Under the artistic triumvirate of Marie-Therese Bruglacher, Laure M. Hiendl and Bastian Zimmermann, Musik Installationen Nürnberg—in its second edition following a 2022 debut—set out to present music differently: “not as a normal concert, but as an experience in space.” But what happens to music when it leaves the concert hall and instead latches onto a […]
Tag: New(ish) Music
Posted inProfile
The Energy of the Moment
A train chugs along rhythmically, accompanied by otherworldly birds. Lazy chords blossom, like flowers from another world. A chaotic burbling morphs into an endless, glistening haze. These are just a few of the images conjured by “Escape Rites,” an album featuring several new works by JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman. The works range from pensive […]
Posted inReview
Saints of Doubt
In an episode of “Looney Toons” called “The Long-Haired Hare”—haughty classical fans were once called longhairs, supposedly after Liszt—Bugs Bunny quarrels with an opera singer. Bugs is hanging out in the Hollywood hills, singing and playing the banjo. Meanwhile, in his home nearby, the best-named Italian American in television history, Giuseppe Jones, is trying to […]
Posted inInterview
Useful Music
Composer, conductor and facilitator Michael Betteridge’s music sometimes moves like the ocean. In his reworking of Vaughan Williams’ one-act opera, “Riders to the Sea,” he stripped the orchestration to its emotional essence, replacing rich string textures with oboe, accordion, and bass clarinet. His new prologue was bold and theatrical as Bartley, silhouetted against a sea […]
Posted inOpinion
AI’s Post-Playlist Future
I. Overture AI is the buzzword. Those little magic stars that pop up in every app, the sunlit uplands of a less laborious future, they are virtually everywhere—and are changing how we think about creativity. AI is a hyperobject, a symbol that refers to a wide range of practices, software and intentions across time and […]
Posted inInterview
“Like ‘The Archers’ On Speed”
It’s been a decade since Jennifer Walshe described “The New Discipline” in a program text for Borealis Festival. This was not a school or a style, but a way of working that she saw shared across music she was witnessing, “where the physical, theatrical and visual aspects are as important as the sonic.” The text […]
Posted inInterview
Exploratory Shapes
The career of soprano Lucy Shelton has been shaped by exploration. Shelton, a contemporary music specialist who has premiered works by Knussen, Carter and Grisey, continues to prove that musical curiosity outweighs perceptions of age. Looking to the 2025-26 season, she’ll make her Metropolitan Opera company debut, in Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” aged 82. I sat […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Norma Beecroft Playlist
The composer Norma Beecroft (1934-2024) was known for works that combined computer-generated and natural acoustic sounds. One among only a few Canadian female composers of her time, Beecroft’s musical formation, beyond her early training in Toronto, came with notable Italian musicians: composers Goffredo Petrassi and Bruno Maderna, and flutist Severino Gazzelloni. Yet her three years […]
Posted inReview
I Saw Morton Feldman’s “For Philip Guston” Twice in One Month
I had just finished making plans to attend the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg at the end of November. Within the festival’s theme of “Extremes,” I was especially looking forward to a performance of Morton Feldman’s epic “For Philip Guston” by Sophie Deshayes (flutes), Pascal Meyer (piano and celeste) and Galdric Subirana (percussion). Then I […]
Posted inReview
On Shame
Shame effaces itself; shame points and projects; shame turns itself skin side out; shame and pride, shame and dignity, shame and self-display, shame and exhibitionism are different linings of the same glove. Shame, it might finally be said, transformational shame, is performativity. —Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling 1. Two things about shame. First: it is […]