Miscellany for the 47th birthday of "The Weight"

The 2015-16 season announcements have begun to trickle in. Of particular interest is Jake Heggie's Great Scott, at the Dallas Opera, next October. I mentioned this opera-about-opera in my profile of Joyce DiDonato; she will play the title character, an American diva returning home for the world première of a lost bel-canto work entitled Rosa Dolorosa, Daughter of Pompeii. Complications ensue... As Michael Cooper reports in the Times, a decision is pending on the assets of . Of the proposed plans for a "renaissance," only BAM's strikes me as plausible.... Kyle Gann has been posting previews of his hotly anticipated book about the Ives Concord Sonata. Congratulations to Kyle on the completion of his First Symphony, modestly subtitled the "Implausible." .... If your neighborhood falls strangely quiet this week, the reason may be that all the contemporary-music types have gone to San Francisco for the New Music Gathering at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Such luminaries as Claire Chase, Sarah Cahill, and the Kronos are taking lead roles in three days of performances, talks, discussions, and demonstrations  .... Ekmeles sings Johnston, Cage, Tenney, Evan Johnson, Matthew Ricketts, Andrew Waggoner, and Aaron Cassidy at NYC's DiMenna Center on Jan. 23.... Some tickets remain for late performances of Bora Yoon's Sunken Cathedral, part of this year's Prototype Festival. Most of the rest is, I believe, sold out.... The resurgent LA Opera, pursuing a Beaumarchais theme, presents ¡Figaro! (90210) Jan. 16-18 and then turns to Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles, with The Barber of Seville and the full Figaro to follow later in the season.... The music department of The New Yorker is disconsolate at the departure of its pop-music magus, Sasha Frere-Jones. In a little over a decade, he revolutionized music coverage at the magazine. May he flourish at a site promisingly entitled Genius.