Category: music

“‘Non abbiamo il soprano,’ or, ‘We don’t have a soprano,’ [sic] Mr. Kaufmann sang in Puccini-like strains before the opera ground to halt and he broke character and asked the audience to excuse them … Was it a stunning diva moment or an innocent mishap?” (includes video)

“If you do call him a jazz composer, he is the third to be awarded a Pulitzer in the history of the awards; Wynton Marsalis was awarded for his oratorio Blood on the Fields in 1997 and Ornette Coleman was awarded for his album Sound Grammar in 2007.”

“Now living in an orphanage in the Afghan capital of Kabul, Negin leads the Zohra orchestra, an ensemble of 35 women at the Afghanistan National Institute for Music that plays both Western and Afghan musical instruments.”

“If music was invented to restore our emotional and psychological equilibrium, Music for 18 Musicians is one of the great pieces of music ever composed.”

“Levine built the Met Orchestra into one of the world’s great ensembles. And, more than any other mainstream figure, Levine has used his position to gradually expand American appreciation of the form.”

“We very much want Yannick to be here for a long time, and I believe that he wants to be here for a very long time,” says the chairman of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which has signed YNS through 2021-22. In any case, members of the Met’s orchestra are said to favor another candidate – one who has already directed an opera company.

“It’s not just that his music is engaging. It’s not just that his side interests — his love of electronic music, his active second life as a DJ and his burgeoning activities as a curator of interesting new-music concerts — represent a link to the younger audience the orchestra world is so hungry to reach.”

“Passersby can film a short video of a street musician they like and post it to the Sound of Change website with the hashtag #soundofchange, including a geotag and the musician’s contact information in the description. Hungry Boys monitors the most popular musicians on the site and connects them with recording opportunities at nearby studios, the output of which is distributed through channels like iTunes and Google Play.”

Anne Midgette: “Indeed, with its giants and dwarves and dragons and battles and love duets, it bears marked resemblances to a lot of today’s most popular screen sagas: the political shenanigans of House of Cards, the epic flavor of Game of Thrones, the fairy-tale elements of Lord of the Rings. … (And by the way, where do you think the idea for The Lord of the Rings came from, anyway?)

“It wasn’t just the illnesses, but the constant alternation between concealment and an excess of revelation that kept so much attention focused on them and away from the music.”