One way to guarantee an electoral victory is to change the voting rules. That appears to have been the strategy deployed to add DT’s name to a “rebranded” Kennedy Center by a “unanimous” vote of the Center’s … » Read

Although Philadelphia’s Academy of Music is the nation’s oldest continually operating opera house, New Orleans can rightfully claim the mantle of being the first. The long-since-destroyed Théâtre d’Orléans … » Read

Stephen Schwartz, best known as the composer of Wicked , along with Pippin, Godspell, and portions of Bernstein’s Mass , which opened the Kennedy Center in 1971, has cancelled his appearance at the Washington National Opera gala in May. The … » Read

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s path to the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert started when he replaced a banned Russian conductor at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2022 with the help of a pianist who traveled … » Read

The slowly disappearing San Antonio Philharmonic, which recently axed its Holiday Pops programs , has also been forced to cancel the Jan. 16 and 17 performances of the Classics 5 program featuring Katherine Balch’s 2023 work Musica Pyralis … » Read

When “The Egg,” the brutalist concrete oval that dominates the Albany skyline, opened in 1978, it was intended to serve as a general-purpose auditorium for government meetings—hence its original name, The Meeting Place. Inspired … » Read

Once DT slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, what had been a trickle of cancellations after his self-appointed board  voted him chairman last Februrary, turned into a flood. First, folk singer Kristy Lee announced she had canceled a … » Read

LONDON—Two years ago, Joseph Horowitz published his first novel, The Marriage , a fictionalized account of Gustav Mahler’s annual American sojourns between 1907 and 1911. An attempt to explain why such a fêted European conductor … » Read

For many years, scientists have studied musicians to understand how intense, long-term practice changes the brain and behavior. Now research from a massive new international study is offering a more in-depth look at the memory advantages … » Read

In the wake of Margaret Hodges’ scathing review of Arts Council England , Martin Kettle, a columnist at The Guardian , has stepped forward to argue in favor of a much more aggressive role in supporting the arts by the national government. … » Read