It’s starting to look like the end of the season, and there are even more concerts than usual here in the Center to Universe to feel bad about missing. My own concert-going tends to come in unpredictable binges, the most recent of which began last weekend, resumed last Wednesday, and ended this afternoon (and continues this coming weekend). It’s not all new music, but I thought I’d chime in anyhow to share some highlights. Saturday, April 28th: Doug Wright, Scot Frankel, Michael Korie, Grey Gardens. So The Mom was in town, we couldn’t get tickets to the Met, and we
Read moreSomebody had to do it. Sorry.[youtube]KRIUYgozCGo[/youtube]
Read moreIn which the dean of composition at Eastman and the dean of music technology at Berklee demonstrate that they can’t tell the difference between recorded real orchestras conducted by Roger Norrington, Fritz Reiner and David Ziman and orchestral music created by a Mac Powerbook. Roll over, Beethoven.
Read moreThe Harvard Crimson reports on the return of a notable alumnus who has done pretty well in this composing business and had this to say about his old teacher Leon Kirchner: [Kirchner] himself felt that no matter what he did he’d never be as good as Shubert and passed that onto the students. It became a form of self-flagellation, kills the creative spirit, and was incipient in his teaching. Sound familiar to anyone?
Read moreFor reasons I no longer remember, I had always thought of Carl Nielsen as a stodgy composer whose works were a little severe and chilly–the musical equivalent of one of Bergman’s more depressing films. Winter Light in grainy, black and white sound. I started to rethink (or I should say, to relisten to) Nielsen a couple of years ago when Alex Ross mentioned in one of our discussions here that he considered Uncle Carl to be one of the most “underrated” modern composers. Last year’s DaCapo release of the opera Maskarade convinced me that I had gotten Nielsen all wrong. He’s really an enormously fun
Read morewhose version of Take My Breath Away is this: [youtube]ggWiK8iotJU[/youtube]
Read moreNo? Well you should, and can, this Friday night, May 4, 8PM at the Robert Miller Gallery, 524 W. 26th Street, New York, NY on the second night of a three-day music/art festival called Look&Listen. Finally had a chance to meet up with Brian Sacawa after all these years for lunch at Ralph’s, a New York institution since 1952. Got to regale him with tales of having seen Dexter and Stan and Jimmy and Zoot and Gerry doing that thing they did so well while they were still doing it. I’ve reached the age where “I was there” has become a conversation capper–one of the few
Read moreFJO flags Terry Teachout’s WSJ piece called Jazz Wins a Pulitzer – But did Ornette Coleman deserve his prize? Thoughts?
Read moreLots of neat stuff happening this week and beyond. Pulse, the composers federation that includes our amigo Darcy James Argue will close out its 2006-2007 “season” with a new music project called Sihr Halal, Music of Praise and Celebration. The concert is Saturday, May 5th 2007 at 8:30 PM at Roulette located at 20 Greene Street in SoHo (tickets are $15 at the door, $10 students/seniors). The project is funded in part through Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections program. Sihr Halal features the premiere of six compositions by the composers of Pulse—Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider, and Yumiko
Read moreItaly has produced great pianists like Busoni, Michelangeli, and Pollini. Its current pianist in the running for that distinction, Marino Formenti, even hails from Pollini’s hometown, Milan, where he was born in October 1965. Formenti has been dubbed ” a Glenn Gould for the 21st century ” by The LA TIMES’ Mark Swed, which probably refers to his Gould-like obsessive-compulsive absorption in the music he performs, as well as the widely divergent composers he programs. These traits were certainly center stage in the last of 3 San Francisco Piano Trips programs — the first consisted of Kurtag and 17 other
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