On September 6, the citizens of Saxony-Anhalt, a state in the former East Germany, will vote in a closely watched election. Recent polls put the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party at an unprecedented 43 percent. Among the potentially profound consequences for the region if the party governs Saxony-Anhalt are changes to its artistic life, […]
Author Archives: Jeffrey Arlo Brown
… has been an editor at VAN since 2015. He’s the author of The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (Boydell & Brewer), and his journalism has appeared in The Baffler, the New York Times, and elsewhere.
Posted inBreaking
Life After Monsieur
On Tuesday, the newspaper Badische Neueste Nachrichten announced the death of Hans Florian Messner at the age of 84. Messner was best known in musical circles for his connection to Pierre Boulez, for whom he served as a personal valet for over 50 years. Messner hailed from South Tyrol, a German speaking region in the […]
Posted inReport
Tough Life
On June 22, Maison Krug Champagne invited a group of tanned and tattooed influencer types (plus a few journalists) to taste their champagnes at the Reethaus, a sleek “space for radical presence” on the bank of Berlin’s river Spree. Accompanying the three-part cuvée—“Krug A ‘Clarity,’” “Krug B ‘Ensemble,’” and “Krug C ‘Sinfonia’”—was music by the […]
Posted inInterview
“The Music Still Has to Go On”
Like few others, the composer Carlos Simon’s artistic work has been subject to the changing political winds at the Kennedy Center. He came to the institution in 2021 as part of an industry-wide reckoning with legacies of racism. He will leave amid unprecedented turmoil and with the Center itself closed for Trumpian renovations. We spoke […]
Posted inReport
Welcome 2 Shorworld
In 2024, we reported on the meteoric rise of a composer named Alexey Shor. His music, which resembled the kind of music theory homework that gets Bs and Cs (and that multiple musicians compared to material produced by AI) was suddenly everywhere: in Valetta, Yerevan, and Dubai, but also in London, New York and Amsterdam. […]
Posted inOpinion
Is Post-Piece Silence a Recession Indicator?
The motivic development winds down. The harmony modulates into the home key. The final chord rings out. The conductor’s hands are poised at shoulder height, holding the room. The audience sits in hushed silence. And sits. And sits and sits and sits and sits and sits. I’ve lost count of the times in recent years […]
Posted inBreaking
“All you had to do was go on Google”
Before conductor Frédéric Chaslin asked her if she would be interested in meeting Jeffrey Epstein, the former French philosophy student, who was 21 at the time, had only exchanged a handful of messages on Facebook with him. One day in 2013, Chaslin asked the student, who requested anonymity, if she would like to interpret for […]
Posted inBarTálk
Optimistic Nihilism
On Sunday, Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek’s new opera, “Monster’s Paradise,” premiered at the Staatsoper Hamburg, staged by the house’s artistic director Tobias Kratzer. The work is a dark satire that involves a King-President obsessed with shit and modeled on Donald Trump; he battles a monster named Gorgonzilla, as vampires based on Neuwirth and Jelinek […]
Posted inBreaking
Emails Raise Questions About Conductor’s Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
“I found a great girl for your next stay in Paris,” the conductor Frédéric Chaslin wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in September 2013. Chaslin told the financier, who first pleaded guilty of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008, that the girl was a 21-year-old philosophy student who spoke three […]
Posted inReport
Under The Mask
In August 2023, the orchestral conductor Rebecca Bryant Novak began a doctor of musical arts degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Bryant Novak, who had spent time working as a conductor after getting her master’s, decided to go back to school to build a strong professional portfolio. She “felt like […]