Jessica Grahn’s research has focused on how and why the human body responds to music. She’s looked at Parkinson’s patients and found some very interesting therapeutic effects to cranking the music up that might help point to better lives for those like Diamond living with the disease, and even point to the evolutionary mystery of why music makes us move the way it does.
Category: music
Berlin’s New Generation Of Maestros
While Daniel Barenboim, 75, remains the dean of the Berlin music scene, and another veteran, 77-year-old Christoph Eschenbach, arrives in 2019 to lead the Konzerthausorchester, many older maestros are passing the baton to a new crop of musical leaders. Here’s a look at several of the new arrivals injecting vitality into an already thriving landscape
Jazz And Classical Pianists Use Their Brains Differently: Study
“While neuroscience has largely debunked the left-right brain divide, new research from the Max Planck Institute … shows that a similar binary might apply to pianists.”
Robert Spano To Depart From Atlanta Symphony After 20 Years As Music Director
Spano, only the fourth music director of the ASO in its 73-year history, will step down at the end of the 2020-21 season.
The Cleveland Orchestra Is 100 Years Old. Is It America’s Best?
Skeptics say that touring orchestras are steeled and on their mettle when they visit Carnegie Hall, adding, “They don’t play that way every week at home.” The Cleveland Orchestra, as I learned during a season (1988-89) spent as its program annotator and editor, plays that way every week, no matter what or where.
Cellist Pulls Out Of New Concerto Premiere With Three Days’ Notice, And L.A. Phil Comes Up With Daring Solution
“There are said to be only three [other] cellists on the planet who have played [Bernd Alois] Zimmermann’s incredibly demanding concerto, all in Europe. I’m not sure any other orchestra would have dared, or even could have dared, to go on. But management turned to three local musicians with exceptional new music chops – L.A. Phil associate cellist Ben Hong, Calder Quartet cellist Eric Byers and Lyris Quartet cellist Timothy Loo – to divide the solo part. They got their scores Wednesday morning. Rehearsals were Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.” And, writes Mark Swed, they were “utterly convincing.
Should I Take My Daughter To See Opera, Where Terrible Things Happen To Women?
Actually, yes. “Asked if she wanted to copy Gilda’s supremely self-sacrificing approach to romance, your correspondent’s daughter replied: ‘No, the opera made it quite clear that people who act like Gilda end up shanked and in a bag.'”
Listening To Classical Music Every Day Saved My Sanity, And It Can Save Yours
Freelance writer, BBC Radio 3 presenter, and mother of a toddler Clemency Burton-Hill: “It turned out that, when I converted my listening habits into a conscious daily ritual, I began to feel less anxious almost immediately. I curated myself monthly classical playlists with a specific piece for each day. Getting on the Tube and pressing play, instead of automatically being sucked into a social media scroll hole, seemed to be spiritually stabilising. I began to look disproportionately forward to it. And it occurred to me that, if I could benefit in such a meaningful way from this small but powerful act of soul maintenance, so might others.”
Oslo’s New Opera House Is The City’s Most Striking, Democratic Building
The most striking modern building in the capital of Norway proudly identifies itself as the Oslo Opera House. Yet a more democratically accessible building in this hereditary kingdom would be difficult to imagine. When I paid my first visit last year, young people were dangling their feet in the water from its roof. Yes, its roof. In an audacious move, the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta extended the roof line right into the city’s harbour, creating an enormous sloping public space, regularly inhabited by citizens and non-citizens alike.
There’s A New Music Academy In France, And Its Plan Is To (Finally) Diversify The Classical Music World
Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky said his academy “was inspired by ambitious initiatives such as El Sistema, a program founded in 1975 that has provided hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan children with a music education, and the Demos project in France.”