Celebrating Benjamin Britten
Benjamin 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…
Steve’s click picks #9
Our weekly listen and look at (mostly) living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since…
MSM Offering Masters in Contemporary Performance
In Ohio over Thanksgiving, I was happy to discover a small pile of mail from Manhattan School of Music: it’s about time they decided to keep in touch with their…
Last Night in L.A.: Ades and Barry’s “Triumph”
As part of his residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thomas Ades was given a Green Umbrella concert, his choice of music, and his choice of role. Ades chose to…
Monkey Business
It’s awfully quiet out there. What are you folks up to? I’m off to lunch at a nice bistro called Le Singe Vert. Why don’t you talk amonst yourselves for…
Happy Thanksgiving!
Name all the people in this photo and win a turkey. (Thanks to Steve Layton for the Last Supper treatment.)
One day, two musicians, three anniversaries
There are three anniversaries today of important events connected by a fascinating thread. November 22nd is remembered by many for the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963,…
Last Night in L.A.: Powder Her Face
Thomas Ades is back in town, and this season he will have five different programs showing Los Angeles his range of talents as composer, pianist, and conductor. We saw the…
New music and the wider culture
‘If you’re talking about “relevance to the wider culture” and “speaking to our times“, and all that Greg Sandowian stuff, I couldn’t possibly care less … People seem to forget…
Really nice to see so many young people
All too often today, appealing menus of new music turn out to be measly meals relying heavily on technical gimmickry, self-serving cliques, bitchiness and cynicism. By contrast the Britten Sinfonia…