Happy Birthday, Steve
Steve Reich turns 70 today. There will be the usual superlatives–greatest living composer, most important musical thinker, and other fun, but largely unreliable, speculations. We won’t burden Reich with any of them. …
Family Bidness
Elodie Lauten is performing and presenting her piano and chamber music on Tuesday, October 3 – 8 PM at Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street in Manhattan. Elodie will perform selections from…
Free CDs
In my continuing efforts to find volunteer reviewers who will actually write reviews, this is my latest tack. All of the wonderful CDs you see below are currently in my possession and…
Sonic Beatings in Boston
Should you find yourself in the vicinity of Williams Hall at the New England Conservatory tonight at 8:30, the Callithumpian Consort is playing Alvin Lucier’s Small Waves for string quartet, piano,…
An Orchestra Blooms in Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra announced the schedule yesterday for its usual four concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and there’s great news for contemporary music lovers, especially those who have a jones for…
Jihadists 1, Mozart 0
Deutsche Oper said it will scrap planned showings of Mozart’s Idomeneo because of warnings by Berlin security officials that a scene in the current production depicting the head of the Prophet Mohammed (along with…
Malcolm Arnold, 84
Malcolm Arnold died over the weekend. He was a deeply troubled man who had a remarkably productive life against the odds. He was, in my view, the most underrated symphonist of the post-war…
What to Wear is Boffo in La La Land
Mark Swed, who is (perhaps wisely) ignoring our attempts to stir up trouble over his incoherent Jefferson Friedman review last week, is wild about the Michael Gordon/Richard Foreman opera What…
Loose Ends
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…