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Two posts back, busy blogophile Henry Holland — whose postings I’ve long noted here and elsewhere with genuine interest — left an inquiry in the comments field. I’ll quote it here rather than addressing it there, because it deserves a post of its own: …can you give a thumbs up/thumbs down/meh opinion on the new…
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I’m sure this video has done the rounds before, but I’d never seen it until guitarist-impresario David Spelman forwarded it earlier today. The conundrum pondered: How does a pianist with small mitts handle the massive chords demanded by Rachmaninoff ? Igudesman and Joo offer a novel solution. There are more clips of the duo to…
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There are three words I’ve frequently used to describe what’s covered in the parts of Time Out New York that aren’t about arts and entertainment. Two of these words are "eating" and "shopping." The third, another "-ing," didn’t strike me as suitable for use in a classroom full of undergraduate journalism students on Monday morning.…
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While searching Google News for reviews of Charles Wuorinen’s Symphony No. 8, premiered by the Boston Symphony on Thursday night (and mentioned in my post immediately below), I stumbled upon an intriguing essay on Jason Gross’s Crazed by the Music blog at PopMatters. In a February 4 entry titled " Navel-gazing as journo trend?" Gross…
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Charles Wuorinen’s Symphony No. 8 ("Theologoumena"), which received its world premiere during a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert last night at Symphony Hall, will be broadcast and streamed live today on WGBH-FM and wgbh.org. The radio station’s web page lists the broadcast at 1pm; the BSO site says the concert begins at 1:30pm. The program also…
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I finally had time tonight to catch up with Ben Ratliff’s excellent profile of trumpeter John McNeil, which ran in The New York Times on Thursday (Feb. 15). I’d long been aware of the buzz building around McNeil — my Time Out New York comrade K. Leander Williams is another enthusiast — but hadn’t really…
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Dan Lippel, guitarist of the excellent new-music quartet Flexible Music, dropped me a note to clarify that the group’s upcoming concert on March 30, which I mentioned at the end of a review of its last concert, will be held at the Quaker Meeting House. I’d referred to it as the New York Quarterly Meeting…
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Metropolitan Museum Artists at the Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe New York Times, February 12, 2007
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"A High-Octane Chamber Group’s Continuing Insurrection"The New York Times, February 11, 2007 An article about two recent recordings by radical string quartet Ethel. I haven’t seen the print edition of the paper yet, but missing from the web view is the live peg for this piece: Ethel is throwing a party this Thursday night, February…
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Program notes are a useful thing, but sometimes they just don’t do a piece justice. At a concert presented by the quartet Flexible Music at the Construction Company Gallery on Saturday night, the following note was provided for the premiere of Atomic Variations, a new piece by Wisconsin-based composer Ethan Wickman: "Atomic Variations explores some…
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Some of you may have fond memories of the late-’90s website Bird Lives, a proto-blog whose pseudonymous propreitor, the Pariah, used to tell wild, off-color stories of the dark side of the jazz recording industry. The site was regarded as the jazz world’s Drudge Report — and rightly so, even if my perspective as an…
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I’d originally planned to go hear Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Piano Concerto at the New York Philharmonic’s "Hear and Now" concert on Tuesday night. By all accounts, the piece is a smash hit. And when Alex Ross told me on Sunday night that he’d rearranged his schedule in order to hear it a second time, I was…
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David Byrne’s "One Note" with Haale, Alarm Will Sound and Camille at Zankel HallThe New York Times, February 6, 2007
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Joshua Kosman’s San Francisco Chronicle review of British composer Robin Holloway’s Fourth Concerto for Orchestra, newly premiered by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, is a brilliantly effective piece of writing. Opening with a paragraph that compels attention, Kosman provides just enough history to help you comprehend how this new piece came to…
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That a massive crowd of New Yorkers was extremely eager to greet the legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone in his first-ever American concert was made eminently clear by the rousing ovation that greeted an assistant who carried the maestro’s scores to the podium. That awkward moment, which generated a hearty laugh when the mistake…
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Focus! Festival at the Juilliard SchoolThe New York Times, January 31, 2007 Bruce Hodges offers another view. The Focus! Festival continues through Friday night, entirely free of charge.
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Happy birthday, Philip Glass.
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Hamburg Symphony at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and John Scott at St. Thomas Church, Fifth AvenueThe New York Times, January 30, 2007
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In an interesting pair of posts on his blog, David’s Waste of Bandwidth, David Toub has sounded off on the pros and cons of the Internet music store eMusic.com. In his first post, Toub succinctly described the way the site works — a subscription format entitles you to X-number of downloads per month, which are…
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"A Serialist Island Thrives in a Sea of Minimalism"The New York Times, January 28, 2007 An article about composer Charles Wuorinen, whose recent orchestral works have found a powerful, enthusiastic champion in conductor James Levine. Theologoumenon, the symphonic poem premiered by Levine and the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall exactly two weeks ago, is indicative…
Night After Night 