The Center for Black Music Research (CBMR) is an independent research unit of Columbia College Chicago devoted to the documentation, research, preservation, and dissemination of information about the history of black music on a global scale. I recently spoke with Melanie Zeck, Research Fellow with the Center, over Skype. Zeck joined the CBMR in 2005, […]
Tag: Music & Equity
Posted inInterview
Speaking Through The Moment
Saul Williams is a rapper, actor, musician, and slam poet who toys with the sounds of syllables, words, and terminologies. Classical composers, such as Thomas Kessler and Ted Hearne, have found themselves inspired by his texts. We spoke with him about resistance, colonialism, and why he only sits when he’s performing with a string quartet. […]
Posted inInterview
Boundaries
During this year’s Ojai Music Festival in Ojai, California (June 8-11), I met up with George Lewis, the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, to discuss his opera “Afterword,” which received its West Coast premiere at the festival on June 9. The theme of this year’s Ojai Music Festival, directed by […]
Posted inReport
The Age-Old Problem of Aging
There’s a strange clip after a beautiful performance in “I Am The Violin,” the 2004 documentary about violin virtuoso Ida Haendel. On a simple string crossing in the first movement of the Brahms Concerto, Haendel’s bow bounces uncontrollably. She recovers within seconds, and the incident hardly registers in the scope of the performance. Yet the […]
Posted inOpinion
Tacet Acceptance
In 2012, I embarked on a study of the classical music profession in the UK and Germany. I was interested in learning what it is like to work as a musician, the ups and downs of the profession, and how musicians deal with the often precarious nature of their work. Another issue that I wanted […]
Posted inReview
Sing Her Name
“Sing Her Name,” a concert presented by The Dream Unfinished, was the first time, in nearly 20 years of concert-going, that I have heard a performance of classical music composed by a Black woman. It is the only concert I’ve been to that featured music solely by female composers. The classical music world likes to […]
Posted inReport
I Am Singing About Myself
Introduction On a late night this past spring, I saw a headline in The Independent that would soon provoke exasperation in parts of the opera world, outrage in others: “Otello: Why is a white tenor leading the Royal Opera House’s new production?” I was troubled, too: the headline I’d expected to see was, “ ‘I […]
Posted inEssay
Sound Color
In his gripping and provocative memoir Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa (1997), the journalist and former Washington Post Africa bureau chief Keith B. Richburg writes, “White people traveling in East Africa are rarely stopped, rarely questioned, rarely instructed to open their bags. They jump to the front of lines, they scream and […]
Posted inOpinion
Orientalism 2.0
I have met Daniel Barenboim twice. The first time was during his first visit to Beijing in 2008; we had a brief chat after a press conference. At that time I was impressed by his promoting peace in the Middle East together with Edward Said, and I have a Chinese translation of the book of […]
Posted inInterview
Faces of Change
Chineke! is Europe’s first Black and minority ethnic orchestra. Founded by Chi-chi Nwanoku, its artistic director and the principal double bassist of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the ensemble is made up of independently active musicians who come together especially for projects. The name derives from a word in the southeastern Nigerian language […]