Steve Smith
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Apologies for the lack of scintillating bloggery this week — less than a week to go before the big day, and I’m completely manic with work and other planning. Still, I wanted to break radio silence long enough to call attention to two comments, one here on the blog and one received elsewhere. Earlier in…
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If you, like me, are feeling more than a little bit jealous after reading glowing accounts of Unsuk Chin’s new opera Alice in Wonderland from Alex Ross, Mark Swed and Alan Rich, then I’ll leave it to you to decide whether to go to this page on the Munich Opera Festival website, where you can…
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The Miller Theatre at Columbia University has just announced its 2007–08 season, and as usual there are some choice events on the horizon. Probably the most important is the local premiere of Elliott Carter’s opera What Next?, to be presented by the Juilliard ensemble AXIOM Dec. 7-11. This year’s batch of Composer Portrait concerts includes…
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Olga Kern at the International Keyboard Institute & Festival at Mannes CollegeThe New York Times, July 23, 2007
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(Posted this afternoon on the TONY Blog) We can’t remember the last time we were more pleased to admit we’d picked the wrong horse in a race. As officially announced in a press conference at Avery Fisher Hall this morning — although the news actually broke late last night, and had hit blogs by midnight…
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Bel Canto at Caramoor’s Il Trovatore at the Caramoor International Music FestivalThe New York Times, July 16, 2007
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At 70, Philip Glass is still full of surprises. And it’s no exaggeration to state that Book of Longing, his new 105-minute song cycle based on poetry and images from a recent book by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, includes some of the most surprising music he has ever composed. Specifically, I’m thinking of five unaccompanied…
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How long does a band actually have to be gone in order for a new tour to be properly billed a reunion? And is an official break-up required to qualify? The Norwegian black-metal trio Immortal called it a day in 2003 after 13 years of steady activity, with members scattering to pursue other projects. It…
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I try to keep up with current political events to the best of my abilities: I’m on all the right mailing lists, I scan breaking news headlines every chance I get, and I’ve recently started reading The Nation and The New Republic on a regular basis for the first time since my immediate post-college years.…
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Jerry Hadley, an American opera tenor fallen on hard times, attempted to commit suicide this morning, and is currently lingering near death in a Poughkeepsie hospital. Dan Wakin has the details on the New York Times web site. Our sincere condolences go out to the loved ones Hadley seems likely to leave behind.
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Philip Miller’s REWind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony at the Prospect Park Bandshell and Gli Altri at the Noguchi MuseumThe New York Times, Jul 10, 2007 Over at wordsandmusic, Rod Warner has posted a detailed description of the epochal reunion that took place in London over the weekend: Cecil Taylor, William Parker and…
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"Rebel Composers on a Rock Tour of Sorts"The New York Times, July 4, 2007 An article about The End of New Music, a short documentary about a November 2005 tour of rock clubs and alternative spaces undertaken by two groups, Now Ensemble and Newspeak, under the umbrella of the composers’ collective Free Speech Zone: Missy…
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(Posted this afternoon on the TONY Blog) Further to our post from this morning regarding the passing of beloved opera singer Beverly Sills, we’re posting verbatim a late-breaking press release from Lincoln Center regarding its own plans to remember her: In response to the news today of the death of opera star and Lincoln Center…
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(Posted this morning on the TONY Blog) Today, the music world mourns the loss of American opera singer, arts administrator and public figure Beverly Sills, who succumbed to inoperable lung cancer on Monday night at the age of 78. Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, the soprano known as Bubbles was far more than one…
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Last night, I finally managed to catch Passing Strange, a new musical by singer-songwriter Stew, musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald and director Annie Dorsen, at the Public Theater. The show chronicles the coming-of-age of a young, middle-class African-American man from Los Angeles, as he pursues his muse and grapples with issues of racial identity, belonging and…
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The Brooklyn Youth Chorus at the Kumble Center for the Performing Arts at Long Island UniversityThe New York Times, June 26, 2007 (Administrative note: Starting now, reviews like this one are open to comment, same as everything else on this blog. Thanks, as always, for visiting.)
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It’s that time of year when there’s not so much going on: plenty of busy work to fill up office hours, but not so many assignments afterward. Combine that with ongoing wedding preparations, and the result is that I haven’t had so many nocturnal ramblings to share just lately, newspaper links aside. But the good…
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New York magazine editor-in-chief Adam Moss announced today that Justin Davidson will be the magazine’s new classical music and architecture critic. Davidson will join New York magazine’s staff and begin writing reviews and features on both subjects in September 2007. Davidson comes to New York magazine from Newsday, where he has worked as classical music…
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Institute & Festival for Contemporary Performance at Mannes College the New School for MusicThe New York Times, June 18, 2007
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(Posted today on the TONY Blog) Don’t get us wrong, no one loves Joe’s Pub more than we do. But we can think of a few ways that swanky lounge might have been refurbished to suit last night’s record-release date by Boston roots-rockers Sarah Borges and the Broken Singles. All those tables? Outta there. Toss…
Night After Night 