Eamonn Quinn, the self-described “oddball” who founded the Louth Contemporary Music Society in the northeast of Ireland in 2006, is neither a composer nor a performer. It shows in the best way. Quinn, who works in education, was introduced to new music through his wife Gemma while studying at Queen’s University in Belfast, beginning with […]
Author Archives: Jeffrey Arlo Brown
... has been an editor at VAN since 2015. His work has also appeared in Slate, The Baffler, The Outline, The Calvert Journal, and Electric Lit. He lives in Berlin.
Posted inPlaylist
A March Madness Playlist
“What if we did a playlist of 32 musical marches to tie in with March Madness?” asked one VAN editor who definitely understands sportsball and did not have to google how many teams are in a bracket (or when March Madness takes place). As classical-music-cartoonish as the idea sounded, it did get us thinking about […]
Posted inBreaking
In Safe Hands
It’s still early in February, but classical music has already seen two major conducting appointments this month. On February 1, Israeli conductor Lahav Shani signed a contract to become the new music director of the Munich Philharmonic from the 2026-27 season, replacing Putin cheerleader Valery Gergiev. On Tuesday, the New York Philharmonic announced that Gustavo […]
Posted inInterview
A Point in the Soul
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Brian Greis, a retired obstetrician-gynecologist who lives with his husband in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, attended some 200 classical concerts a year and spent up to eight out of 12 months on the road traveling to attend performances. Greis never harbored serious ambitions of being a classical musician, but since his childhood […]
Posted inReview
Too Big To Fail
Can a piece of music be too big to fail? The latest work by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Finnish composer and conductor who is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony, has a startling number of what politicians like to call “stakeholders”: The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice (which gave the premiere on […]
Posted inReport
“You’re Afraid to Ask Your Friends How They Are”
On November 26, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (YsOU) performed a concert titled “A Night for Ukraine” at the Konzerthaus in Berlin. Supported by the Goethe Institut and the YsOU’s German counterpart, the Federal Youth Orchestra of Germany, the event had patriotic trappings, with blue and yellow light projected on the back of the […]
Posted inInterview
The Threshold of Time
In the big pond full of big fish that is the New York contemporary classical music scene, the Argento New Music Project, led by composer and conductor Michel Galante, is an unusual and irreplaceable specimen. As artistic director of the ensemble, Galante combines two qualities that rarely go together: An ear for logical and creative […]
Posted inBreaking
“They See Us as Numbers, Not People”
On November 16, the part-time faculty of the New School in New York City, including the conservatory under its auspices, the Mannes School of Music, went on strike. A whopping 87 percent of the professors at the New School, which costs upwards of $60,000 per year to attend, fall under the category of part-time teachers. […]
Posted inBreaking
Requiem for a Tweet
Twitter was never a very musical social medium. Unlike YouTube, you couldn’t listen to ten hours of “Für Elise” on repeat; unlike TikTok, teenagers didn’t go viral for singing sea shanties. You can’t really share your own music like on SoundCloud or Bandcamp, and probably no one will care about your rare vinyl of Gérard […]
Posted inInterview
A Glimpse of the Butterfly
Few conductors manage to cross the invisible boundary separating contemporary music ensembles (with their emphasis on ephemeral premieres) from mainstream orchestras (where even the 867th rendition of a Brahms symphony is expected to sound gripping and fresh). The American David Robertson is one such conductor. In 1992, Pierre Boulez appointed Robertson music director of the […]