Writing about music, like the art itself, is alive and well in this country.
THE ART FOR A RECENT ECM DISC SHOWS a solitary figure on a shadowy, fog-swept landscape, his worldly possessions, including a drum and a trumpet, beside him in loose bundles. The photograph — as is usual with this exceptionally arts-aware record label — is black-and-white, handsomely presented. In another photograph the performers — the Argentinean [...]
STRANGE, THESE CONFLUENCES. LAST week was the time of the double bass: Italy’s Stefano Scodanibbio, with Terry Riley, in an off-the-wall Monday Evening Concert at the County Museum; the multiphased Edgar Meyer in a new concerto of his own fashioning with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra a few days later. Add to this the hilarious, [...]
TARRED WITH THE BRUSH OF “CONSERVAtive,” politicians turn into bogeyman figures suitable for frightening small children. Composers are not so drastically afflicted. Their world may not be mine, but I feel safe there on occasional visits. At Pasadena City College, a small chorus beguiled me most pleasantly with the lavender-and-cream of the bygone Randall Thompson [...]
MY NORMAL REACTION TO THE VIOLIN Concerto of Johannes Brahms is one of resigned tolerance. People whose friendship I cherish pretend to like it, therefore I must. In the past year, however, I have had two epiphanies about the work, which have induced the hallucination that the Brahms Violin Concerto is some kind of masterpiece. [...]
Alan's Poppies and Sage, photographed by Paul Cabanis, Spring 2010.