Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Drink the Wild Ayre for String Quartet is the last work commissioned by the venerable Emerson String Quartet. The group – who plans to disband after 47 years of recitals and recordings – gave the New York premiere at one of their last concerts in New York City. It was a tidy closing of a loop. Early in Snider’s compositional career, two decades ago, performances by the Emerson String Quartet inspired her to write her own first quartet. The ten minute work led the second half of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center program at Alice
Read moreIn a culture in which we are constantly reinventing ourselves, any event can be the first annual anything. And so it is with Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival, whose inaugural edition was launched in Spring 2022. The organizers clearly found Long Play to be a success: The 2023 edition is May 5, 6 and 7 with events spread over ten venues in downtown Brooklyn: Pioneer Works, Roulette, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Public Records, Littlefield, BRIC, Mark Morris Dance Center, The Center for Fiction, and Fort Greene Park. Over 50 performances are scheduled; most are accessed via a one-day or
Read moreSometimes, classical music gets a bad rap. To be perfectly honest, there is a chunk of the population that finds it to be synonymous with any number of derogatory terms: boring, annoying, or pompous. Some classical music lovers and advocates will counter this popular belief with arguments that only go to further the opinion of the other side: “Some people want to listen to mindless music”, “Some people simply don’t have patience”, etc. These ridiculous arguments only go to further the stereotype that classical music lovers are all pompous windbags who believe themselves to be uniquely educated and informed. How,
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