Often the most interesting nuggets of interviews arrive when questioning dissolves into chatting. “Sorry, that previous answer was a bit wishy-washy,” Robin Ticciati says on reflection: Following the tenor David Butt Philip’s recent Times of London interview, where he advised young UK singers to head abroad for the betterment of their careers post-Brexit, I’d asked […]
Tag: Music & Health
Posted inEssay
“I don’t know why I’m angry, I’m angry, I’m angry…”
“Almost one year since the escalation of the war in Ukraine, a generation of children has experienced 12 months of violence, fear, loss, and tragedy,” wrote the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on February 21. According to the organization’s most recent statistics, at least 438 children have been killed by acts of war, with 842 […]
Posted inInterview
A Point in the Soul
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Brian Greis, a retired obstetrician-gynecologist who lives with his husband in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, attended some 200 classical concerts a year and spent up to eight out of 12 months on the road traveling to attend performances. Greis never harbored serious ambitions of being a classical musician, but since his childhood […]
Posted inEssay
Living in the Elsewhere
Some years ago, I found myself stranded in a guesthouse in the Scottish Highlands after an unexpected storm put an end to my hiking plans. As I buttoned up my coat by the door, the lady who ran the establishment asked me where I was headed. I’d intended to find a fireside drink to salvage […]
Posted inReport
The Pitch of Living
“I’ve been interested in the 432 Hz conspiracy theories for a while,” began an email from my editor at VAN. “Would you like to spend some time using the 432 Player, a website that adjusts all your music to 432 Hz?” I consider myself a very online person, and yet, through a mixture of willful […]
Posted inInterview
The Time Remaining
On March 25, pianist Lars Vogt wrote on Twitter: “Today: fight against cancer, round 2 (chemo). Keep your fingers crossed for me…” A month and a half later, he’s made it to the cusp of round five. “Another six months like this, until October, 12 rounds in total, as long as my body holds up. […]
Posted inOpinion
19 COVID Theses
Not long after the last global pandemic, in which some 50 million people died from Spanish flu, a social change began to take place in living rooms across the world. With the dawn of radio, and later television, the parlor gatherings and upright pianos that had once been the focus of evening entertainment were gradually […]
Posted inReport
Electronic Intimacy
On 8 p.m. Thursday, March 12, pianist Simone Dinnerstein and musicians—mezzo-soprano Kady Evanshyn, violinist Rebecca Fischer, oboist Alecia Lawyer, and the ensemble Baroklyn—were to take the stage at Miller Theatre and play music by J.S. Bach: “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” for piano solo; the Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor, BWV 1060; […]
Posted inEssay
Indigo Moods
All music is mood music. There is party music, from Parliament to “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” there is music, like Air Cushion Finish and Mompou, to induce waking dreams and soothe the savage breast, and there is music, like Boduf Songs and Lustmord, that expresses foul, dark moods. For me the latter can seem permanent. Because […]
Posted inReport
A Hall of Mirrors
How strange to be older than an army specialist. One gray, drizzly day at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, a 24-year-old firefighter with brown hair, a pale complexion, and a self-deprecating sense of humor was struggling to play a C major scale with both hands on a little keyboard. As I watched her instructor, a blond […]