Date 12/22/2016 Classical music social media gave us many funny, cringeworthy, or just plain strange gifts over the course of 2016. Here, we’ve collected some of our favorite Bagatelles of the year from our monthly series. Enjoy, and remember: if you look under the #classicalmusic hashtag, you never know just what might be waiting for […]
Author Archives: VAN Magazine
Posted inPlaylist
A Pamela Z Playlist
The composer, performer, and media artist Pamela Z works with a wide variety of techniques, including “voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video,” and has produced art both for the concert hall and the museum. From San Francisco, she sent us this playlist. Each track here contains a multiplicity of influences; taken together, the […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Barrie Kosky Playlist
Often, music from childhood and youth doesn’t merely bring back memories of those times: it evokes real, physical sensations like adrenaline, sweat, and heartbreak. For this playlist, Barrie Kosky, the Artistic Director of the Komische Oper Berlin, mined his experiences as a gay kid growing up in Australia and the influence of his grandmother. His […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
December 2016 Bagatelles
By VAN Team · Date 12/8/2016 Latrice Royal VAN in earnest mode: we love opera, and we love drag. Here, Latrice Royal of RuPaul’s Drag Race dances for an old white woman in a painting who, frankly, looks very glad to see her. If this is the start of a trend involving all-drag string quartets […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Víkingur Ólafsson Playlist
Backstage at the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, a mens’ choir is rehearsing. It’s their 100th anniversary, and a group of craggy old men in suits are talking to Víkingur Ólafsson like he’s a favored son-in-law, back for one of his many regular visits.Ólafsson has a lot on his plate right now. Last week, he […]
Posted inInterview
Adaptation
10 years ago, in an ill-tempered article for the Berliner Zeitung, a music critic coined the term “cuddle classical.” It referred to musicians whose PR strategies tended towards the sweet and approachable; alongside the violinist Hilary Hahn, he named Janine Jansen, Baiba Skride, Leonidas Kavakos, and (of course) Lang Lang. I think he got Hahn, […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Bang on a Can All-Stars Playlist
One way the Bang on a Can All-Stars describe themselves is as “a genre in their own right.” On their upcoming European tour, with performances at the Kampnagel in Hamburg (November 18), Les Halles de Schaerbeek in Brussels (November 19), and Villa Musica in Mainz (November 20-21), their programs confirm this, reading more like new […]
Posted inInterview
Hierarchy of the Moment
The conductor Elena Schwarz grew up in Lugano, Switzerland, with parents who were both doctors specialized in internal medicine. Her recently work has emphasized contemporary music: she performed Olga Neuwirth at The Lucerne Festival, and Brian Ferneyhough in 2013 in Berlin, among other composers and ensembles. When we spoke on Skype, she spoke English fluently, […]
Posted inProfile
Protect
In the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore, a building that could easily be mistaken for the state-of-the-art hospital nearby, a workshop performance of “Bangsokol: Requiem for Cambodia,” by the composer Him Sophy was taking place. The atmosphere there was festive. Friends greeted one another; soloists on traditional Cambodian instruments, a string orchestra […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Losing Presidential Candidates Playlist
Yesterday, the BBC posted a surprisingly tame piece with Donald Trump’s thoughts on music; in it was an admiring reference to Steve Reich’s phase technique. (I first found out about it through a tweet by William Robin.) As others have pointed out, Trump himself probably didn’t write those lines. But it got me wondering. The […]