Cello Upside-Down Cake
An evening of unconventional cello music, ranging from Appalachian fiddle tunes to alt-rock quartets and elecro-acoustic washes of noise.
On Namedropping
On saying what new music sounds like, and also on not doing that.
How to Contain the World
It’s summer, and that means it’s beach read season, and what says beach read like a dense academic treatise on some of the thorniest and most brobdingnagian works in the standard repertoire?
Of Cardinals and Coups
Five world premieres, one local play, and a preview of upcoming summer festival offerings!
What, Like It’s Hard?
Everyone knows that fast, flashy pieces are hard. But what about all the other kinds of difficulty?
Up All Night (to Get Jesus)
I’ve heard people say there isn’t much Rachmaninov in the Vigil; it may not have the pyrotechnics of his piano concerti, but the variety he pulls out of this slight palette testifies to his compositional skill.
The Great Migration
In Review: Castle of our Skins
Anyone expecting to hear Jazz-inflected late-Romantic lushness at the Brattleboro Music Center
Marseille Memories
In a moment when our government seems to be doing all it can to sever ties of international solidarity, it’s reassuring to be reminded that there are many working to strengthen those ties.
In Defense of Dissonance
I sometimes find it unbearable to listen to Mozart. If his works are beautiful, it is a beauty of stability, of order. As below, so above: The tonic brings order to the notes; G-d brings order to the world.
It seems like a comforting thing to believe. I wish that I could.
To Fugue or Not to Fugue
The evening opened with a piquant rendition of Piazzolla’s 1956 Tango Ballet. With its snappy rhythms and wry melodies, it’s a piece with tremendous emotional range, and the Dalí members swung from one extreme to the other with palpable glee.
