In war, truth is the first casualty, as the saying goes. Maybe the second or third casualty is a sense of perspective about what happens on war’s periphery. When the world is divided into friend and foe, it’s hard to find space for the in-between. But that’s where the truth is usually found. Greek-Russian conductor […]
Category: Breaking
Posted inBreaking
Unveiling
On September 13, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini was detained by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s “morality police” in Tehran. Three days later, she died in police custody. Protests erupted around the country, and while their causes are manifold, they have been led by women and take as their primary target what Iranian […]
Posted inBreaking
A Queen Elizabeth II Playlist
Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years. Sources inside the BBC report that the rolling television coverage of her life and times is planned to continue just as long. What follows is a monarchical playlist to help those inside and outside the UK make sense of this momentous event through music. Benjamin Britten: “Gloriana” (1953) […]
Posted inBreaking
In Between Worlds
“I don’t know if there is a creator, but if he exists, all I could do is tip my hat to him and say, ‘Thank you,’” pianist and conductor Lars Vogt told me in May 2021, when we spoke shortly after his cancer diagnosis. Vogt died on Monday in a hospital in Erlangen, Germany, surrounded […]
Posted inBreaking
Music in the Background
Classical music-theory academia is a small field with limited professional opportunities, to say the least. So it might seem surprising that the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, an annual music theory journal dedicated to the work of Austrian-Jewish musicologist Heinrich Schenker based at the University of North Texas, has been searching for a new editor (or […]