David Patrick Stearns

Now that Yannick Nézet-Séguin is one of the best-liked conductors on the planet, he can afford to come out – as a cat person. The music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Metropolitan Opera recently paid a visit to the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA) and brought with him a playlist based on the musical responses he and his … [Read more...] about Music that sends cats hunting

Great Shakespeare plays take the color of their surroundings – if the production is doing its job, and Broadway’s new King Lear is accomplishing that. But then how could any alert, modern Lear production avoid the current parallels with lines such as these? “’Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.” “Get thee glass eyes and, like a scurvy politician, seem … [Read more...] about King Lear with Glenda Jackson and everything else that’s happening now

New York Polyphony’s concert on Feb. 16 gave listeners many excellent things to agree upon - even though reactions were probably as numerous as the ears that heard it. This charming male foursome specializes in 15th- and 16th-century Renaissance polyphony, frequenting composers with strange names and music relatively rarely heard in recent centuries. This … [Read more...] about Renaissance polyphony as the eternal frontier of self-discovery

Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time made a high-prestige appearance Feb. 5 as the one and only work in concert series known as The Crypt Sessions - a sought-afte insider ticket for a few years now, presented at the Church of the Ascension Crypt in Harlem by the non-profit organization Death of Classical. Always a thoughtfully-curated series, this concert had the … [Read more...] about Messiaen in a crypt: New meaning to ‘the end of time.’