The first time I saw Charlemagne Palestine play was in a forest clearing on the grounds of a 17-century palace just outside Milan. It was a little after half-past eight in the evening in early July 2016 and the sun was just starting to set. The air was thick with weed smoke and mosquitoes. Wearing […]
Category: Interview
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Wonderful Chaos
On December 8, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was swiftly toppled from power after 13 years of oppressive rule. Syrian communities around the world celebrated the sudden shift in power as Assad was granted asylum in Russia. What does this mean for Syria—and for Syrian musicians? I caught up with Aeham Ahmad, a pianist and a […]
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The Authenticity of Spirit
“See the music, hear the dance.” Listening to the Czech Philharmonic this fall, both at their home in Prague, the Rudolfinum, and in their many recent recordings under current music director Semyon Bychkov, that quote from George Balanchine often came to mind. What was different about these renditions of classics? The orchestra’s dark, rustic strings […]
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So Everything
Earlier this week, Nina Guo, a soprano, composer and improviser originally from Pasadena, California, performed a piece of hers called “The Rides Are Going Up Again” at the Berlin experimental music venue KM28. The delicate work combined gentle, rhythmic spoken poetry with gauzy recorded vocalizations—a sound, I thought and Guo later confirmed, inspired by Morton […]
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Testimony
One Sunday afternoon last month, I attended the benefit concert Make Freedom Ring at St John’s Waterloo, an Anglican church near London’s South Bank. Under a striking painting of the crucifixion—one of many intensely colored murals painted for the Church of England by Jewish refugee Hans Feibusch, who fled Germany in the 1930s—the pianist Jayson […]
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The Found Voice
Doğa Eren Birlik has her left hand on her heart and her right hand on the piano. Onstage at the Süreyya Opera House in Istanbul, she sings her heart out. It’s a special day for the 22-year-old Turkish performer: After making the final round of the Suna Korad vocal competition, she’s performing the beautiful, difficult […]
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The Experience Element
Listening to Magnus Lindberg’s most famous piece, the 1985 work for ensemble, electronics, and orchestra “Kraft,” is a little like getting slapped in the face in super slow motion: You know it’s going to knock you over, but you can’t help appreciating the texture and graceful arc of the hand. Like his colleagues Esa-Pekka Salonen […]
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Culture of Discrimination
In recent years, the classical music world has been increasingly confronted with its own exclusionary practices. Dr. Maiko Kawabata, an award-winning musicologist, violinist and professor at the Royal College of Music and the Open University, examined some of those challenges in her article “The New ‘Yellow Peril’ in ‘Western’ European Symphony Orchestras.” Kawabata’s extensive research and […]
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Open Garten
Walter Zimmermann’s music has a rare combination of stasis and flow. It wanders without being lost. It communicates calm curiosity and curious calm. Many composers have written music about nature, but Zimmermann’s is one of the few musics that seems as if nature itself could have created it. In April, he turned 75. On Friday, […]
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Waiting Outside
Nearly three years ago, Maria Kalesnikava, the Belarusian flutist, curator, politician, and icon of the resistance against the Lukaschenko regime, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for alleged “conspiracy with the intent of illegal power seizure” and “founding and leadership of an extremist organization,” in a case widely considered to be politically motivated. In […]