Miscellany

This year's Pulitzer Prize for Music has gone, most deservedly, to John Luther Adams, for Become Ocean. Here is my review of the premiere. I also deeply admired J. C. Adams's Gospel According to the Other Mary, cited as a finalist. I missed Christopher Cerrone's Invisible Cities, but reputable sources praised it strongly.... Louis Andriessen on pop: yes to the Supremes, early Janet Jackson, hip-hop, no to the Beatles.... Some very lively programming at this year's MATA Festival, starting tonight.... Annie Gosfield is back at the Stone on April 29, curating a week of concerts.... How did Steve Reich come to conquer the Big Ears Festival? Ben Ratliff and Chris Weingarten discuss... What possessed the Birgit Nilsson Foundation to give a million dollars to the Vienna Philharmonic? Neil Fisher of the London Times aptly calls the prize "ludicrous." ... A new blog, en français, by the superb Laurent Slaars.... Fiona Maddocks gives a remarkable report of the Abbado memorial in Lucerne. Andris Nelsons conducts; the rendition of the Mahler Third finale is overpowering indeed.... Ethan Iverson zeroes in on Ralph Shapey. I've long concurred with Kyle Gann in seeing Shapey as the great underrated modernist, the one who fulfilled William Billings's mission statement for New World music: "I think it best for every composer to be his own carver."