at Nonesuch. For a series
Read moreOn September 15, 2001 Kalvos & Damian put out a call for pieces composed in reflection of the September 11th tragedies in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania, to be broadcast on the late, lamented radio program. Their list is here. There have been lots of pieces since–Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, Carl Schroeder’s Christine’s Lullaby, Michael Gordon’s The Sad Park. Who can name some others?
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