Tom Jackson over at Modernclassical writes: Donald Rosenberg, the classical music critic and correspondent for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, gets the cover of the arts section Sunday with a primer on classical music, an article about the “beloved staples” which form the foundation of classical music. The headline graphic lists the usual suspects — Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach. The big shock is when you turn the page and see a huge graphic accompanying the article listing Rosenberg’s picks for a representative sampling of the repertoire. Rosenberg lists just three works from the Baroque period and only four from the Classical
Read moreYou wouldn’t know it from the freakish weather (60 degrees today) here in the Center of the Universe but it’s Christmas time and that means it’s time for Phil Kline to lead a massive chorus of boomboxes through the streets of Greenwich Village in the 15th annual holiday presentation of his legendary UNSILENT NIGHT. The fun starts this Saturday, December 16 at 7:00 pm, at the arch in Washington Square Park. You know the drill: Kline puts the different parts of his composition on cassettes, and distributes them to those who show up at Washington Square. At the given signal, everyone simultaneously pressses PLAY. When the cassettes start
Read moreIt’s the time of year again when everybody makes “best of” lists. So what’s yours? CDs? Concerts? Meals? Books? The concert of the year for me, of course, was the Sequenza21 event which, I believe, exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of attendance and quality of performances. I’ll be making my list of best CDs soon. Who’s got something?
Read moreDecember 5, 2006 — One of the great things about the internet is that several of the pieces on this concert were available for preview on the Bang On A Can website, and in fact you can still hear those previews to get a flavor of what I’m talking about. New music concerts are so hit-or-miss, it’s a shame more organizations don’t offer this service to help potential audience members pre-screen their events. If you’re listening to that preview, you will already have figured out that this concert was one of the good ones.
Read moreBenjamin Britten, composer, pianist, conductor, pacifist, humanitarian, and visionary, died on December 4th 1976. The thirtieth anniversary of his death is being celebrated with the remarkable story of how he left not just a legacy of 20th century masterpieces, but also a remarkable music vision which is about to be realised after three decades. Take An Overgrown Path to Britten celebrated with new music campus.
Read moreMartin Bresnick turned 60 last month and he’s celebrating the event with two events at Zankel Hall this week. One piece will be on the Bang on the Can All-Stars program on Tuesday night and, on Saturday, the Yale School of Music will devote an entire evening to Bresnick’s music, including choral songs, a concerto for two marimbas, and a multimedia piece for solo pianist. Steve Smith has a splendid profile of Bresnick in the Sunday New York Times which acknowledges the perhaps unfortunate fact that Bresnick is best-known for being the teacher of other composers who are more famous than he
Read moreBen Ratliff has a great review (and photo) in today’s New York Times of our amigo Darcy James Argue’s Thursday gig with his big band at the Bowery Poetry Club. Having your name mentioned in the same sentence as Charles Mingus and Bob Brookmeyer is a pretty damned inspiring head rush and we’re thrilled for Darcy and the gang. Read his postmortem and listen to samples here. The big news out of Second City this week is that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will return to weekly radio broadcasts on WFMT-FM, 98.7 (probably in March 2007) and the CSO has founded its own record
Read moreOn the Friday before Thanksgiving, the Argento Chamber Ensemble took the audience at Symphony Space on a little transatlantic trip with an evening featuring four contemporary French composers: Fabien Levy, Gérard Pesson, Tristan Murail, and Philippe Hurel. Of course for many readers, the phrase ‘contemporary French composers’ will evoke one word (especially with Murail being one of the composers in question) – spectralism. For those of you how aren’t familiar with the term, spectralism is an approach to composition that arises from the analysis of the partials of a particular sound or sounds (its spectrum). How this information relates to
Read moreThe Can Banger All-Stars are playing Zankel Hall on Tuesday, December 5, beginning at 7:30 pm, in a program called American UnPop What is American UnPop? This is how Evan Ziporyn, clarinetist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, describes it: “Vox populi, vox pop, the voice of the people, or rather the voices of many different peoples, filtered through radio, record companies, market testing and the iTunes…pop culture is today synonymous with corporate culture, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The music industry may be a nightmare, but the sound of pop music, in the broader sense, is
Read moreThe International Society of Bassists wanted a new concerto for their favorite instrument, and they wanted orchestras to play the work rather than merely filing its name in the list of new works that they might think about some future year. With help of their members they formed a consortium of 15 orchestras to back the work, enabling each participating orchestra to list themselves as a co-commissioner, giving each a “premiere” (even if merely a local one) at a bargain price. John Harbison was commissioned to write the concerto, and yesterday the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed his “Concerto for Bass Viol
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