Category: music

Lincoln Center’s glittering new jazz center is impressive both acoustically and visually, but is that enough? “When the last sax had sounded and the last champagne bottle was drained, a quandary remained: Will the ‘House of Swing’ revitalize jazz, or merely embalm it?”

It’s somewhat appropriate that, in a year when being gay became unavoidably, irritatingly “cool” in the pop culture sphere, the classical music world appears to be obsessing over the phenomenon of the gay composer. But some scholars are going well beyond traditional views of homosexuality, and are suggesting that the “American sound” created by composers like Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein is, in fact, the sound of a “queer sensibility” which is unique to gay composers. But can you really hear gayness in a piece of music?

In Philadelphia, the new music-focused Orchestra 2001 is looking (so far, unsuccessfully) for a $20,000 grant to fund a groundbreaking music education series for underprivileged children. Meanwhile, Philly Pops got $150,000 in government funds last year for educational activities that were not exactly the height of creative engagement. Worse, the pops orchestra hasn’t even used the vast majority of the money. Why the inequity? David Stearns says that it has little to do with artistic integrity, and a whole lot to do with political connections.

It was something of a surprise when Philadelphia mayor John Street, who has never taken a leading role in the city’s arts community, stepped into the middle of the acrimonious Philadelphia Orchestra contract negotiations last week. But apparently, Street means to stay involved in the delicate contract talks: after brokering a new extension of the existing agreement, the mayor and his Commerce Director have taken a direct role in the process, and hope to use their combined clout to avoid a work stoppage. The intervention means that both musicians and management will likely have to stop posturing and actually make a good-faith attempt to settle their differences.

Say this for the Boston Symphony Orchestra: it knows how to welcome a maestro to town. A champagne reception, a black-tie dinner featuring such celebrities as James Taylor and John Williams, and a gala concert with ticket prices as high as $2500 kicked off James Levine’s tenure as the BSO’s 14th music director this weekend.

Levine and the BSO pulled out all the stops for the maestro’s debut, performing Mahler’s monumental “Symphony of a Thousand”, which requires a mind-boggling 328 musicians. Richard Dyer liked what he saw. “[Levine’s] conducting was undemonstrative, but vividly detailed and obviously inspiring. Only a little of it was invisible weaving; most of the time his baton sliced through plenty of space, and decisively… There was an occasional rough edge or sloppy entry in the orchestral playing, but an edge-of-the-chair intensity and excitement carried all before it.”

The Audubon Quartet is making headlines again, three years after the group was dismissed from the faculty of Virginia Tech in the wake of recriminations and lawsuits stemming from the group’s decision to split with its first violinist, David Ehrlich. The Audubon has continued to perform with a new first violinist, ever as Ehrlich has continued to challenge the group’s right to perform at all. Now, Ehrlich has been suddenly and unexpectedly rehired at Virginia Tech as an “outreach” coordinator, and the music faculty are furious.

The piano is 300-year-old technology. So can it be improved? Made more cheaply? An engineering professor is looking in to it. “Is there some material other than wood that will produce the dulcet sound of a Steinway without costing a mint? Can we figure out a way of constructing the keyboard-action mechanism (the keys striking the strings) so that it doesn’t take an army of craftsman to put it into place? Can you change the shape of the piano and still allow it to resist the 20 tonnes of pressure the wires exert? Can piano wire be made differently?”

Will Lincoln Center’s new jazz temple revive interest in the art form? “No one will doubt the scope and ambition of the venture, which marks the first time a cultural center has been conceived from the ground up to honor jazz, a music now virtually ignored by the country that invented it. Whether future generations will look upon the grand edifice as a turning point for indigenous American music or a glorious last stand for an art form that’s slowly slipping from public consciousness (at least in the U.S.), Jazz at Lincoln Center clearly showed no hesitation in making its plans.”

There are plenty of things wrong with the way classical music is covered in today’s newspapers. A symposium in New York last weekend focused on what it’s like to be a classical music criic…