How many years should pass, in polite society, before a country is allowed to have its own national style of classical music? In 1939, over 150 years after the Declaration of Independence, Leonard Bernstein began his senior thesis at Harvard with the statement, “I propose a new and vital American nationalism.” In the essay, “The […]
Tag: Jazz & Nonclassical
Posted inInterview
Mission Family
In 2013, Groupmuse launched as an app to help you put on live classical concerts in your home. It was the height of the app boom, and outlets from Wired to the Wall Street Journal praised Groupmuse as the AirBnB or the Uber “of classical music.” Those comparisons read differently now—but Groupmuse was never trying […]
Posted inEssay
Timbral Bombast
On Saturday, the Birmingham Royal Ballet will take the stage, not to the languid string melodies of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky or Adolphe Adam, but to the distorted power chords of pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath. The new production, “Black Sabbath – The Ballet,” honors the hometown musicians whose eponymous debut album helped spark a global […]
Posted inInterview
Playful Entities
Composer, improviser, and trombonist Alex Paxton has had a busy few months. Between winning both this year’s Ernst von Siemens Composer’s Prize and Paul Hindemith Prize, preparing for the release of his upcoming album “Happy Music for Orchestra” on Delphian Records, and commissions for Riot Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, and Ensemble Modern, it felt like […]
Posted inInterview
Tender Transitions
Nicole Mitchell is a leading flutist in jazz, a player with one of the strongest senses of swing there is, either inside a beat or playing freely. Her thematic albums and projects like “Mandorla Awakening” and “EarthSeed” are inspired by, and develop, Afrofuturist ideas that she first discovered through the great speculative fiction writer Octavia […]
Posted inInterview
A Servant of Their Voices
For nearly three decades, Ian Nagoski has been collecting old 78 RPM records made by people who immigrated to the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Since 2009, he’s restored, digitized and shared those records on his independent Baltimore, Maryland based label Canary Records. Over the years, he has built a […]
Posted inProfile
Throw the Doors Open
In early December, I went to a concert in London called a noisenight. Founded 18 months ago by through the noise, led by Jack Bazalgette and Jack Crozier, this nascent live music group organizes classical gigs in traditionally non-classical venues. Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, arguably the UK’s top classical star of the moment, performed with pianist […]
Posted inInterview
Into the Cosmic Unknown
When does your experience of a new piece of music begin? When you hear the first note? When the performers first enter the space? Or does the context of the venue’s ambience beforehand also affect how you take in the piece? Does the experience begin with the first rehearsal, the first compositional sketch, the first […]
Posted inInterview
Advanced Easy Listening
Christof Dienz is a composer, zither player, and bassoonist, born in Innsbruck in 1968. This year he was joint artistic director—along with composer Clara Iannotta—of the Klangspuren (“Sound Traces”) festival in Austria. Based in the small Tyrolean town of Schwaz in the Austrian Alps, Klangspuren features 18 concerts given over 18 days in venues around […]
Posted inPlaylist
An Autumn Equinox Playlist
I’m not here to shit all over Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” but I do believe that the Venn Diagram between people who consider the composer’s “Autumn” to be the epitome of fall-inspired classical music and people whose image of autumn stops at Pumpkin Spice Lattes and rewatches of “Hocus Pocus” is a circle. On the eve […]