Close Encounters of the Tragic Kind
People love tragedy, at least, in the literary sense, and Mozart and Schubert’s early deaths were certainly tragic. The death of the talented gay and black composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990)…
Separation Anxiety
We in the West like to think that music is a series of narrative events about me. How did I, the composer or performer, feel today? Was I happy or…
Be Sure to Let ’em Catch the Brooklyn Rider
Nothing stays the same for very long these days, especially in NY. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when Brooklyn Rider’s first violinist Johnny Gandelsman and I meet at 11th…
Glass x 2
We like to think that concert music is something other than sound we hear with others in a room. Of course it is, but music is a physical fact we…
No Exit
Life is about conflict, and so is opera. And what could be a more dramatic subject than the French Revolution when keeping your head wasn’t an abstract issue, but a…
In Memory of My Feelings
Music is as much of a time art as reading or looking at pictures because its subject, as John Ashbery once said about poetry, is always somehow about time. And…
Loud and Clear sfSound
Musical programs come in all shapes and sizes, just like people. But getting a program to make sense is what separates the quick from the dead. The San Francisco-based new…
Be Here Now – Kinan Azmeh and Dinuk Wijeratne Down San Francisco Way
“For me it’s very hard to see people who adore Mozart and then don’t appreciate what Keith Jarrett does. You know what I mean? For me music is really just…
Werewolves of San Francisco
Putting a musical program together is always a challenge, but it’s one thing on paper, and another live, in front of people. The San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra’s Silence of…
Fits and Starts — sfSoundSeries
Music has always come from two basic sources, and served two quite different masters — thought and emotion. The Western tradition, especially in its modern and contemporary permutations, has given…