Musical America Blogs

By Rebecca Schmid Many American opera-goers, including New Yorkers, look across the ocean and wish that their home institutions would afford themselves the same liberties of programming. Back in Berlin, the Deutsche Oper kicked off its season with a Lachenmann opera, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, while the Komische Oper launched a Monteverdi trilogy including [...]

By James Jorden Of hundreds of juicy anecdotes in Ken Mandelbaum’s indispensable volume Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Flops, one stands out perhaps a little more than the others. It’s about a show called Reuben Reuben which closed out of town in 1955. This was a through-composed absurdist piece by Mark Blitzstein, and [...]

By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. One of the questions I was asked this past summer when I did a live Ask Edna session at the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival was about tips for successful grant writing.  Unfortunately, the allotted time that day didn’t suffice for me to address that [...]

by Sedgwick Clark Of Lincoln Center, that is. The announcement on Tuesday (9/25) that Reynold Levy, 67, president of Lincoln Center since 2002, considers his work done and will move on at the end of next year, was a surprise. I figured there would be more total remakes like Alice Tully Hall. Under Levy, all [...]

Another event that featured music as much as dance was the September 17 Alice Tully Hall performance of the Simón Bolivar National Youth Choir and the José Limón Dance Company. The highlight of the one-night only occasion, celebrating Venezuala’s El Sistema, was Missa Brevis.

By Brian Taylor Goldstein I run a small management company. In addition to our commissions, we bill our artists monthly for their share of expenses (conference fees, publicity materials, etc.) One of our artists is now refusing to pay unless we provide her with an itemization of expenses. Do I have to give her one? [...]

By Rebecca Schmid In Berlin, where contemporary music thrives from the Philharmonie to off spaces, it is a widespread perception that New York’s mainstream institutions are afraid to program anything past Stravinsky. A look at Alan Gilbert’s recent undertakings with the New York Philharmonic, notably in a hugely successful “360” concert of Mozart, Stockhausen, Boulez [...]

By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. One morning last week, while waking up to radio station WQXR, I heard the announcer introduce a nocturne by Ottorino Respighi, which he said was part of their featured album of the week. I had never heard it before and was spellbound by the beautiful [...]

by Sedgwick Clark Alastair Macaulay’s review in Thursday’s Times reminded me of the two-week Stravinsky-Balanchine mini-festival that opens New York City Ballet’s fall season. No performing organization in the world offers so much Stravinsky in a single season—and so authoritatively. These two weeks commemorate NYCB’s 1972 and 1982 Stravinsky festivals; I saw every program of both [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein I wonder if you would mind giving me some advice on a visa situation with one of my artists. To summarise, I represent a British artist who was commissioned to write a 7 minute piece for a university in the United States which will be premiered in 2013. The artist will [...]