Archives for the 'Classical Music' Category
Tracker: old fire rekindled
Just found out that the wonderfully talented laptop artist Jeremy Flower has his own Web site. In one of his posts he talks about the Chicago high school visits of a few weeks ago, as a part of the “Ainadamar” curriculum. He has also uploaded the student-created beats.
I very briefly talked to Jeremy at one [...]
New season, new press room
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced its 2008-2009 season today. The overarching theme of “Echoes of Nations” is really close to my heart. Ever since I wrote an essay on the question of “what is a nation?” for a scholarship contest on textbookx.com, I’ve been enormously interested in the subject of nations and nationalism. It didn’t [...]
Adams’ Doctor Atomic at the Lyric: a review
Ever since my first opera attendance, when I saw Parsifal at the Vienna Staatsoper with Placido Domingo in 2002, I have not seen a better opera. Maybe it was the first impression that counts. Growing up, opera wasn’t present in my life; all that I knew of opera was packaged in those tedious concerts with [...]
Proving once again, there’s more than corn in Indiana…
The recent discussion surrounding Richard Taruskin’s piece in The New Republic made me think of Indiana. I swiftly sifted through the article, but it required a printer, as 12,000 words are no friend to eyes staring at a computer screen. In its stead, I read Marc Geelhoed’s and Drew McManus’s commentaries. Paul A. Alter, in [...]
Others on Liverpool phil in Second Life
I decided to give some more thought to the Liverpool Philharmonic’s Second Life adventure. One of the questions at the post concert Q&A was if the orchestra had made any money with this concert. The short answer was a no. I can only imagine it actually cost the orchestra quite a bit to produce the [...]
Liverpool phil live in Second Life
Today, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra performed live in Second Life. There were only 100 passes available, but I was one of the lucky ticket holders. Since it was work-related, my employer was gracious enough to have me install Second Life on my work computer. (The concert was at 7:30 p.m. in Liverpool, which means [...]
Boorstin’s Composing for Community
I am currently reading Daniel Boorstin’s The Creators, a most original perspective on arts history focusing on several “heroes of the imagination.” I’ve been reading it for a while, as I do, in phases. I recently picked it up again and I have just finished the chapter entitled “composing for community.” I thought I would [...]
Live blogging about cultural participation
The folks at Arts Journal are currently live-blogging from the ASOL conference in Nashville. In anticipation of the book Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life they started a discussion last week on a specially created blog. This afternoon they have taken the discussion partly out of the blogosphere with a presentation [...]
Brahms the vandal?
Let me start by saying that I am probably the only Chicagoan who likes the 2003 addition to Soldier Field.
This week conductor Kent Nagano programmed Brahms’s A German Requiem with interludes by Wolfgang Rhim, a contemporary composer. Few were happy about it, some even offended.
For example, Sounds & Fury author A.C. Douglas:
“By the time of [...]
Learning about Rostropovich
The news of Mstislav Rostropovich’s passing spread around quickly this morning. At this moment I am listening to the final bars of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with Rostropovich and the London Philharmonic, via YouTube (via Marc Geelhoed). Remarkably, it is the first music I have heard him perform.
I have only really been in the classical music [...]
