Category: music

In Boston, the five-year partnership will feature an annual program known as “Leipzig Week in Boston,” a celebration that includes lectures, archival exhibitions, musician visits, and orchestra and chamber music concerts devoted to the history and repertoire of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, one of Europe’s most storied ensembles. The BSO will be similarly featured during “Boston Week in Leipzig.”

“One reason why,” says Deborah Borda,” the L.A. Philharmonic’s president and CEO, “is that contemporary music is not nearly as doctrinaire as it used to be. As great as they were, the years of Milton Babbitt, Elliot Carter, and Roger Sessions are over. It’s a different ethos now that crosses borders and is more accessible. I don’t mind saying that a new work is accessible. We want people to come. I also think,” she adds reflectively, “judging by the period we’re entering, there are going to be a lot more pieces with a distinctly political message.”

“The really important thing is that the musical ideas come out of the sound we collect. But the piece has a to tell a story; it has to exist for some reason.” Typical urban noise, like the revving of a car engine, the ringing of a bicycle bell, or the pitter-patter of pedestrian footsteps, can be found in virtually any city. So how do you make an audio portrait feel particular to the town it’s supposed to reflect?

Anne Midgette compares two piano concerts and comes away pondering the difference between playing music very well and communicating well.

“[The John Adams opera] is usually staged as an array of physicists and military generals standing around the New Mexico landscape, wondering if the first atomic bomb will ignite the entire planet – and looking worried. ‘But who wants to watch that?’ said R.B. Schlather.” David Patrick Stearns talks to the director about the staging he’s helming this week in Philadelphia. (Oh, and the singer playing Oppenheimer is a barihunk.)

“The announcement, made Sunday, comes on the eve of Langrée’s first international tour with the Cincinnati Symphony next month to Asia. In August, he and the CSO will embark on a three-week tour to capital cities and major music festivals in Europe.”

“Ms. Dan joined the CSO as its first female, and youngest, conductor in September 2011.” This extension, for five years, runs through May 2022.

“The evolution of music must be a complex, multi-step process, with different features developing for different reasons,” says Samuel Mehr, who co-authored the paper with psychologist Max Krasnow. “Our theory raises the possibility that infant-directed song is the starting point for all that.”

Breaking The Waves, the new Missy Mazzoli-Royce Vavrek opera, caused a huge wave (ahem) of excitement when Opera Philadelphia premiered it in October – and even more when the production traveled to New York in January. As a result, reports Peter Dobrin, the company now has terrific word-of-mouth from artists, extra funding from new donors, and interest from some of the top opera houses in the world.