Music & the Arts
March 25, 2022 • 2:12 pm Comments Off on Michael Tilson Thomas with the National Symphony
Honored to have been able to write the program notes for this weekend’s National Symphony concerts with Michael Tilson Thomas. The program features his own remarkable, unclassifiable Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind.
Filed under: American music, Michael Tilson Thomas, National Symphony, program notes
September 27, 2019 • 7:21 am Comments Off on New from John Adams: I Still Dance
John Adams’s latest composition was recently given its world premiere by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. Here’s my program note introducing I Still Dance:
The unique creative exchange between John Adams and the San Francisco Symphony spans four decades and represents one of the most significant success stories in the collaboration among contemporary American composers, orchestras, and audiences.
Filed under: John Adams, Michael Tilson Thomas, program notes, San Francisco Symphony
June 24, 2018 • 11:36 am Comments Off on Michael Tilson Thomas: Music and Emotion through Time
Filed under: Michael Tilson Thomas
June 22, 2016 • 10:38 am Comments Off on Brahms 1
This is going to be a good concert:
Filed under: Brahms, Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony
July 4, 2015 • 11:30 am Comments Off on A Fourth with Ives
Celebrate American music! And you can’t do much better than Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for this rep.
As Charles Ives impishly recalled about this third movement from his Holidays Symphony :
I did what I wanted to, quite sure that the thing would never be played, although the uneven measures that look so complicated in the score are mostly caused by missing a beat, which was often done in parades. In the parts taking off explosions, I worked out combinations of tones and rhythms very carefully by kind of prescriptions, in the way a chemical compound which makes explosions would be made.
And for good measure:
Filed under: American music, Charles Ives, John Adams, Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony
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MEMETERIA by Thomas May