Alex Ross's Blog, page 244

More on EMPAC

In my column on Georg Friedrich Haas in last week's magazine, I mentioned my visit to EMPAC, the high-tech performing-arts center on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY. The complex is two years old — James Oestreich covered the opening for the New York Times — but I hadn't had the chance to see it until now. It contains a 1200-seat concert hall, a 400-seat theater, and two black-box studios. The main hall is housed in a spectacular egg-like wooden shell that is structurally isolated from the remainder of the building, ensuring that no extraneous vibrations disturb the sound picture. I'm not sure if I've ever heard music in so preternaturally silent a space. All the venues are wired into research and production facilities that would seem to be as technologically advanced as any in North America. It's an extraordinary place, and I hope to return soon.

London

Quote of the day

Dave Hickey in Air Guitar:

The presumption of art's essential 'goodness' is nothing more than a political fiction that we employ to solicit taxpayers' money for public art education, and for the public housing of works of art that we love so well their existence is inseparable from the texture of the world in which we live. These are worthy and indispensable projects. No society with even half a heart would even think to ignore them. But the presumption of art's essential 'goodness' is a conventional trope. It describes nothing. Art education is not redeeming for the vast majority of students, nor is art practice redeeming for the vast majority of artists. The 'good' works of art that reside in our museums reside there not because they are 'good,' but because we love them. The political fiction of art's virtue means only this: the practice and exhibition of art has had beneficial public consequence in the past. It might in the future. So funding them is worth the bet. That's the argument: art is good, sort of, in a vague, general way. Seducing oneself into believing in art's intrinsic 'goodness,' however, is simply bad religion, no matter what the rewards. It is bad cult religion when professing one's belief in art's 'goodness' becomes a condition of membership in the art community.

Dark Harvest Song

Dark Harvest Song

Featuring Wagner, Strauss, Shawn Greenlee, Boulez, John Luther Adams, Justin Bieber, Merzbow, and Stockhausen.

Listen to This UK

The UK edition of Listen to This arrives in stores this week. Next week I'll be in London, lecturing at the British Library at 1PM on Nov. 30 and reading at Foyles that evening. On Dec. 1 I will be at Daunt Books in Marylebone. Reminder: I have an audio guide for the book and also an explanatory video for Chapter 2.

Sonic youth

Will Robin, whose blog Seated Ovation is based in Berlin this season, confronts the eternal question of how to attract younger people to classical music. His anecdotal sense, which matches mine, is that the German scene is far ahead of the American one. "Here, it's just as natural for adults to attend the symphony as it is for adults to attend an art museum in the U.S.," he says. "And, generally, young people turn out for the Berlin Philharmonic. There's an especially large surplus of the 25-35 crowd who dress well and seem culturally refined."

The rough video above gives a sense of the atmosphere at DG's Yellow Lounge events.

Georg Friedrich Haas

"He is an esoteric Romantic, dwelling on the majesty and terror of the sublime."

Darkness Audible. The New Yorker, Nov. 29, 2010.

EPS returns to LA

On the occasion of his first visit to the Los Angeles Philharmonic since his farewell in April 2009, Esa-Pekka Salonen tells the story of Bluebeard's Castle. (Via Opera Chic.)

Miscellany: Dark Harvest, etc.

The New York Times has a brief video of Paul Jacobs playing the newly refurbished organ at Alice Tully. Jacobs's rendition of Bach's entire Clavier-Übung III on Tuesday night was quite a feat, although, as Jim Oestreich notes, he got off to a jittery start.... Nick Frisch, Noise's sometime Chinese correspondent, has a fascinating report in the Boston Globe on how Beijing audiences respond to a Westernized version of Chinese opera.... Blog worth noting: Killing Classical Music.... A Wagner in Israel Society is announced. (Via AC Douglas.) ... This weekend in NYC, Peter Lieberson's monodrama King Gesar has a return engagement at the Rubin Museum's new chamber-music series... William Steinway's diary from 1861 to 1896 will be available in an online edition next month, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. (Disclosure: my mom worked on this project as a volunteer.) ... Philadelphians, take note: the JACK Quartet is coming to town this Saturday with a program of Julia Wolfe, Helmut Lachenmann, and Gregory Spears (a premiere of a piece inspired by an artist residency at the Buttonwood Psychiatric Unit in Burlington County, NJ). The venue is the Ice Box at Crane Arts.... Brandon Stosuy of Stereogum has organized another DJ evening, for Sunday night. The venue is Veronica's, 105 Franklin St., Greenpoint; also participating are Drew Daniel (Matmos), Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors), and Alex Ross (Miss Teen Schnauzer). Our theme is "Dark Harvest," and I plan to go heavy on the Germanic noise: Einstürzende Neubauten, G. F. Haas, and, of course, Wagner.

Après moi, rien

Claudia La Rocco on Jennifer Homans's new history of ballet: "I've never been able to wrap my head around the critical impulse to proclaim an art form kaput.... Perhaps it is best seen as a railing against one's own mortality. Critics age, too, and for some of them the world that helped inspire their creative identity diminishes as they do, replaced by new generations who depart from what they held most dear."