Alex Ross's Blog, page 129

For Andrew Patner

Photo: Israel Wright.

It's difficult to bring myself to write this, because I do not yet accept it, but my close friend Andrew Patner, one of the wisest and most generous people I have known, died this morning in Chicago. For the moment, I can't find more words than that, but obituaries in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune and on the website of WFMT give an idea of Andrew's accomplishments. It was a joy to have him in my life, and I miss him terribly.

Grand Tour at the Met Museum

Eyes and Ears. The New Yorker, Feb. 9, 2015.

Miscellany

All praise to NewMusicBox, which goes from strength to strength: Heather Stebbins's posts from Estonia, Tim Rutherford-Johnson on new music and globalization, Eugene Birman on the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.... LA's Jacaranda goes British-Irish this weekend, with a program of Adès, Barry, and Peter Maxwell Davies (his Vesalii Icones).... The Walden School, a celebrated summer program for young musicians and composers, hosts an event at NYC's Greenwich House tomorrow, with premières by alumni composers and Sky Macklay and Paul Moravec moderating .... Read Gavin Borchert on the Ives Fourth in Seattle.... An interesting new site: 21CM, the DePauw University School of Music's resource for professional and aspiring musicians.... It's Riccardo Muti Day on WFMT. Earlier, Muti spoke to Andrew Patner in advance of a slew of Chicago appearances and of the Chicago Symphony's Carnegie Hall residency, in which the maestro indulges his love of Scriabin.

On the Górecki Fourth

Cult Fame and Its Discontents, New Yorker website.

A Mochizuki moment

Snapshot

Sounds of modern Japan

A brief preview of this year's Focus! Festival at Juilliard.

Who is ... ?

A recent clue on Jeopardy. No one got it.

Leaving Midtown

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The New Yorker ends a fifteen-year stint at 4 Times Square.

Fogbound hummingbird miscellany

The New York Philharmonic has announced its 2015-16 season. The principal news is that Esa-Pekka Salonen is beginning a term as composer-in-residence, presiding over a Messiaen series in March and introducing a new large-scale orchestral piece in June, as part of the second edition of the Biennial. Also notable: the première of an Andrew Norman piano concerto on Dec. 10.... The Detroit Symphony has announced a raft of premières for 2015-16: Mohammed Fairouz, Gabriela Lena Frank, Aaron Jay Kernis, Tod Machover, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Leonard Slatkin.... Vulnicura, the new album by Björk, has appeared a couple of months ahead of schedule. She will have a retrospective at MoMA in March. Ann Powers has an overnight review.... The oboe's James Austin Smith has a new disc entitled Distance; he will give a related concert at Tenri on Jan. 27 ... Mozart in the Jungle, the classical-music show on Amazon, has inevitably stirred critical debate: Zachary Woolfe is pro, Anne Midgette is con.... Rebecca Saunders has received the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize. In Februrary, Munich's Musica Viva will give the first performance of her trumpet concerto, with Marco Blaauw as soloist.... A happy sight: Allan Kozinn, late of the New York Times, writing about classical music, at length, in the Wall Street Journal. The topic is the New Music Gathering in San Francisco.