January 25, 2022 • 2:03 pm Comments Off on SOUNDbox, the New Series at Nonsequitur
Here’s my Seattle Times story on a new Nonsequitur series that’s about to launch at the Chapel Performance Space:
Experimental music. Contemporary classical and post-classical. Free improvisation. Electroacoustic. Sound installation. Avant-garde … There’s a bewildering babel of labels used to try to classify artists who are defiantly unclassifiable….
Filed under: Nonsequitur, Seattle Times
December 27, 2021 • 9:55 am 1
Here’s my latest Seattle Times story, about John Adams as composer and conductor:
Seattle Symphony audiences have another reason to be proud of their band…
Filed under: John Adams, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Times
November 30, 2021 • 6:49 am Comments Off on Andy Akiho’s Seven Pillars Premieres at Emerald City Music
Seven Pillars, an epic for percussion quartet by the marvelous composer Andy Akiho, receives its live performance world premiere this weekend in Seattle by the Sandbox Percussion ensemble. My story for The Seattle Times:
“The spirit of percussion opens everything,” musician John Cage once declared. He had in mind the way percussion music can open the door to unaccustomed ways of listening — and even of perceiving the environment around us…..
And this weekend brings another not-to-be-missed percussion classic: Michael Gordon’s hour-long Timber, for six players, which is being presented by Base: Experimental Arts + Space: 6520 5th Avenue South, #122nd, Seattle, WA 98108 on Dec 4 and 5 at 3 and 8pm. Features a six-player instrument built by local master carpenter Isaac Anderson & light design by Kevin Blanquies.
Filed under: new music, percussion, Seattle Times
April 15, 2021 • 11:52 am Comments Off on Seattle Opera Meets the Museum of Flight
My latest story for The Seattle Times:
We’ve all been there.
The familiar dread that accompanies air travel — Will my flight be delayed? Will I end up stranded? — has only become aggravated in the time of the coronavirus. But the reverse side to such anxieties is the promise of escape, which leads us ever onward. The resulting ambiguity gives airports their tremendous symbolic power.
The company premiere of Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis’s Flight will be streamed on the Seattle Opera website from April 23-25; tickets $35.
Filed under: Seattle Opera, Seattle Times
December 12, 2020 • 9:47 pm Comments Off on This Is Beethoven
My Seattle Times story on This Is Beethoven, Seattle’s citywide digital festival that will take place from 16 to 19 December.
Milestone anniversaries are supposed to be predictable events.
And since no figure in the classical music firmament looms as large as Ludwig van Beethoven, the classical music world was counting on the composer’s 250th birthday this year as a major selling point. But coronavirus started wreaking its havoc, and countless Beethoven-related events had to be scuttled — or adapted on the fly to constraints no one could have predicted….
Filed under: Beethoven, Seattle Times
January 7, 2019 • 1:07 pm Comments Off on The Adventurous Mahan Esfahani
Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani plays with the Seattle Symphony on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 11 and 12. (Kaja Smith)
Filed under: Bach family, Seattle Times
October 31, 2018 • 2:47 pm Comments Off on The Routes of Slavery Traces a Musical Journey of Resilience
Performers in The Routes of Slavery, which comes to Seattle on Tuesday, Nov. 6. (Foundation Centre Internacional de Music Antiga)
My Seattle Times story on the upcoming Seattle performance of Jordi Savall’s The Routes of Slavery is now online:
Joined by a global array of musicians, music researcher and virtuoso Jordi Savall traces the relevant story of the African diaspora and its musical legacy across centuries and continents in The Routes of Slavery.
Filed under: early music, Jordi Savall, Seattle Times
May 9, 2018 • 9:37 am Comments Off on Gaman at Music of Remembrance
I had the privilege of interviewing Shokichi Tokita for my latest Seattle Times story. As a boy of 8, he was incarcerated with his entire family at the infamous Minidoka”War Relocation Center” in Idaho soon after Pearl Harbor.
Filed under: Music of Remembrance, Seattle Times
April 16, 2018 • 4:05 pm Comments Off on The Esoterics: Concert Review
Photo by Bruce Weber
The Esoterics Sing Radically Secular Rewrites of Texts from the Christian Mass
The Esoterics have a reputation for giving voice to new ideas. But this past weekend’s program explored a concept that was unusual even for them.
Filed under: choral music, review, Seattle Times
March 27, 2018 • 2:00 pm Comments Off on “Become Desert” from John Luther Adams
This week brings the world premiere of the new large-scale orchestral work from John Luther Adams, which Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot will perform Thursday and Saturday. My preview for The Seattle Times:
“Close your eyes and listen to the singing of the light,” exhorts Octavio Paz in “Piedra Nativa” (“Native Stone”)….
Filed under: American music, John Luther Adams, Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Times
Arts & Culture Stories from NPR
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 