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New Orchestras Focus on the ‘Now’ and ‘Nu’
“The musicians you see here are not from central casting—they’re conservatory-trained,” Bard College president and conductor Leon Botstein assured audiences on Friday night as he introduced The Orchestra Now, Bard’s new graduate training ensemble.
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The Year 2015 in Classical Music Videos
For the final week of 2015, the pop music critics of the New York Times put together a survey of their top music videos of the year. A couple of the choices crossed into classical territory, including an intriguing video for Terry Riley’s minimalist landmark In C.
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Podium Powers: Hispanic Conductors on the Rise
This article originally appeared in Symphony, the magazine of the League of American Orchestras. When José-Luis Novo was asked to conduct Latin American music early in his career, he frequently declined, fearing people would peg him as a Hispanic specialist. Novo, who left his native Spain to study at Yale University as a Fulbright Scholar, would…
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New York Thrill
This article appeared in the September 2012 issue of the BBC Music Magazine. An ambitious project to resurrect the works of Danish composer Carl Nielsen is just one of the many innovations of the New York Philharmonic’s music director Alan Gilbert. Brian Wise meets New York’s musical visionary. With all the ways that the New…
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New Notes on the Autism Scale
This article appeared in Symphony, the magazine of the League of American Orchestras. It wasn’t the kind of concert that receives glowing press or even a sellout crowd, but the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s June 27 performance was deemed an auspicious success by its organizers. This was the Pittsburgh Symphony’s first sensory-friendly performance—a concert designed specifically for families…
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A Changing Landscape: Detroit Emerges from Bankruptcy to a Burgeoning Arts Scene
This article appeared in the summer 2015 issue of Listen magazine. Soon after tuba player Dennis Nulty joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2009, he did what nearly every musician in the orchestra had done before him: he hightailed it to the suburbs. The then-twenty-two-year-old from Buffalo, NY had received one too many warnings about…
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The Highs and Lows of 2014 in Classical Music
In this edition of WQXR’s Conducting Business podcast, three top music critics looked back at the year 2014 in classical music. Joining host Naomi Lewin were Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of the Washington Post; David Patrick Stearns, classical music critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer and for WQXR’s Operavore blog; and Zachary Woolfe, now classical music editor of the New…
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When Gender Stereotypes are Applied to Instruments
Girls often take up what they perceive as “feminine” instruments while boys tend to gravitate towards trumpets, tubas and percussion. Is this a bad thing?
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Pablo Heras-Casado: Polymath on the Podium
Among the conductors who has appeared on critics’ wish lists to succeed Alan Gilbert at the New York Philharmonic is Pablo Heras-Casado, music director of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and assistant conductor of Madrid’s Teatro Real.