Mr. Justice Speaks
. . . He looks around, full of secrets; His strange deep thoughts have brought, so far, no harm. Carefully, with fists and elbows, he prepares One dark, tremendous chord…
Last Night in L.A.: the Adams Birthday Portrait
John Adams is almost 60 (February 15), and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella concert last night had Adams as conductor of three of his works. It appeared to me…
Wednesday Miscellany, Take Two
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has announced their 2007-2008 season. Do you realize that in one year Elliott Carter will be 100 years old? Wowza. To mark the…
C’mon baby, let’s orbifold!
The theoretically minded of you out there should be aware of the work of Dmitri Tymoczko. Tymoczko is a composer and teaches at Princeton. An active music theorist, his recent…
Who-cares-about-the-Super-Bowl-now Monday
Doubtless legions of Sequenza21 fans are crestfallen this morning. Being people of superior intellect, you were all hoping for a New England / New Orleans Super Bowl. Now we get…
Steve’s click picks #13
Philippe Kocher (b. 1973 — Switzerland) Philippe Kocher studied piano, electroacoustic music and musicology in Zurich and more recently music theory and composition with Detlev Müller-Siemens at the Musikakademie Basel,…
Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy
Hey – don’t worry if you don’t have a great date to go to the movies with tonight: just stay home and tune in to modernism’s official goofball, Mauricio Kagel.…
Buchwald and Me
The picture was taken about 11 am on November 22, 1963 in the newsroom of The Parthenon, the student newspaper of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. The young man, barely…
On Thursday, the Ogre erwartet devastating commentary.
Right now — just maybe — on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio, there might be the broadcast premiere of a string piece by Arnold Schoenberg. Is this the big moment? Find…
Last Night in L.A.: Blue-orange chords
The description in the title is how Messiaen described a section of the piano part in the second movement of his great “Quartet for the End of Time” (1941). Last…