Category: music

“Although it was Debussy’s orchestral work Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune that Pierre Boulez described as ‘the beginning of modern music,'” writes the MacArthur-winning pianist, “it was always at the piano where his revolutionary new approach to form and timbre developed.” (includes sound clips played by Hough and a playlist of his favorite Debussy recordings)

When the piece premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 1983, most of the reviews were harsh: The New York Times pronounced it “a pretentious failure.” Now, with the Bernstein centennial upon us, David Patrick Stearns looks at two versions of A Quiet Place – one brand new and released by Bernstein’s estate – that aim to show audiences the work’s underestimated strengths.

“That friendliness was in contrast to the bruising conflict between the orchestra and the Woodruff Arts Center, which led to lockouts in 2012 and 2014, picket lines, and harsh words. Ongoing deficits and deteriorating relations also brought about pay cuts, a shorter season and a shrinking orchestra.”

When the “Rhapsody” bowed, classical was seemly, jazz the outsider. By the time the jazz-band version was again in the ascendant, jazz itself had become “America’s classical music.” Now, both traditions are marginal to popular-music dominance. Near the end of the 1996 Ben Folds Five single “Underground” — a cheery, piano-pop ode to more hard-core musical subcultures — Folds, at the piano, drops in a quote from “Rhapsody in Blue.” Even the most daring cross-stylistic experiment eventually occupies just another niche. Nevertheless, the work’s competing forces still jostle for space. To perform the “Rhapsody” is, in part, an exercise in diplomacy.

“It’s a strange word, ‘jazz,’ The people I revere as master jazz musicians have said they don’t want the word. It’s limiting. It tells them more what they can’t be than what they can. So – do I consider myself a musician who is limited?”

Judith Lisi, Opera Tampa’s co-founder and CEO of the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, has maintained that she did not know about the Canadian arrest warrant, which was issued in February 2017, until told by a Times reporter. But she has now acknowledged that Opera Tampa bought out the final eight months on Lipton’s contract. The reason, she said, was her concern over what she had heard about his behavior toward women.

Dutoit was a guest conductor for the BSO, and an independent investigator found that he harassed four women in the 1980s and 1990s.

Greg Porée, one of the guitarists for the orchestra, was stumped (yes, even in Los Angeles) when it came to finding the right guitar for the nominated song from the animated movie Coco: “The Mexican vihuela, I believe it started in the 1800s, and it became very popular in mariachi bands because it’s very loud and it’s almost a percussive type of instrument where you strum it. It speaks very loudly. It cuts through all the singing and cuts through all the playing.” (Spoiler alert: He found one.)

Whew, things have changed since the category was added in the 1930s: “The list of undeserving — or worse, unmemorable — winners is a long and embarrassing one. Even more damning, many of the nominees and winners seem to have little to do with the movies themselves, blatant cross-promotional devices that serve only as the closing-credits Muzak for your shuffle to the exits.”