Alex Ross has a moving tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in this week’s New Yorker. “She was the most remarkable singer I ever heard,” he writes, and it’s hard to argue with that. Speaking of Alex, he’ll be chatting with Mason Bates, Corey Dargel, Nico Muhly, and Joanna Newsom at BargeMusic at 10 pm on October 7 as part of the New Yorker Festival. Alas, the event seems to be sold-out. Alan Rich in L.A. Weekly on why he didn’t hang around for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Hollywood Bowl: The night had turned cold; the gin had run low;
Read moreThe Philadelphia Orchestra unveiled this morning an online music store where you can download archival recordings, commerically released CDs and, coming soon, recent Philadelphia Orchestra concerts. Other orchestras have done the same thing but the orchestra says it is first major American ensemble to market directly to the public without a distributor. There are 26 pieces currently available on the site, including eight Beethoven symphonies conducted by Christoph Eschenbach over the 2005-06 season, plus Wolfgang Sawallisch’s Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 from 2005 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 from 2000. For a limited time, you can download Beethoven’s Fifth (can’t get too many copies of that
Read moreGloria Cheng opened the season of serious music-listening in her position as opener of the Piano Spheres series of concerts. The program was oriented the program to two-musicians works, and there was a gracious lead-in to the guest appearance to be given by Thomas Ades in December, with performances of two of his early works. Cheng began the concert with Ades’s Opus 7, “Still Sorrowing” (1992-1993), written at age 21. This is a more restrained work than many of his, with the prepared piano dampening the middle range of the piano, creating a hollowness to support its feeling of loss. The middle
Read moreMichael Gordon’s new post-rock opera What To Wear opens tonight at the Redcat Theater in downtown LA. Richard Foreman wrote the libretto and directs the stage production. According to our sources (Michael, who “guarantees a good time will be had by all”), What to Wear is a raucous and bitingly funny work about fashion. There are 4 main characters (all called Madeline X) and 2 ducks, a small one and a big one. There are ten singers, ten actors and 7 musicians all under the musical direction of David Rosenboom. “What to Wear postulates a world in which military tanks and nightmare
Read moreJohn Zorn is officially a genuis. The 53-year-old composer, improviser, saxophonist, provocateur, and ardent promoter of experimental music through his Tzadik recording label, was one of 25 new MacArthur Fellows named today. Like his fellow honorees, Zorn will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. Unlike most other awards, MacArthur winners don’t apply but are picked by a secret committee of “experts.” One day you get phone call that says you don’t have to worry about next month’s rent. The award notes that Zorn is a “largely self-taught artist who, since the mid-1970s, has been at the center of
Read moreSome exciting news via e-mail today from our old virtual pal Joseph Waters, godfather of NWEAMO (the New West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization). The NWEAMO Festival is coming to New York on Friday, October 6 and Saturday, October 7 with a program called Pulse: the Influence of Africa — NWEAMO-SoHo 2006 International Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music, which will feature cross-genre works that investigate the influence of Africa on classical music. The NWEAMO Festival began in Portland, Oregon eight years ago and has since spread to San Diego, Mexico City, Venice (Italy) and now New York. Each year NWEAMO proposes a theme to composers around the world,
Read moreI like Mark Swed’s writing a lot and find I normally agree with his tastes but I can’t make sense out of his review of the Carl Orff/Jefferson Friedman concert at Hollywood Bowl that we hyped a little last week. I am particularly baffled by this line: As in “Carmina,” there is much to like musically in “Throne,” as long as you hold your nose. The political implications in both scores are troubling. Orff was, if not a Nazi sympathizer, at least a National Socialist opportunist. Okay, but I can’t for the life of me see a parallel in anything
Read moreReader Bill Westfall passes along this link to a story about a new research study that reports more than one quarter of classical music fans use cannabis and 12.3 per cent of opera buffs have tried magic mushrooms. This, I suppose, is as opposed to the 100 per cent of Grateful Dead fans who do and have. The finding suggests an interesting topic: Great Composers Who Were Stoners. Discuss. And speaking of discussion, get on over to the new, spiffed up Composers Forum page and weigh in on Rob Deemer’s question about how important a web presence is for an active composer’s career. Meant
Read moreIf there were ever any doubt that Peter Gelb, the new director of the Metropolitan Opera, had big plans to turn the venerable company into a glitzier, more populist experience, there isn’t any more. The New York Times reports this morning that the Met will simulcast the opening night “Madama Butterfly” gala on September 25 on the Panasonic jumbo screen in Times Square. Traffic will be closed between Broadway between 42nd and 45th Streets to make room for 650 cushioned seats and standing room for the performance, which will be blared to the large tin can that is Times Square on giant speakers. Goodbye amplification purists;
Read more