Though this opera isn't Terence Blanchard's first work to qualify as contemporary classical, he's best known as a jazz drummer and film score composer. So the paper's contemporary classical maven, Seth Colter Walls, and jazz writer Giovanni Russonello went to see the piece together. - The New York Times
"Paganini may be a better comparison: a restless figure of astonishing ability, despised by (some) as a circus performer and accused by others of selling his soul to the devil. Kennedy seems similarly trapped, … with a gift for embarrassing nearly everyone nearly all the time." - London Review of Books
The Chandos release of Britten's opera stars Stuart Skelton with Edward Gardner conducting the Bergen Philharmonic; the Minnesota Orchestra took honors in its final season under Osmo Vänskä. Violinist James Ehnes is Artist of the Year; Young Artist of the Year is soprano Fatma Said. - Gramophone
“We’re well into the 21st century. It’s time to acknowledge that in many ways, and one of them is the way the orchestra looks on the stage,” says Philadelphia Orchestra president and CEO Matías Tarnopolsky. - Philadelphia Inquirer
"Whenever I'm playing drums, I'm always thinking compositionally about how things develop. … Why do certain harmonies accompany the musicians in a particular way? Or why does a type of rhythmic information that I'm hearing … make me accompany the musicians in a certain way?" - The Paris Review
Worldwide sales of the old-style black discs are up 700% in a decade, so the supply chain has no slack to absorb problems caused by the temporary closure of a petrochemical plant due to the Texas snowstorm or a California lacquer plant due to wildfires. - The Observer (UK)
Orchestra conductors appear to live longer than people in any other profession. Famous conductors of the past, then in an era when life expectancy was around 50 years, lived well into their 80s and 90s. - San Francisco Classical Voice
Ari Benjamin Meyers explains that part of his inspiration for the public orchestra came from the lesser-known Fellini film Orchestra Rehearsal, in which the orchestra and conductor are used as metaphors for radical political change. - Philadelphia Magazine
I'm increasingly uncomfortable with attending concerts "interpreted by these internationally-touring orchestras when I realize that at least 80 people took a plane for a single concert; particularly when I know that I can listen to a similar interpretation of the same piece by a more local orchestra. - Van
After trying for a month, "more than 100 young artists, teachers and their relatives affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, a celebrated school that became a target of the Taliban," finally escaped, heading for Portugal. - The New York Times
The Romanian "embodied an ideal of the complete musician in his roles as composer, virtuoso violinist and pianist, conductor, teacher and generous mentor to younger artists." And the country attracted 32 orchestras from 14 countries for the 25th Enescu Fest. - The New York Times
