Category: AJBlogs

Market Madness: Sotheby’s to Auction 13 Berkshire Museum Works this May
Notwithstanding its direct relevance to the Berkshire Museum’s mission (which includes both history and art) and the museum’s professed concern for the education of schoolchildren, a portrait of our first President is among its works to be sold at Sotheby’s American Art sale on May 23. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-10

Denny Zeitlin’s Birthday
As you will momentarily see and hear, Zeitlin has retained the vigor and style that have helped keep him one of the most consistently interesting pianists of his generation. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-10

 

Rehabilitating Stockhausen with a KLANG: Does less mystique enhance his stature?
Karlheinz Stockhausen has only been gone a little over ten years, but the infamous, trailblazing composer (1928-2007) seems like a name from the past, provoking as much suspicion as awe … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-04-09>

Celebrating a 40-Year Career
In 1978, Jane Comfort and I were both forty years younger. Not a surprise? I guess not. But that sentence may prove a snappier lead than my starting off by recounting what Comfort has accomplished over those forty years and how many dances of hers I’ve seen. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2018-04-09

Picking on the Frick: Is It Shortchanged by Its Significantly Downsized Expansion Plan?
“We’re able to achieve everything we need,” Ian Wardropper, the Frick Collection’s browbeaten director, told Robin Pogrebin of the NY Times about his institution’s revised renovation and expansion plans. Not exactly. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-08

“The Art and Alchemy of Conducting” — and Mahler’s Fourth
As all Mahlerites know, the opening of the Fourth Symphony is both magical and mutable. A preamble of chiming sleigh bells and flutes dissipates to a cheerful violin ditty that coyly … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2018-04-08

Monday Recommendation: Oscar Peterson Plays 10 Composers
Oscar Peterson Plays (Verve)
In this five-CD reissue, the formidable pianist plays pieces by ten composers who dominated American popular music for decades. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-09

 

Cecil Taylor Is Gone
Cecil Taylor, a pianist who fashioned his music from myriad styles and sources, died yesterday in New York. He was 89. From his earliest recordings in the mid-1950s with bassist Buell Nieidlinger, … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-04-06

Cecil Taylor, dead at 89, as celebrated nine years ago
Cecil Taylor in 2014, photo by Sánta István Csaba The brilliant, challenging, perplexing and incomparable pianist/improviser/composer Cecil Taylor died April 5, 2018, at age 89. Here’s what I wrote of him to celebrate his 80th … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond JazzPublished 2018-04-06

Almanac: Shakespeare on the function of music
Preposterous ass, that never read so far To know the cause why music was ordain’d! Was it not to refresh the mind of man, After his studies or his usual pain? William Shakespeare, The Taming … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-06

Historically informed performance: How does it translate into the real world?
Are we there yet? That classic question that comes with long-delayed arrival was inevitable after a weekend packed with early-music concerts in New York … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-04-05

Deaccession Dejection: Court Allows Berkshire Museum Sales
Justice David Lowy of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has just handed down a lamentable decision that rubber-stamps the devil’s bargain between the Attorney General and the trustees of the Berkshire Museum … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-05

Bill Kirchner: Two Views
Composer, saxophonist, bandleader and author Bill Kirchner is the subject of two new articles that recognize his decades of creativity. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-05

 

Can Orchestras Be Re-Invented?
Theater companies have dramaturges. Museums are staffed by scholars. But orchestras, despite their reverence for great music of the past, don’t even care about their own backstories. … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2018-04-04

Juilliard Dancers Predicting Spring
Watching the Juilliard School’s annual Spring Dances, I think of young racehorses turned loose on a course. The Juilliard performers aren’t as young as those ballet dancers who join companies while still in high school; after four years at the school, they’ll graduate with BFAs. However, all that they’ve learned, and are still learning, is on the line in these performances, and often, they’re being shown in choreographic masterpieces. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2018-04-04

 

Post-Racial? Puhleeze!
I recently attended a production of Our Town presented by Triad Stage, a professional theater company based in Greensboro, NC. It had been decades since I had seen the play but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for it. I thought it was very well done, but this is not a review. What this is … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-04-03

Morbid Fascination: The Undead Haunt the Met Breuer’s “Like Life” (with video)
“Ewww, gross!” exclaimed a seasoned critic (not me), disconcerted by one of many creepy, gruesome works that affront delicate sensibilities in the Met Breuer’s Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now), … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-03

April 3 Birthdays, Scott LaFaro’s Among Them
The Jazz West Coast listserve often begins its posts with the names of jazz people born on the current date. The April 3 list is a profusion of such names. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-03

 

Who is Kirill Petrenko? The incoming Berlin Phil chief conductor – at least for the moment – can do no wrong
Though not a stranger to New York, Kirill Petrenko showed every sign of being discovered by some highly engaged Carnegie Hall audiences in a two-day visit by the Bavarian State Opera, … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-04-02

Propwatch: the book in The Inheritance
A companionable slump of young men sits on the floor and frown over notebooks and laptops. They squirm to tell their story, but they’re struggling. One clutches a cherished volume – Howard’s End by E.M. Forster, … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2018-04-02

Shostakovich and Film — Take Two
I spent the last two days repeatedly viewing – and (as the orchestra’s pianist) participating in – screenings of the 1929 Soviet silent film The New Babylon, … [and] I have no doubt that Shostakovich’s score, however little known (there is no suite by the composer), is one of the most formidable ever composed for film. … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2018-04-02

Recent Listening In Brief
Edward Simon, Sorrows & Triumphs (Sunnyside)
Rich DeRosa, Perseverence (North Texas Jazz)
Azar Lawrence, Elementals (High Note)
Willie Nelson, American Classic (Blue Note) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-02

 

Sultanof Arrangements, Part 2
Today, Rifftides offers the second installment of scholar, teacher and historian Jeff Sultanof’s essay on pleasures and challenges in the craft of correcting arrangements.  Exploring Buried Treasure in Plain Sight, Part 2 … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-03-31

Jeff Sultanof On The Archeology Of Arrangements
Rifftides is delighted that Jeff Sultanof has agreed to contribute another piece. A distinguished expert on arrangers and arranging, Mr. Sultanof is the author of the invaluable book Experiencing Big Band Jazz: A … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-03-30

Replay: Angels in America on Broadway in 1993
Excerpts from a live performance of the original 1993 Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, shot for use by the press. The cast included Ron Leibman as Roy Cohn, Joe Mantello as Louis, … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-03-30

Almanac: Steve Gadd on art and craftsmanship
“I don’t consider myself an artist. I go out there and I try to play what’s right for the music. It seems to be a much more open approach and it would seem to allow … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-03-30

April Showers: 28 La Salle University Deaccessions in Three Christie’s Auctions (with estimates)
Without a press release, let alone any fanfare, Christie’s has now published the complete catalogue information (including presale estimates) for 28 of the 46 works that were deaccessioned by La Salle University to bankroll its … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-03-28

Chummy MacGregor And “Moon Dreams”
Chummy MacGregor was born on this day in 1903 and died on March 9, 1973. It’s the rare listener to modern jazz who doesn’t know of the MacGregor composition “Moon Dreams,” which … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-03-28

 

Frames
There are two basic facts I must acknowledge in my work: … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-03-27