Category: music

Help End Sexism And Racism In Classical Music By ‘All-Naming’ All Composers

What? Here’s the (beautifully depicted) deal: “There will be a time when we’ll go to concerts again. We will buy our tickets, shuffle shoulder to shoulder down the aisle, and find our seats. The lights will dim, and the conductor will walk onto the stage to introduce the program. They might talk about Beethoven, Schumann, and Bartók. And they might talk about Alma Mahler, Florence Price, Henry Burleigh, and Caroline Shaw. Many of us, used to the conventions of classical performance, will hardly notice the difference: ‘traditional’ white male composers being introduced with only surnames, full names for everyone else, especially women and composers of color.” – Slate

The Case Against Pierre Boulez

When conductors manage to continue performing into their eighties, their colleagues tend to soften their views, even of maestros who were once feared and despised. A shock of white hair and a newly tremulous tone of voice in rehearsals has helped many former tyrants come to be seen as benevolent fountains of wisdom. I can think of no other artist for whom this transformation was as complete, or improbable, as Pierre Boulez. When he was a young composer and polemicist in Paris in the 1940s and 1950s (he did not seriously take up conducting until later), he seemed intent on burning down the entire music world. – New York Review of Books

The Composer Who Has Her Students Cook And Do Nature Hikes

Gabriela Lena Frank hosts the young composers in her apprentice program at her mountainside farmstead in northern California, where, she says, “we get rid of the shame of wrong notes. We make good food and I say, ‘You get to make mistakes here.'” As one alumna put it, “It shows you that music making is an earthly thing, so why not connect to the earth while we make it?” – The New York Times

Facing Closed Buildings And Budget Cuts, Schools Find Ways To Teach Kids Music Despite COVID

“For luckier, specialized schools, … planning for this unprecedented fall semester has boiled down to some common themes, including online vs. hybrid instruction, space constraints, and technological considerations. But for music education programs like the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and the Harmony Program, planning has hinged on a more urgent question: How can we continue to provide music education to kids whose schools can no longer afford it?” – WQXR (New York City)

Don McLean Explains ‘American Pie’

That’s not to say he finally tells us what the lyrics mean: “Carly Simon’s still being coy about who ‘You’re So Vain’ was written about. So who cares, who gives a fuck?” But he does discuss the song’s structure as a fusion of folk, rock, and old-school popular song and about the roots of its inspiration in his suburban New York upbringing and family tragedies. – The Guardian

Minnesota Orchestra And Engineers Study Aerosols From Wind Instruments, And There’s Hopeful News

“The risk of the instruments projecting virus-carrying aerosols horizontally into the crowd wasn’t as bad as feared. … Among the 10 instruments they analyzed, [Univ. of Minnesota] researchers found that the trumpet, oboe and bass trombone generated the most aerosols, while the tuba was less hazardous than someone talking or breathing.” – Star Tribune (Minneapolis)