Byron Schenkman (Will Austin/Will Austin Photography)
For Robert Schumann, the Romantic concept of poetry was the common denominator that inspired him to compose across a wide range of genres…
Filed under: Byron Schenkman, Schumann, Seattle Times
November 7, 2017 • 8:48 am Comments Off on Byron Schenkman & Friends Present the Poetry of Schumann
Byron Schenkman & Friends Present the Poetry of Schumann
November 3, 2017 • 6:18 am Comments Off on Making Mozart’s Garden Grow
Making Mozart’s Garden Grow
Conductor Joseph Colaneri and director Mary Birnbaum during a rehearsal for Mozart’s ‘Finta’
My story on Juilliard’s upcoming production of La finta giardiniera:
It may be hard to imagine that there was a time when pre-Baroque figures were generally treated as an obscure footnote to the alleged master narrative of Western music history. But when it comes to the lifework of individual composers, a similarly myopic attitude is still sometimes found…
October 29, 2017 • 5:44 pm Comments Off on Berlioz Festival Coming Up at Seattle Symphony
Berlioz Festival Coming Up at Seattle Symphony
My story on Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony, and Berlioz immersion in the Seattle Times:
Ludovic Morlot’s connection to Hector Berlioz goes deep. When he was 12, his parents moved to a house just a few miles from La Côte-Saint-André, the composer’s native village in the southeastern corner of France.
Filed under: Berlioz, Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Times
October 27, 2017 • 5:51 am Comments Off on Contemplating End Times with the Emerson Quartet
Contemplating End Times with the Emerson Quartet
Emerson String Quartet Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco
My review of the Emerson Quartet’s performance for the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center for Musical America (paywall):
NEW YORK—“Conclusions are the weak point of most authors,” George Eliot famously declared, “but some of the fault lies in the very nature of a conclusion, which is at best a negation.” That may hold true for fiction, but composers glory in the powerful statements they can make when a piece approaches the double bar line. And, in the case of certain composers, music written when their own lives are nearing the end possesses a special mystique.
Filed under: Beethoven, Emerson String Quartet, Musical America, review, Shostakovich
October 26, 2017 • 5:13 am Comments Off on Layla and Majnun
Layla and Majnun
Mark Morris and his Dance Group are now giving Layla and Majnun its New York premiere at the White Light Festival. I interviewed Morris for this Seattle Times preview when they performed it last year in Seattle:
Filed under: dance, Mark Morris
October 22, 2017 • 1:12 pm Comments Off on Musical America New Artist of the Month: Seth Parker Woods
Musical America New Artist of the Month: Seth Parker Woods
This afternoon Seth Parker Woods makes his debut at the acclaimed Phillips Collection Sunday concerts series.
Musical America is featuring cellist Seth Parker Woods as New Artist of the Month for October. My profile here.
Filed under: Uncategorized
October 18, 2017 • 12:25 pm Comments Off on Angel in America
Angel in America
My essay for the Metropolitan Opera on Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel. The Met’s production opens next week and will be the North American premiere:
Not every composer has a knack for finding operatic potential in unlikely sources. But over the past two decades, Thomas Adès has followed his dramaturgical instinct to some of the most spectacular successes in contemporary opera…
Filed under: Metropolitan Opera, new opera, Thomas Adès
