JOHN LENNON SHOT DEAD
Dec
8
2010
Leaving home for classes at Hunter College, I stepped out the front door of my East 4th Street tenement walk-up, pausing on the top step to acclimate to the biting-cold December air. Gloria, the black single mother from the first-floor-rear apartment, was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, chatting with a friend. At the foot of ...
I just love the guy: John Lennon
Nov
27
2010
It’s not his song writing or performance that grabs me, although I like and admire that too. It’s his total artistic nature, flamboyant personality, troubled personal journey, and his bonding with a really wacky Japanese artist that endears him to me. Yes, bonding; John and Yoko were a deeply bonded couple, for better or for worse. LENNONYC, ...
From Rio con brio: Musica Angelica returns to Los Angeles 1
Nov
23
2010
I’m looking forward to a marvelous performance by Musica Angelica, the L.A.-based baroque chamber orchestra, just back from a tour of South America, primed to let ‘er rip in Santa Monica and Pasadena performances next weekend. The 20-piece baroque band’s versatile music director, Martin Haselboeck, in a previous concert, conducted while singing, balancing on his ...
Alex Ross: top critic, top halls, top tunes
Nov
8
2010
The music mavens in our group at the NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Classical Music & Opera were levitating into outer space after meeting a huge hero: The New Yorker‘s music critic, Alex Ross, the author of The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) and Listen to This (2010). In a chat between ...
Ornette was fantastic. Frances Davis was also fantastic. 3
“Miles liked Ornette,” said the restaurant hostess as though first-name-basis chatter about two jazz-world geniuses was the most natural thing in the world to do while seating customers. Adam and I were grabbing a bite at Hamburger Hamlet before what would be a wonderful Ornette Coleman concert at Royce Hall. Yes, that Miles. And this ...
Jackie K’s symphony seat before she was Jackie O
Oct
24
2010
This snapshot was taken by my colleague Bret at Avery Fisher Hall, where over two evenings, we watched the New York Philharmonic’s young new conductor Alan Gilbert do his thing. Mrs. K/O, in her time, sat in the seat in front of us. The first concert was a mixed bill of Debussy, Sibelius Violin Concerto ...
Back to LA after whirlwind classical music tour of NYC 2
Oct
21
2010
Your humble correspondent is chained once again to her desk in Los Feliz, California, following a 10-day tour of paradise — otherwise known as New York City in scintillating October weather, with the art season in full blast. As a lucky recipient of a fellowship to the NEA’s Classical Music & Opera Institute, I joined a gung-ho group ...
Ornette Coleman, at 80, can still change the way you listen . . . or even scare you 2
Oct
17
2010
Jazz enthusiast Adam Hyman contributes this appreciation of Ornette Coleman to arts·meme: Ornette Coleman, who returns to UCLA Live on November 3, is one of jazz’s few remaining legends to walk among us. He’s usually credited with creating “free jazz.” In fact, a variety of free-jazz experimentations preceded him. What Coleman created, as part of his truly ...
Fear & loathing at the Met: Rene Pape as Boris Gudonov 1
Read this story on The Huffington Post. Opera goers didn’t so much descend the Metropolitan Opera House’s red staircase late Friday night as fled the house after a challenging four-hour encounter with “Boris Gudonov,” Modest Mussorgsky’s sprawling recitative-driven opera from 1869. Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky Theater conductor whose advocacy for “Boris” may have spurred the ...
Meeting NY Philharmonic conductor Alan Gilbert
Oct
12
2010
As part of the NEA Arts Journalism Institute for Classical Music & Opera, our group of 23 met yesterday with the New York Philharmonic’s talented new conductor Alan Gilbert. Joining Gilbert in the meeting was his composer-in-residence, the Finn, Magnus Lindberg. Also on the panel was Gilbert’s artistic administrator, John Magnum, formerly of the L.A. ...