Beverly Sills, 1929-2007
Beverly Sills, the All-American diva from Brooklyn, has died of cancer. Bubbles, as she was known to all, was a big lady with a big heart whose down-to-earth personality, talent…
NEA Funding Update
Last Thursday, the NEA funding increases survived three hostile amendments in the House and ultimately made it through to approval unscathed. The most hostile of the amendments, offered by Doub…
Requiescat in Pace
One of my dearest friends and a neighbor of many years died this afternoon. He was a lifelong bachelor who had lost most of the hearing in both ears when…
Cue the Tenor
So, the wonderful Serbian film director Emir Kusterica’s new opera Time of the Gypsies (based on his zany film of the same name) opened last night in Paris. Woody Allen…
Do Conductors and Performers Make Good Composers?
Joshua Bell tells the Korea Times that he’s working toward writing his own stuff in a few years. Could work, I suppose. His pal Edgar Myers is a decent composer…
Beth Anderson’s Pennyroyal Swale 1 & 2
H31YzXCq0Sg bfPcu_buWkg Performed by the Rubio String Quartet. Photography by James Archambeault
Sir Mad Max
Peter Maxwell Davies let loose some fightin’ words a few months ago at the annual meeting of Britain’s Incorporated Society of Musicians. Music education has been unavailable in schools for…
Steve’s click picks #31
Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since…
On the Road Again
The indispensible Alex Ross is back from a fact finding mission to gauge the state of serious music making in the provinces and his report, in this week’s New Yorker…