There’s been a certain amount of breathless reportage about a new study linking personality and musical taste done by Adrian North at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. It’s hard…
How does it sound – a double concerto written by a musician weaned on Beethoven, salsa, Stravinsky and Bulgarian folk music? In short – like nothing else! The Danish composer…
He’s been on my list for a while now, to make famous (ha ha) as an S21 “click pick”. But before I get the chance to feature him, Huck Hodge…
Sonny Rollins, aka the Saxophone Colossus, turns 78 today. Check out the multimedia celebration at his web site. This year’s focus is on his fans, his web visitors, his greatest…
Watching the gritty HBO series called Generation Kill about a platoon of young Marines at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, it struck me again how ambivalent music’s relationship…
One of the threads of this year’s Proms is a survey of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his death. On August 26,…
Big Ups to David Lang and Christopher Theofanidis who have just been appointed to the faculty of the Yale School of Music. They will teach graduate students in the school’s…
It’s been three years since the human and moral disaster that was Hurricane Katrina overran New Orleans and uncovered an ugly blight on America’s soul. To help make sure that…
Among the focuses of the Proms this summer are the centennials of Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiaen and the eightieth birthday of Karlheinz Stockhausen (due to his death in 2007,…
This September marks the 50th anniversary of musical Minimalism, an artistic revolution which critic Kyle Gann has described as “the most important musico-historical event of my lifetime.” I’m delighted to…
