Author: Jerry Bowles

Contemporary Classical, NPR

Sure It’s a Commie Front, But NPR Rules

The big news today is that NPR and 12 NPR Member stations are launching NPR Music, a free, comprehensive multimedia music discovery Web site, that features on-air and online content aggregated from NPR and the participating stations as well as original-to-NPR Music materials such as interviews, reviews, blogs and live performances.   The press release goes on to note that specific sections of the site are dedicated to rock/pop/folk, classical, jazz/blues, world and urban music.   In each genre, program and subject area, users can explore NPR’s and the stations’ renowned music journalism; intimate interviews and studio sessions with artists and bands; NPR’s and stations’ popular national and regional web concerts; reviews and news; original blogs from critics, experts and artists; and podcasts.  The site culls from NPR’s and the stations’ extensive music archives to present thousands of features; at launch, the site’s Artist Index alone, an A to Z artist directory, offers content about more than 2000 performers.  More than 200 new features will be added from NPR and the stations monthly, joining thousands of hours of archived concert, story, review and interview pieces.

Sounds pretty neat to me.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Serenading the Glorious Leader

The New York Philharmonic is thinking of visiting North Korea next year and that has caused a great deal of tut-tutting from the nuke ’em, don’t serenade ’em crowd.  The conservative position was captured rather nicely by Terry Teachout in a piece called Serenading a Tyrant  in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday:

“Why … is the New York Philharmonic giving serious consideration to playing in Pyongyang, the capital of what may be the world’s most viciously repressive dictatorship?” he wrote. “Attendance at the Philharmonic’s concerts will be carefully controlled. And of course any concert in Pyongyang can’t possibly reach the North Korean people, because only the elite, for the most part, are allowed into Pyongyang.”

Here’s my thought.  If a goodwill visit by an American orchestra opens the door for even a single sliver of sunlight to shine on one of the planet’s darkest lands, it will be worth it…even if it means letting the world’s most obnoxious dictator claim a propaganda victory.  Music has survived a lot worse.

What do you think?  Or, if you don’t want to think, go over to the New Yorker and read Alex’s brilliant piece on Philip Glass. (Somehow that didn’t come out right.)

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Critics

The Norman Conquests

Norman Lebrecht is an entertaining writer who has never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  Come to think of it, he may have been the world’s first blogger–he adopted the sloppy research habit before blogs were even invented.  For years, he’s been planting verbal IEDs along the classical music highway, wiping out entire convoys of evildoers and occasionally fragging some innocent bystanders in the process.  So, it is with some smugness that one is able to report this morning, or the New York Times is able to report, that Stormin’ Norman has had a bit of a comeuppance.  The Brtisih publisher of his latest missle–Maestros, Masterpieces & Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry–has agreed to recall and destroy the book and apologize to Naxos Records Founder Klaus Heymann. 

Heymann had filed suit against Lebrecht for “accusing him of serious business malpractices” and for at least 15 errors of fact.  Penguin agreed to settle rather than go to court. 

For a much more reliable portrait of Heymann and his role as an internet music pioneer, see Alex Ross in this week’s New Yorker.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

El paseo de Buster Keaton

Did you ever wonder why doctors think it’s a good idea for a bunch of sick people to wait together for their exams in a small, overheated, unventilated room?  Or why drugstores invariably put the cough medications in the aisle where people are waiting to pick up their prescriptions?  No?  Well, I do.  Think of these things, I mean.

But, I  digress and I’m late checking in today.   Here’s a new rule for those of you with frontpage posting ability.  If you don’t see something from me by noon Eastern, feel free to jump in there and mix and stir.  If you don’t have frontpage posting rights, let me know and I’ll sign you up.

Okay, here’s some exciting news.  Marvin Rosen is going to be airing another piece from last year’s Sequenza21 concert on his Classical Discoveries program.  On Wednesday, Marvin will be playing David Toub’s Objects in observance of WPRB’s first membership fund drive which is this entire week.  That, I guess, makes David the Andrea Bocelli of WPRB.

Marvin is scheduled to be airing Objects during the latter part of the 7:00 o’clock hour but the time may be slightly changed if the begging gets too exciting.

And if you happen to be near Indiana University on Thursday or Friday night this week don’t miss  the collegiate premiere performance in concert of the chamber opera Ainadamar or Fountain of Tears by Osvaldo Golijov.  Our amiga Carmen Helena Téllez, director of the IU Jacobs School’s Latin American Music Center (LAMC), and of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, will conduct the production which will take place on Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall, with a repeat performance on Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. The performances are free and open to the public. 

by Jerry Bowles