“Such a really good version”!

Yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air, I heard an interview with singer and composer Theo Bleckmann, a German native who moved to New York in 1989 and has been, according to his bio, “a steady force in the New York downtown music scene for over 15 years.”
Now, don’t worry if you don’t know what “downtown music [...]

Hearing With New Ears?

Cross-posted at the Detroit Symphony Blog.
Sometimes before I go to an orchestra concert, I think to myself, “I should listen to a recording of the pieces on the program before I go, so that I can better appreciate the music when I’m hearing it live.” But actually I tend to reject the idea, though, because [...]

A Lucky Day for Detroit!

Cross-posted at the Detroit Symphony Blog, because I am so famous and in demand!
If you’re superstitious, you probably already have your lucky rabbit’s foot or some such charm or talisman at the ready, tomorrow being Friday the 13th and all. I would say that tomorrow is a very lucky day for Detroit, though. [...]

A Classical Riot!

One of my favorite stories from music history concerns the audience reaction at the première of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), which was given in Paris on this day in 1913 by the Ballets Russes. (I mentioned the piece during my May Day Spring Celebration post at the beginning [...]

Happy Birthday, György!

NaBloPoMo Day 28!
I was just reading the Composers Datebook (like a good little Music Nerd ) and I noticed that today is the birthday of György Ligeti (1923-2006), one of my favorite composers. (I seem to have a fondness for Hungarian composers — I wrote about another one earlier this month!) Whether you’ve heard [...]

Hard Thoughts: A Renaissance Woman’s Dilemma (part 1)

NaBloPoMo Day 18!
This afternoon I attended the Detroit Symphony’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 9. I’m going to write about it, you can bet your bottom dollar, but I haven’t quite peeled myself off the ceiling yet (I hope it’s obvious that I mean that in a good way! ), so I’ll sleep [...]

Criticism: Possible Antidotes… and That’s Enough for Now!

“How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?”

I came across this quote the other day in a post about musical responses to great tragedies: “Requiems,” by Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker.

Ross’ understanding of Shakespeare’s question (which, as he mentions, Wallace Stevens cited while writing about World War II) concerns the light-in-the-darkness function that musicians serve in the face of horrific events:

How, in other words, can artists respond to news that exceeds their most extravagant nightmares?”

Happily, we can, and do, respond in many ways…

Coming Attractions

NaBloPoMo Day 11!
Another quick post, while the follow-up to yesterday percolates…
It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been nearly a year since McDoc and I arrived in Detroit. One of the first things we discovered after arriving here was a music festival put on by the Detroit Symphony called 8 Days in June. It was [...]

The Ecstasy and the Criticism (Wherein my Bubble is Burst)

I didn’t expect that committing myself to a month of daily blogging would send me off on a nostalgia trip (for one thing, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that I’m old enough to be capable of nostalgia ). But the discussion of my Bartók String Quartet Watershed Moment brought up the memory of what has to be one of my top ten classical concert-going experiences of all time.

My Musical Conversion, Part 2

NaBloPoMo Day 7!
Yesterday I recounted the story of a defining moment in my musical education, when I learned that classical composition didn’t end with the dawn of the 20th century. (I wonder what my life would’ve been like if I’d learned this earlier — then again, I was enough of a geek in high school [...]