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 […]
Category: Playlist
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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 […]
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A Hannu Lintu Playlist
Einojuhani Rautavaara “mastered almost every compositional style of the 20th century,” the Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu writes. Perhaps for that reason, he is often grouped with other European mavericks outside the serialist tradition, such as Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki. He is also an indispensable figure in Finnish music history. In October, Lintu will be […]
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A Pekka Kuusisto Playlist
“Hi VANdals,” Pekka Kuusisto writes to us in the email with this playlist. The Finnish violinist, experimenter, and artistic director of the Meidän Festivaali (“Our Festival”) in Järvenpää, will visit his home country on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra this August, playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto; in September, he’ll be traveling to Germany with Ligeti’s Concerto, […]
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A Graham F. Valentine Playlist
“Your voice…is attracting the most discerning audiences.” In the 1994 film “Farinelli,” the actor and performer Graham F. Valentine looks down at the kneeling castrato, delivering faint praise in a nobleman’s reedy French. His normal speaking voice is a bass-baritone with a Scottish accent; he can also sing in a penetrating head voice. In this […]
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Chains Are My Reward
While awaiting his execution by firing squad, the painter Cavaradossi sings, “I die in despair, and never before have I loved life so much!” It’s an aria of reverie, lament, and implicit protest against his captors. In this opera, Puccini’s “Tosca” (1900), power and evil aren’t abstractions: the chief of secret police has arrested and […]
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A JACK Quartet Playlist
This playlist, by JACK Quartet cellist Kevin McFarland, emphasizes darkness—a fitting counterpoint to the group’s recent and upcoming concerts (on March 4 at San Francisco Performances) of Georg Friedrich Haas’ String Quartet No. 3, “In iij Noct.” Here is McFarland’s introduction to the compilation. “In putting together this playlist, I struggled with the seemingly infinite […]
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An Olga Neuwirth Playlist
Malaria! – “Geld/Money” In the 1980s, I was a punk living in the Austrian countryside, and I couldn’t wait to trade alpine meadows for a big, rough city. This all-girl band from Berlin made provocative, social-political, tough-as-nails songs; they inspired me to be loud, and ironic, and stir things up in my uptight environment. Besides […]
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A Barbara Hannigan Playlist
On February 4, 5, and 6, the soprano Barbara Hannigan will perform Hans Abrahamsen’s “let me tell you,” with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, conductor. Here is her introduction to this playlist, which she uses to inhabit her role of Shakespeare’s Ophelia. “For many of the major pieces I perform, I make a […]