MEMETERIA by Thomas May

November 11, 2016 • 3:12 am Comments Off on RIP Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

RIP Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

The losses continue mercilessly.

From the New York Times obituary:

Mr. Cohen was an unlikely and reluctant pop star, if in fact he ever was one. He was 33 when his first record was released in 1967. He sang in an increasingly gravelly baritone. He played simple chords on acoustic guitar or a cheap keyboard. And he maintained a private, sometime ascetic image at odds with the Dionysian excesses associated with rock ’n’ roll.

[…]

“The changeless is what he’s been about since the beginning,” the writer Pico Iyer argued in the liner notes for the anthology “The Essential Leonard Cohen.” “Some of the other great pilgrims of song pass through philosophies and selves as if through the stations of the cross. With Cohen, one feels he knew who he was and where he was going from the beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper, deeper.”

Filed under: music news, obituary

November 10, 2016 • 3:11 am Comments Off on Tim Munro’s Recounting

It’s been hard to fight the despair of the last few days. But we have to move on and focus on our shared humanity. The work of artists is more essential than ever. If you’re in New York, tonight flutist Tim Munro (formerly of eighth blackbird) makes his solo concert debut there in a fascinating program at the Miller Theatre. Here’s my introduction from the program book:

Thresholds and Transitions: Tim Munro’s New York Solo Debut

If there’s one thing you might safely expect from a Tim Munro concert, it’s not merely that it will contain the unexpected, but that the unexpected will hold centerstage. Munro (b. 1978) has pointedly not organized a menu of greatest hits replete with virtuoso pablum for his New York solo debut. Casting aside the standard showcases of silver-toned sweetness, he presents a program entirely of living composers (including two world premieres) who aid and abet Munro’s fascination with the theatrical and performative dimensions of his instrument.

If the avant-garde became known for its preoccupation with “extended-playing” techniques, Munro updates the experimental impulse for the 21st century with a bold vision of what it means to play the flute.

Filed under: new music

November 9, 2016 • 12:36 am 2

How To Go On?

how-to-go-on

Filed under: Uncategorized

November 5, 2016 • 10:53 am Comments Off on A Primer in the Romantic Spirit from Seattle Symphony

A Primer in the Romantic Spirit from Seattle Symphony

khachatryan-12 Sergey Khachatryan. Image courtesy of Seattle Symphony.

My review of this weekend’s Seattle Symphony program with Ludovic Morlot and violinist Sergey Khachatryan is now live on Vanguard Seattle:

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO)’s sixth season with Music Director Ludovic Morlot has so far included a pair of electrifying programs that paired world premiere commissions by composers of today with Beethoven classics—the latter part of an ongoing two-year cycle of the composer’s complete symphonies and piano concertos.

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Filed under: Berlioz, Ludovic Morlot, review, Seattle Symphony, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Vanguard Seattle

November 1, 2016 • 12:10 am Comments Off on Dudamel and LA Philharmonic on Tour with Mahler’s Ninth

Dudamel and LA Philharmonic on Tour with Mahler’s Ninth

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Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Benaroya Hall. (VERN EVANS PHOTO)

The charismatic conductor makes his first-ever Seattle stop with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a one-night performance of Mahler’s profoundly moving Ninth Symphony.

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Filed under: Gustavo Dudamel, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mahler, Seattle Times

October 28, 2016 • 10:43 am Comments Off on A Pair of Striking Debuts at Seattle Symphony

A Pair of Striking Debuts at Seattle Symphony

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Polish soprano/composer Agata Zubel

Along with unveiling a world premiere by composer Agata Zubel, the Seattle Symphony continued its ongoing Beethoven cycle with a rhapsodic contribution by soloist Inon Barnatan at the keyboard.

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Filed under: Beethoven, new music, review, Seattle Symphony

October 25, 2016 • 8:01 pm Comments Off on Bob Dylan’s Nobel Silence

Bob Dylan’s Nobel Silence

I’ve been waiting to see Bob Dylan’s own response to being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but as of today, there’s reportedly been only a stunning silence from the artist.

According to Johan Sennero’s report , Dylan “must give a lecture on a subject ‘relevant to the work for which the prize has been awarded’ no later than 6 months after Dec. 10, the anniversary of dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel’s death.”

If Dylan doesn’t deliver the relevant lecture (or “even a concert”) within that time frame, he’ll forfeit the $900,000 prize –though he’ll remain immortalized as 2016’s laureate.

Sennero adds: “Over the years, only six laureates has declined the prize. One of them was French existentialist author Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964. After Sartre fell on hard times a few years later his lawyer wrote the Nobel foundation asking them to send Sartre the money. They refused.”

Filed under: Bob Dylan

October 25, 2016 • 1:19 am Comments Off on Joshua Bell Teams up with Cellist Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Denk

Joshua Bell Teams up with Cellist Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Denk

Image by Shervin Lainez

My story on the making of For the Love of Brahms, the marvelous new release from Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, and Jeremy Denk, is now live on Strings:

“Humanity . . . must in the long run regain its health through the true and great works Brahms produces,” wrote Clara Schumann in her diary in January 1889. To which cellist Steven Isserlis adds “Brahms—we need you!” to complete a Tweet he shared just a few days after wrapping up a recording project in May with violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jeremy Denk.

The release, For the Love of Brahms, contains the Double Concerto, Op. 102, and the First Piano Trio, along with the slow movement of Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto, and is being released in September by Sony.

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Filed under: Brahms, chamber music

October 22, 2016 • 12:02 am Comments Off on 2017 Lucerne Summer Festival Announced

2017 Lucerne Summer Festival Announced

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The program for the 2017 Summer Festival in Lucerne has just been announced. The overall theme is “Identity.” Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Jay Campbell will be featured as “artistes étoiles,” and Michel van der Aa will be the composer-in-residence for 2017’s Summer Festival.

Lucerne has also launched a new magazine packed with interviews, commentary, and articles and listings of the programming for all three festivals.

download a pdf of the magazine

Filed under: Lucerne Festival, music news

October 18, 2016 • 8:16 am Comments Off on Hansel and Gretel at Seattle Opera: Laurent Pelly’s Cautionary Fairy-Tale

Hansel and Gretel at Seattle Opera: Laurent Pelly’s Cautionary Fairy-Tale

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Sasha Cooke (Hansel) and Ashley Emerson (Gretel); photo by Philip Newton

Absurd as it sounds, there was a time in the early 20th century when Hansel and Gretel was regularly performed at the Metropolitan Opera on a double bill with Pagliacci. And its longstanding association with Christmas – Richard Strauss, after all, conducted the world première in Weimar on 23 December 1893 – has reinforced a general impression of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera as a light entertainment, a candied appetiser in need of more substantial fare to balance it out if presented as part of a regular opera season intended for adults.

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Filed under: review, Seattle Opera

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