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A death in my family

January 7, 2011 by Greg Sandow

My cousin’s husband died today, a man I was close to. He died peacefully at home, after being diagnosed with stage four cancer some months ago.

He was a physicist, who worked for years in Los Alamos. Over the past few years, now retired, he devoted himself to art, taking studio classes and doing marvelous work.

I’ll resume my posts on culture change on Monday. Today, in Carl’s honor, i’m going to write some music. Bless him — he was a fine spirit, and both his devotion to art and the fine work he did were inspiring.

01/7/11 11:52 AM | filed under: Uncategorized |

Looking for mavericks

This was the first in what turned out to be a long series of posts, in which I and many readers highlighted people, groups, and institutions making new departures in classical music, doing things in new ways. This wasn't even close to a complete … [Read More...]

Gerald Klickstein: Music education and entrepreneurship

“To be a musician in the service of music is not a job; it is a way of life.” –Isaac Stern, violinist (The Musician’s Way, p. 299) The music education community is swirling with talk about how best to prepare university-level students for … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Erica Sipes: Words before Winterreise

[From Greg: A followup to Erica's guest post yesterday, about the performance of Winterreise she did in a small town. Here she tells us what she said before the performance, to introduce the piece to an audience that doesn't know classical music. … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. How young the audience was in 1937: Results of an audience study, showing a median age around 30 (from … [Read More...]

CD covers I like

While we're still talking about CD covers, I thought I'd add a few likes of my own. Starting with this one, which I've loved ever since the recording came out on LP in 1962: Of course it's Siegfried, from the Georg Solti Ring. And there couldn't … [Read More...]

Lara Downes: Here at the Exiles’ Cafe

[Lara Downes was the first of our guest bloggers here, and she began with a post about classical CD covers she likes. And about how she came up with the cover for her own latest album. Her list -- along with mine, and others that I hope will come … [Read More...]

Nathan Shirley: Videos — untapped potential

I've spent some time compiling a list of videos I think especially stand out from the very bland standard classical music videos (no easy task to find these!). Most bigger budget classical music videos are basically just documentations of … [Read More...]

Holland Reece on From Victoria Paterson: Filling the house for new music
Congratulations to the American Modern Ensemble! I'm glad to see that there are some modern pieces with some melody...
Posted Nov 30, 2013
Vanessa Zigliani on From Victoria Paterson: Filling the house for new music
Thanks Victoria - fantastic comments. We're doing much the same here in New Zealand with NZTrio but have learnt...
Posted Nov 25, 2013
Ken Nielsen on From Victoria Paterson: Filling the house for new music
A great post with a great story. Thanks, Victoria and Greg.
Posted Nov 24, 2013
Rafael de Acha on From Victoria Paterson: Filling the house for new music
Terrific post and ideas...Inspiring...THANK YOU!
Posted Nov 22, 2013
ariel on From Jeffrey Nytch: The entrepreneurial symphony
There is nothing new here -just the same old same old tune-choices in programming have been made for well over...
Posted Nov 16, 2013