Alex Ross's Blog, page 230

Berio Place

"An essential factor of modernity has always been its ability to modify perspectives, to cancel or multiply the vanishing points, the tonics that indicate the 'right' path, and to construct something from the remains of what has been transformed, sublimated, and even destroyed."

— Luciano Berio, Remembering the Future

Doctor Gubaidulina

This weekend the University of Chicago will give an honorary degree to Sofia Gubaidulina. The university has never before given such a degree to a composer, and it's hard to think of an artist more deserving of the gesture. In February, Contempo will give the world premiere of Gubaidulina's A Pilgrimage of Four, composed at the behest of the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress.

City Opera outrcy

Julius Rudel writes in the New York Times: "Some have blamed the company's woes on its Lincoln Center location, citing the expense and the proximity to the Met. But I believe the location has become a scapegoat for the hardships of a company that has suffered from inconsistent leadership by its board and a failure to engage in the smart programming and strategic planning that companies need to survive in hard times."

George Loomis writes an open letter to Mayor Bloomberg on the Musical America site: "New York City Opera is on the path to ruin. Without your intervention, without new, competent management, the company is doomed to failure."

For what it's worth, I wrote in last week's New Yorker that "a strong personality needs to step in and take charge of this chaotic situation."

Ponte della Musica

Rome's newest bridge, opened just the other day, is a footbridge linking the Flaminio area and the Foro Italico. The architect is Kit Powell-Williams, the engineering is by Buro Happold. The musical angle is that the bridge points toward the Auditorium, where I'll be speaking tomorrow evening.

Quote of the day

"Movies may be the only art form whose core audience is widely believed to be actively hostile to ambition, difficulty or anything that seems to demand too much work on their part," writes A. O. Scott in the New York Times. Well, there is classical music....

Roma

Miscellany: Morty in Philly, etc.

Beginning this weekend, Bowerbird in Philadelphia is presenting American Sublime, a seven-day festival of late works of Morton Feldman. Marilyn Nonken will play Triadic Memories; JACK will perform Structures alongside Cage's String Quartet in Four Parts; Joan La Barbara will sing Three Voices; and, at the end, FLUX will reprise Quartet II. It's the most extensive tribute I can remember seeing on these shores, bigger than Lincoln Center Festival's Feldman series of 1996. The organizers generously credit me with the title, although the phrase in fact comes from an infinitely higher authority.... Roulette will inaugurate its new Brooklyn space with a pair of Cage Musicircuses on June 4 and 5.... Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects will present a new version of Stravinsky's Histoire du soldat on June 9, 10, and 11, shifting the story into a modern landscape of reality TV and political hype. The British actor Christian Coulson is the Narrator; the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra performs.... On June 9, at Merkin, David Krakauer and Ensemble 212 give the world premiere of Tahrir by Mohammed Fairouz.... Anne Midgette has a lovely review of Meredith Monk's Songs of Ascension, which is one of my current Recommended CDs.... More than fifty works of Xenakis will be performed at the Flâneries musicales de Reims in July.... The complete Make Music NY schedule has been posted.

The Met in Japan

"Artists are certainly not necessarily the most stable strata of human society," Peter Gelb said at a news conference in Tokyo today, explaining why several singers — Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann among them — dropped out of the Met's tour of Japan over radiation fears. (Independent measurements show such fears to be unfounded.) The Met is sending a powerful message of sympathy in undertaking the tour, and I imagine that Japanese listeners will reward them loudly.

Roman appearance

On June 5th, at 6PM, I will give a lecture entitled "Lamento Eterno" at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. It will be in English with Italian translation. The following week, Bompiani will publish Senti questa, aka Listen to This.

Appearance

On June 5th, at 6PM, I will give a lecture entitled "Lamento Eterno" at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. It will be in English with Italian translation. The following week, Bompiani will publish Senti questa, aka Listen to This.