As the spring semester hurtles onward after the break, take refuge in many heartening concerts this weekend. Tomorrow evening, the storied saxophonist and artist Dickie Landry will regale anyone lucky enough to grab a seat in the Menil Collection’s Byzantine… Continue Reading
From July 1966 to January 1967, John Cage and Morton Feldman recorded several conversations for radio at WBAI in New York City (happily published by MusikTexte in 1993). In a conversation in July, 1966, they ended up talking about looking… Continue Reading
Last night, at the American premiere of Black over Red (My dialogue with Rothko), I think I heard the music of the spheres. Presented by the Menil Collection and Dance Salad Festival in the main foyer of the Menil, Black… Continue Reading
I’m proposing a session about my favorite things at the 2018 Modern Language Society Convention in NYC and I would love to get your proposals! See the call below. (And wide range really means wide range, but if you have… Continue Reading
In 1978 at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, György Ligeti premiered his opera Le Grand Macabre. It’s sort of the opera that has everything, running the gamut from tragedy to comedy. Wild, dramatic, absurd, but still philosophical, the opera offers… Continue Reading
In a time when opera is trying to reinvent itself and competing with all number of entertainment that has to do much less work to seem relevant, Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte at this year’s Salzburger Festspiele is a remarkably original… Continue Reading
…for Germany’s opera houses. It’s a cruel trick to imagine what I’ll be missing when the fall season opens across the country (in Berlin, the Staatsoper under den linden; in Bayreuth, the Margravial Opera House). I’m just hoping the Wortham will… Continue Reading
I’ve just left Bayreuth, Germany, where the famed annual Wagner Festival began on Monday with Parsifal. Anticipation was high, the city on alert, as the Wagner-obsessed descended. After a few walks through town and visit to the newly-renovated Richard Wagner… Continue Reading
A letter from Aldous Huxley housed in the Woodson Research Center here at Rice University made me wonder what could have been (Bernstein’s response is not supplied): April 4, 1957. Letter to Leonard Bernstein. As a very busy man with… Continue Reading