Author: Michael McDonagh

Our Buddhist friends like to remind us that the idea that we are separate is an illusion and not a fact but try telling that to anybody anywhere these days…

It’s never good to live in the past, but sometimes we have to, even though as our latest catch phrase would have it “it is what it is.” These are…

It used to be that you could pick up the phone and call someone, and they would answer. And so it was perhaps a decade ago that I called Gunther…

We like to think that chamber music is an acquired taste but what is chamber music but music played in a room by a few people for a few people…

Meeting someone out of cyberspace can be fun. After a flurry of e-mails discussing various online slots sites, San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet double bassist and composer Shinji…

The gulf between pop music and “serious” or “new music” can be a big one, and the first concert of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players 2014-15 season TenFourteen set…

Sometimes a phone interview is the way to go, even if you live in the same town. And so it was on a rainy Friday afternoon this past December that…

What becomes a legend most? Well, in the case of two legends–director/designer Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass, an international tour of their first and most famous of their five…

Meeting someone out of cyberspace can be fun. And so it was after a flurry of e- mails that San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet double bassist and composer…

Life is competitive and composers are as competitive as anyone else–sometimes even more so. This thought came forcibly to mind when I heard two of the three composers–Stefan Cwik and…