When I was nine, in the spring of 1987, I spent a school semester in England. My history-professor dad took advantage of a faculty-exchange program between Ball State University and Westminster College, outside Oxford, and brought the family along. We spent the weekend visiting castles and ruins and the countryside, and it one of those [...]
Freshly blessed by the New York Times, Gabriel Kahane arrives in Chicago Wednesday night as part of his Tour with No Name. He plays and sings at the St. Paul’s Cultural Center up at 2215 West North Avenue, a venue I know nothing about, but hey, if you aren’t up for a little exploring, you [...]
I went to the CD-player this morning, grabbed Grizzly Bear’s Friend EP, and went to put it into the machine. It has two covers of “Knife” on it, one by CSS and another by Atlas Sound. Completely normal state of affairs, nothing really worth calling out. Except that when you compare it to how a [...]
The next CSO Resound release will be out May 12 here in the States (May 5 on iTunes), with Bernard Haitink conducting Poulenc’s Gloria and Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloe. The Chicago Symphony Chorus sings throughout, with soprano Jessica Rivera stepping up in the Poulenc. Pre-order yours on Amazon today.
As I jokingly alluded to below, last weekend was Easter weekend, and another important anniversary was that of Marian Anderson singing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s been 70 years since Anderson sang there, and everyone ought to go out now and read Richard Powers’s 2003 novel The Time of Our Singing, which [...]
“It is the brain’s correlations of sensory information that create the knowledge we have about our surroundings, such as the sounds of words and music, the images we see in paintings and photographs, the colors we perceive: ‘perception is not merely a reflection of immediate input,’ [Gerald] Edelman and [Giulio] Tononi write [in A Universe [...]
It’s late for an Easter post, but pay that no attention. Here’s Eddie Izzard summarizing Easter, and for extra big laughs, and what may be Izzard’s funniest bit ever, his take on how the da Vinci’s Last Supper was painted. And below that you’ll find one of the more bizarre offerings on youtube, Kermit the [...]
Cashing in on the worldwide success of The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross hinted that his next book won’t be as esoteric as his history of the twentieth-century’s art music. The working title is Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli: Singers by Our Time, of Our Time, for Our Time. And John Adams announced his next operatic [...]