“Who was Takemitsu? He was a largely self-taught composer whose career followed a vague trajectory from the avant garde of the 1960s to a French period of ethereally moody music influenced by Debussy and Messiaen, winding up in a more Romantic, even nostalgic, style. But that’s leaving out one of his key innovations, combining traditional Japanese music with Western music. It is leaving out his love for pop music. (His Beatles arrangements for solo guitar have never been bettered.) It is leaving out his more than 90 film scores.”
Category: music
Food And The Life Of A Touring Piano Star
“My mother’s dumplings – with a secret ingredient that makes them so juicy yet so clean – are the best in the world and knowing I would have her food as a reward always gave me great energy at the keyboard.”
The Founder Of The International Contemporary Ensemble Has Decided To Step Down
“The ensemble has performed hundreds of new works, staking a strong claim as the nation’s pre-eminent new-music group in the process. Its annual budget has grown from $603 — her holiday catering tips underwrote that first year — to north of $2 million. Ms. Chase won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. And ICE now moves seamlessly among small nightclubs, schools and some of the nation’s premier stages.”
The (Faint Hint Of) Scandal Surrounding Shostakovich’s Opera ‘The Nose’
“He wrote The Nose from the unguarded standpoint of a young composer using his entire box of tricks at a time when the liberated Russian intelligentsia had free rein to experiment and revel in the avant garde. The first Stalinist crackdown was still around the corner. The result is almost a catalogue of all the devices and gestures that would become standard practice for mid-to‑late 20th-century modernist iconoclasm.”
‘Symphony From The New World’ Is The Best Of All Time, No Contest
“The first movement, the Adagio — Allegro molto, is fine. It’s actually extremely good, but if a first movement is good, you’re only acknowledging it on a subconscious level. It keeps you invested. It pulls you into the rest of piece without making a show of it.”
The New York Phil Musicians Who Kept A New Music Ensemble Alive
“Its fate took on added importance amid questions over how committed the Philharmonic would remain to new music after the departure of Mr. Gilbert, who has raised its profile during his tenure.”
Why Are Classical Audiences Fascinated By Child Prodigies?
“Is it a sense of magic, or the feeling that perhaps a higher power does exist and bestows talent upon the chosen? Is … Is it the victory of nurture over nature, like a tamed tiger at Siegfried and Roy’s? To be able to juggle, all you need is excellent physical coordination. The spectacle of a child playing a Scarlatti sonata is more than that – it can be seen as a kind of acculturation to a specific, Western tradition. A kid playing adult music is performing adult emotions. She is concentrated and well-dressed, not wild and silly.”
America’s Oldest Music Group
“Music has been a part of America’s history since the very beginning. In fact, America’s oldest continuously active professional music organization predates Washington, D.C.”
What’s A Forensic Musicologist? Here’s What
“Peter Oxendale, a onetime glam rocker (‘We all have skeletons,’ he says), is perhaps the world’s leading forensic musicologist, the person musicians call when they believe someone has ripped off their work. In a penthouse overlooking the English Channel, he analyzes songs, everything from pop hits to classical pieces, until he is sure there has been an infringement, or not.”
Violinist Daniel Hope Named ‘Artistic Partner’ At San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra
“Ever since the announcement by New Century Chamber Orchestra that its music director will leave at the end of the current season, the organization has been faced with Mission Impossible: replacing the irrepressible and – not to mince words – irreplaceable Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. And yet, the news today is of success.”