In 2012, I embarked on a study of the classical music profession in the UK and Germany. I was interested in learning what it is like to work as a musician, the ups and downs of the profession, and how musicians deal with the often precarious nature of their work. Another issue that I wanted […]
Archive
Posted inProfile
Just Like A Concert
Lukhanyo Moyake was the first singer I heard at the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition last June, which for the first time in its 35-year history held rounds in Cape Town, South Africa. Still bleary-eyed from the day-long flight, I quickly regained my senses upon hearing the first phrase of his aria, “Ella mi […]
Posted inEssay
Brandenburgs and Buffalo
Downbeat was in less than 24 hours for the inaugural concert on the ranch. A herd of trucks and tractors still rumbled through, as hundreds of construction workers added finishing touches to buildings, and cleared roads to the eight sculpture sites placed among the dips and rises of the 11,500 acres of this working cattle […]
Posted inReview
Sing Her Name
“Sing Her Name,” a concert presented by The Dream Unfinished, was the first time, in nearly 20 years of concert-going, that I have heard a performance of classical music composed by a Black woman. It is the only concert I’ve been to that featured music solely by female composers. The classical music world likes to […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Graham F. Valentine Playlist
“Your voice…is attracting the most discerning audiences.” In the 1994 film “Farinelli,” the actor and performer Graham F. Valentine looks down at the kneeling castrato, delivering faint praise in a nobleman’s reedy French. His normal speaking voice is a bass-baritone with a Scottish accent; he can also sing in a penetrating head voice. In this […]
Posted inEssay
Performing Creativity
When I was starting out as a composer, in Canada in the early 1990s, being a composer was the opposite of being a business person. A few composers devoted a small amount of attention to promoting their work, which seemed both admirable and quirky; but if anyone was too self-promoting, it seemed like they were […]
Posted inInterview
Succession
I reached the French composer Tristan Murail on a Tuesday afternoon at his home in Provence. Since moving back to Europe from New York, where he taught at Columbia University for 13 years, Murail has built himself a kind of comfortable semi-retirement, though he is still composing and teaching: family, year-round good weather, separate studio, […]
Posted inInterview
Paper Music
The South African composer Philip Miller isn’t in his room. I’m at the reception of Berlin’s Ellington Hotel, and I’m about to go home, but there he is, hurrying around the corner. There were some last minute technical problems in his work “Refuse the Hour,” a collaboration with the artist William Kentridge and the choreographer […]
Posted inOpinion
Redundant Space
On June 19, I saw the English National Opera’s production of “Tristan und Isolde.” Besides the cast, the house advertised its collaboration with the British-Indian artist Anish Kappoor, who doubled as the production’s set designer. Employing a famous artist as a set designer is an appealing double whammy for opera houses, promising both creative constructions […]
Posted inInterview
Preservation
“Messiaen is not so present here, but he is very present in me.” On June 20, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the pianist and first non-UK based artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival, realized the composer’s “Catalogue d’oiseaux” indoors and outdoors in nature in Suffolk, England. It was his last major project at the festival, where he has […]