Remember when I was really awesome and posting interviews every week? Well, I'm less awesome now, but here's an interview with Billy Robin of Northwestern University. He started Music Marathon on campus last year and is gearing up for another successful 26 (!) hours on April 30th. If you're not in the Chicago area, you can watch the entire concert live on their website. Billy Robin is a senior at Northwestern University studying musicology and saxophone performance. Born in Chappaqua, NY, he spends time in both Chicago and New York City, … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2010
Show off
It's like, I want to roll my eyes but it's really just pretty great. Lang Lang, Christoph Eschenbach, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, an iPad, and the .99 cent Magic Piano app in San Francisco on Monday night:It really makes iDude seem so 2009. … [Read more...]
The Balding Twelve Tones Announce US Tour
I'm not entirely sure why BrooklynVegan, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Hipster Runoff, etc. haven't picked this up, but should you be in San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or sunny Kalamazoo this weekend, you can see that famous Alex Ross byline in the flesh. Tour dates can be found on Alex's mostly-but-not-entirely retired blog, The Rest is Noise:This weekend, Ethan Iverson and I will launch our globe-spanning, three-city modern-music tour, touching down in San Francisco (rise and shine with Schoenberg at 10AM on Saturday), Ann Arbor (Sunday at 4PM), and … [Read more...]
What Not to Design
Maybe one day TLC will give me my own show where I get to go into graphic designers' computers and Move to Trash - Empty Trash all of their bad graphics and fonts. And they'll be all "noooooo my mom gave me that horn graphic for my 16th birthday" and "oh come on: I wore that Orientalist Graffiti font to my sister's wedding," and I'll just say IT ALL HAS TO GO YOU'LL THANK ME LATER, delete. Where, pray tell, are my poor eyes expected to go on this graphic? I guess to the fire burst? And now for some excellent marketing: a YouTube trailer for … [Read more...]
Is this a ~challenge~?
I'm still furious with Ben & Jerry's for removing Mint Chocolate Cookie from their Scoop Shops, but I will take the high road and post this news regardless.[drum(stick?)-roll]From Nylon magazine's website:Last night, I got a preview of Bonnaroo Buzz, a new Ben and Jerry's flavor. The Manchester, Tennessee music festival's combo, though free of any illegal substances, still promises to give you a bit of a kick, with a blend of light coffee and malt ice creams, whiskey caramel swirls, and English toffee pieces....Although we do wonder wha's … [Read more...]
And here is my worst nightmare
From Macy Halford on The New Yorker's Book Bench blog:While enjoying a typical New York Sunday morning yesterday--coffee, two eggs on a roll, the Times, NPR--I had an unexpected moment of empathy for someone much, much richer than myself: Yann Martel, who reportedly got three million dollars for his new novel, "Beatrice and Virgil," a Holocaust parable about a donkey and a monkey who meet a terrible fate at the hands of a taxidermist. Also about a writer who resembles Martel....I am sitting there, rereading Michiko Kakutani's … [Read more...]
Chopin till you drop
Did not see this coming, in Time Out New York's weekly sample sale round-up: Record Show and CD and Classical Music Expo Eighteen vendors from across the tristate area will congregate and unload new, rare and used records, 45s and CDs, most tagged at $5 or less. Classical-music enthusiasts will be in heaven rifling through the expanded classical section, featuring orchestral, symphonic, opera and soloist discs. Mention TONY to receive $1 off admission. The Holiday Inn, 440 W 57th St between Ninth and Tenth Aves (973-209-6067, … [Read more...]
So you wanna put on a show
Maybe it's just the blogs I read, but it seems to me you can't swing a dead Grizabella the Glamor Cat without hitting a new ridiculous idea for a musical these days. Currently on Broadway, we have the Green Day musical (which I saw at Berkley Rep last spring - I mean, I like Green Day concerts, too, almost as much as I like plots) and an Enron musical. Ah well: it's possible that a musical roughly about a 35-year-old single guy's birthday seemed ridiculous at the time, too, but I can't help but highlight these upcoming projects. In no … [Read more...]
I like to experiment
For the first time in mini-career, I offered a free download of an aria to a blog. I've worked with Sequenza21 on free track giveaways before, but never for what we in the biz (groan) call a "Core Classical" artist. So let's see how we do. Somewhere beyond the sea, OperaChic is giving away an MP3 from Sondra's debut CD, Verdi Arias. It comes out on April 27, but is available now in a tiny record shop in Cupertino, CA called "iTunes." Google Maps can tell you how to get there. The folks at Naxos, the distributor, and Delos, the label, were … [Read more...]
What’s with all these awards
Many congratulations to composer Jennifer Higdon, whose Violin Concerto for Hilary just won the Pulitzer Prize for Music! Many additional congratulations to my client Julia Wolfe, whose Steel Hammer was a Pulitzer finalist. Sadly, Life's a Pitch did not win for Explanatory Reporting like I had hoped, so I'll just have to be satisfied by loose affiliation with Jennifer and Julia's wins this year. Here are Hilary and Jennifer discussing the concerto just after the premiere in Indianapolis last year: As always, updates from the road and composer … [Read more...]
Just a man and his will to survive
((Look - TIGER colors!))We all know uber talented people get more Get Out of Jail Free cards (literally and figuratively) than the rest of us, but this--from New York Magazine's Daily Intel--is especially interesting:All Tiger Woods had to do to get people back on his side was whack a few golf balls. At least that's according to data from Zeta Interactive, a company that measures public perception by trolling message boards, blogs, and social-media sites. Released on Friday, the data shows that Woods's online reputation went from 51 percent … [Read more...]
The British have come (and are staying)
Gramophone, the self-described "world's best classical music magazine," and BBC Music, the self-described "world's best-selling classical music magazine," are soldiering bravely into the 21st century this month. On April 6th, Gramophone launched its new design. As described by editor James Inverne on the website,"You'll enjoy some new features, such as The Trial (where critics advocate the cases for and against an iconic recording; in this issue Mike Ashman and Peter Quantrill argue the relative merits of Karajan's Parsifal - and you can cast … [Read more...]
Click click click went the keyboard
..slide slide slide went the mousezing zing zing went my heartstringsfrom the moment they e mailed I fell...I'll spare you an entire modified-for-blogging Meet Me in St. Louis Trolley song, but just a quick note to say that should you be in St. Louis, M-to-the-O tomorrow night, check out their FOURTH Bloggers' Night:Fellow Bloggers, You're invited to the SLSO's fourth Bloggers' Night, Saturday, April 10, 2010. The show: David Robertson, conductorGil Shaham, violinCHRISTOPER … [Read more...]
Putting the “LA” in “lame”
Excuse me, but I wore heels for two (2) all-day marathons of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center four years ago. And one of the days I had strep throat. Via OperaChic, out of the Los Angeles Times' tips for first-time Ring-goers: Ladies: Dress up, but don't overdo it with the footwear. "You always want to look elegant when you go out to the opera," Silver said."But you have to be comfortable." After nearly six hours of "Gotterdammerung," your feet will exact vengeance if you get too ambitious with footwear.Guys: Don't blow this … [Read more...]