MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Music & the Arts

March 6, 2023 • 10:08 pm Comments Off on Tod Machover’s Overstory Overture

Tod Machover’s Overstory Overture

The composer Tod Machover and ths soprano Joyce DiDonato. Machover’s chamber opera, “Overstory Overture,” stars DiDonato and is an adaptation of Richard Powers’s novel.Credit…Alex Hodor-Lee for The New York Times

Here’s my latest New York Times story on the latest adventure of tech-forward composer Tod Machover, which receives its world premiere Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall and features Joyce DiDonato and the Sejong Soloists under Earl Lee:

Musical themes abound in the work of the novelist Richard Powers, often intertwined with science and social issues. The parallel decoding of Bach and DNA (“The Gold Bug Variations”), the saga of an interracial family of classical performers unfolding against the events of the Civil Rights era (“The Time of Our Singing”): A signature of Powers’s novels is the virtuosity with which he weaves these strands into narratives that seem both surprising and inevitable….

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Filed under: new opera, New York Times, Tod Machover

October 23, 2022 • 8:14 am Comments Off on From the Underworld to Our World: An Opera About Frida and Diego

From the Underworld to Our World: An Opera About Frida and Diego

The “Último Sueño” team, photographed in front of a Diego Rivera-influenced mural in Chicano Park, in San Diego: from left, the writer Nilo Cruz, the director Lorena Maza, the composer Gabriela Lena Frank and the mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Paz.Credit…John Francis Peters for The New York Times

In today’s New York Times, my story on the new opera by Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz:

“I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return.” Frida Kahlo confided these remarks to her diary in 1954, just a few days before making her final exit.

In a new opera, “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego” (“The Last Dream of Frida and Diego”), the composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Nilo Cruz imagine Kahlo overcoming her reluctance to return from beyond. ..

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Filed under: new opera, New York Times, San Diego Opera, San Francisco Opera

October 2, 2021 • 11:29 am Comments Off on Report on the 2021 George Enescu Festival

Report on the 2021 George Enescu Festival

Here’s my report on the recent 25th edition of the George Enescu International Festival, published in today’s New York Times:

BUCHAREST, Romania — Romania has a long record of defying the catastrophes history has served up, so it certainly would not allow the pandemic to derail the George Enescu International Festival, devoted to its premier musical native son, which ended on Sunday. At stake was not only the 25th edition of this country’s largest cultural event, but also the renewal of a global artistic exchange that this still-marginalized part of Europe considers essential to its development…

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Filed under: festivals, George Enescu, New York Times

April 30, 2021 • 8:05 am Comments Off on Rossini at the Drive-In, as San Francisco Opera Returns

Rossini at the Drive-In, as San Francisco Opera Returns

Photo: Stefan Cohen/San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera is presenting a fully staged opera before a live audience for the first time in 16 months. I wrote about the opening for The New York Times.

SAN FRANCISCO — It feels almost too good to be true after a pandemic closure of Wagnerian scale: an audience watching a cast of singers enter the War Memorial Opera House here to rehearse and perform Rossini’s classic comedy “The Barber of Seville”….

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Filed under: New York Times, Rossini, San Francisco Opera

February 27, 2021 • 11:42 am Comments Off on From Easter Island, a Pianist Emerges

From Easter Island, a Pianist Emerges

Here’s my latest story for The New York Times. Deeply grateful to Mahani Teave for sharing her story, as well as to David Fulton, John Forsen, Gayle Podrabsky, and Elizabeth Dworkin for their generous insights.

“From her home, halfway up the highest hill on Rapa Nui, Mahani Teave was describing the power of nature there to overwhelm….”

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Filed under: New York Times, pianists

October 20, 2020 • 12:05 pm Comments Off on Whispers of an Italian-Jewish Past Fill a Composer’s Music

Whispers of an Italian-Jewish Past Fill a Composer’s Music

Here’s a link to my latest story for the New York Times, which is about the extraordinary composer Yotam Haber. He is the recipient of the 2020 Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music — one of three biannual Azrieli Music Prizes. Haber’s new piece, Estro Poetico-armonico III, will receive its world premiere on 22 October at 8pm ET via free livestream on medici.tv and the Azrieli Facebook page.

Filed under: commissions, new music, New York Times

August 29, 2019 • 7:22 am Comments Off on Clara Schumann, Music’s Unsung Renaissance Woman

Clara Schumann, Music’s Unsung Renaissance Woman

The 200th anniversary of Clara Schumann’s birth is quickly approaching. Here’s a story on her legacy I wrote for The New York Times:

Schumann is among the most celebrated names in the classical music canon — for most people conjuring the poetic and intense work of Robert Schumann, the Romantic master.

But when the Schumann in question is his wife, Clara, the name should remind us most of the frustrating lack of recognition still accorded female composers.

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Filed under: chamber music, Clara Schumann, New York Times, pianists

April 6, 2019 • 1:12 am Comments Off on A Composer’s Final Work Contains ‘Visions’ of an American Master

A Composer’s Final Work Contains ‘Visions’ of an American Master

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The composer George Walker died last summer at 96. He was a close friend of the artist Frank Schramm, who documented his final years in photographs. Photo (c) Frank Schramm

My New York Times article on the late George Walker is now online and will be in the Sunday Arts section.

SEATTLE — Last fall, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery began to display, among its recent acquisitions, a photograph of the composer George Walker. It shows him close up, his right index finger and thumb bearing down on a pencil with the precision of a surgeon, at work on the manuscript score of his Sinfonia No. 5.

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Filed under: American music, George Walker, new music, New York Times

April 25, 2018 • 10:00 am Comments Off on San Francisco Conservatory of Music Gets $46 Million Gift

San Francisco Conservatory of Music Gets $46 Million Gift

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Students in the Technology and Applied Composition program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Credit Sewon Barrera

My latest New York Times story is now online.

Thanks to MaryClare Brzytwa, David Stull, Emily Pitts, DuMarkus Davis.

Here are some sound samples from the TAC program:

Filed under: music news, New York Times, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, women composers

November 24, 2017 • 8:17 am Comments Off on An Unfinished “Phantom Opera” Is Completed with Love

An Unfinished “Phantom Opera” Is Completed with Love

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Pauline Oliveros; photo by Allan J. Cronin

Remembering the great Pauline Oliveros, one year after her death: my New York Times story on The Nubian Word for Flowers:

Pauline Oliveros, the beloved composer who died last November, spent her long career experimenting — with improvisation, with technologically enhanced sound design and with “deep listening,” her term for a kind of heightened, mindful perception of sound.

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Filed under: new opera, New York Times

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