Category: music

“I would guess that no critic in the magazine’s history—not Edmund Wilson, not Lewis Mumford, not Pauline Kael—possessed greater authority in his or her field.”

The orchestra’s president said that Lisitsa’s contract was bought out due to “ongoing accusations of deeply offensive language by Ukrainian media outlets.” The Kyiv-born, ethnically Russian pianist’s “tweets about the Ukrainian regime have included some harsh comparisons with Nazi Germany, sometimes laced with morbid comedy.” Lisitsa’s outraged fans are fighting back.

David Patrick Stearns visits the Guggenheim Museum for the music’s first public outing, and he talks with the opera’s creators. (Librettist Gene Scheer: “When I wrote [Jake Heggie’s] Moby-Dick, I wasn’t worried about getting e-mails from Herman Melville.”)

Fortunately, when Luca Salsi got a call Saturday afternoon saying Domingo wasn’t feeling well enough to sing the matinee of Ernani at the Met, he was only nine blocks away from the opera house. On the other hand, he was due to sing Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor that evening.

Star Tribune rock/pop/jazz write Jon Bream kept his giant record vault in a distant corner of the newspaper’s building since 1991. Now that the paper is moving its offices – and now that we’re in the digital age – Bream decided it wasn’t worth schlepping the collection. Here’s what’s happening to it.

“When lively music was playing, the group overwhelmingly found the wine to be lively, and when powerful music was playing, the wine seemed powerful as well. When the music was mellow and soft, the participants found the same qualities in their glasses.”

“We’re not following the details as if for a film or a documentary. It’s more the ripples that this terrible event has on peoples’ lives. Music is a fantastic vehicle for expressing energy, emotion, feelings that go beyond language.”

“In a lot of ways, we’re kind of like an art museum – for music. It’s interesting – a lot of people don’t know how to look at art or talk about art. But people definitely know how to talk about music. Music is something a lot more people are literate to. And people don’t really have anywhere to go, outside of a show, to cultivate that. The closest you can get is to come to a place like Amoeba.”

“As a number of American orchestras — including the National Symphony Orchestra — embark on the search for new music directors of their own, Nézet-Séguin appears to be a template for what they’re looking for. If there’s a flaw in his seemingly perfect profile, everything around him is usually moving too fast, with too much electricity and excitement, for anyone to have time to figure it out.”

“The orchestra will visit Naples every March for four of five days each time. In addition to performing two concerts each year, the musicians will do other activities, including lectures and public master classes.”