October 8, 2025 • 8:58 am Comments Off on New from John Adams
I’d meant to post a link to my program note for John Adams’s brand-new orchestral piece, The Rock You Stand On, written for Marin Alsop, who recently led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the world premiere:
Listening to John Adams often feels like stepping into a drama already in motion …
Filed under: John Adams, Philadelphia Orchestra, program notes
September 25, 2025 • 7:59 pm Comments Off on Goethe’s ‘Urworte.Orphisch’ Set to Music by Bernd Richard Deutsch
To open the season this weekend, Franz Welser-Möst leads the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in the American premiere of Austrian composer Bernd Richard Deutsch’s ambitious, nearly-hour-long Urworte, which sets Goethe’s famous stanzas to music.
Movements:
Sunday’s concert will be livestreamed on Adella, digital home of The Cleveland Orchestra.
My introduction to the work can be found in the Cleveland Orchestra program notes here.
Composers often set aside ideas that strike them in a flash of inspiration, waiting until the right moment arrives to wrestle them down in detail and give them an enduring form. For Bernd Richard Deutsch, one such idea was to write a work exploring the elemental forces that shape our lives….
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Filed under: Cleveland Orchestra, Goethe, new music, program notes
May 23, 2025 • 1:50 pm Comments Off on Philip Glass: Symphony No. 11
I had the honor of writing the program note for this week’s performances of Philip Glass’s Symphony Np. 11 by the New York Philharmonic, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting:
It wasn’t until he was 54 that Philip Glass began writing symphonies. With Symphony No. 1 in 1992, he opened up a new creative frontier that has remained an essential part of his work ever since….
Filed under: Gustavo Dudamel, New York Philharmonic, Philip Glass, program notes
February 19, 2025 • 5:56 pm Comments Off on Adès Conducts Adès
Here’s the essay I wrote for the Cleveland Orchestra’s program this week featuring guest conductor and composer Thomas Adès:
Among the preeminent composers of our era, Thomas Adès has likened the practice of creating art — whether music, literature, or painting — to fashioning “a simulacrum of the real world, a reflection”…
Filed under: Charles Ives, conductors, program notes, Saariaho, Sibelius, Thomas Adès
June 5, 2024 • 8:01 am Comments Off on 2024 Ojai Music Festival
With Mitsuko Uchida as Music Director, this year’s Ojai Music Festival from 6-9 June promises an intriguing mix of Mozart piano concertos, early Modernist masterpieces (with a focus on Arnold Schoenberg), and pieces by contemporary composers who hold special significance for her. I had the privilege once again of writing the program notes, which are available here.
Visit OMF’s homepage for livestreams and replays of the concerts here.
Filed under: Mozart, Ojai Festival, program notes, Schoenberg
April 23, 2024 • 3:51 pm Comments Off on “La Clemenza di Tito” at Juilliard
Mozart’s remarkable return to opera seria at the end of his life with La Clemenza di Tito is the choice for this year’s spring production by Juilliard Opera. Directed by the wise Stephen Wadsworth and with Nimrod David Pfeffer, the performance is on 24, 26, and 28 April at Alice Tully Hall at 7.30 pm. Tickets here.
My program essay for the production can be found here.
Filed under: Juilliard, Mozart, music news, program notes
October 6, 2023 • 12:22 pm 1
A rare opportunity to hear John Adams’s mammoth symphonic canvas on this weekend’s San Francisco Symphony program. Esa-Pekka Salonen, who led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the world premiere in 1999, conducts. My program note here.
The program also includes the world premiere of Jesper Nordin’s Convergence, with violinist Pekka Kuusisto as the soloist.
Filed under: Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, program notes, San Francisco Symphony
June 7, 2023 • 8:57 am Comments Off on 2023 Ojai Festival
Thursday is opening day of the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. This year’s edition is curated by Music Director Rhiannon Giddens together with Artistic Director Ara Guzelimian. Links: complete lineup of performances and 2023 program book, which include my notes and commentary, along with an introduction to the themes of the festival.
You can watch the Libbey Bowl concerts via livestream on the OMF homepage: To watch the 2023 Festival’s free Live Stream of Libbey Bowl concerts, please visit our homepage at concert time beginning on Thursday, June 8. The live stream video will appear at the top of the page for viewing.
Filed under: Ojai Festival, program notes, Rhiannon Giddens
May 22, 2022 • 5:43 am 1
The Metropolitan Opera has revived its splendid production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. Joshua Barone writes: “There were, though, some crucial differences from 2019. Phelim McDermott’s production, now more lived-in, unfolded with elegant inevitability rather than effort; the score was executed with a clarity and drive absent on the often slack album. And while “Akhnaten” may be one of Glass’s tributes to great men who changed the world — through science, politics and faith — Thursday’s performance of it made a persuasive argument for where the real power lies: with the women.”
Here’s my program note:
Filed under: Metropolitan Opera, Philip Glass, program notes
April 7, 2022 • 10:41 am Comments Off on John Corigliano’s Triathlon at San Francisco Symphony
In his programs this weekend with San Francisco Symphony, guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the world premiere of Triathlon by John Corigliano. Now 84, the composer has contributed a major work to the saxophone repertoire in this concerto for the remarkable Tim McAllister. I had the privilege of writing the program note for this world premiere. The rest of the program presents music by Adolphus Hailstork, Antonio Estévez, and Astor Piazzolla.
Filed under: commissions, John Corigliano, program notes, San Francisco Symphony
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MEMETERIA by Thomas May 