Alex Ross goes home to Washington, D.C. to watch Ma’s “day of action,” the meetings with students and community members in poor neighborhoods (in this case, Anacostia) that he combines with each concert appearance in his 36-city Bach Project. — The New Yorker
Meet The Formerly Homeless Choristers In The Soup-Kitchen ‘Amahl And The Night Visitors’
“It brings people together and gives them discipline and self-esteem. … When I first joined I really didn’t think much of it. And after a certain point I thought: You know, I think I have a voice, and I’m finding it.” — New York Times
The Communist Manifesto Becomes A Cantata
“Choral Marx, which was recently performed at NYU’s Skirball Center, consists of nine singers whose variously musical utterance transfigures, toys with, and otherwise implements eight heavily excerpted selections from the 1888 Samuel Moore translation of the Manifesto. Led by [composer Ethan] Philbrick’s cello, the band played all the hits: ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies/ Is the history of class struggle,’ ‘The bourgeoisie has reduced personal worth to exchange value,’ ‘There is a specter haunting this world’ and so on.”
Rethinking The San Francisco Conservatory Of Music (And Finding Success)
David Stull’s notion is that any reasonable education should teach you to think critically and creatively; write and speak effectively; work alone or on a team; translate constructive criticism to advantage, and, no matter the obstacles, continue to succeed. In sum, from a proper education, you should learn to embrace versatility, failure, and the desire to innovate. You should also know how to create a 501(C)(3).
The Optics Of A Music Problem
New music has done very little to change the expected optics of classical music, which is why new music’s identity problem is what it is today. Moreover, despite the recent increase in conversation about female, non-binary, transgender, and BAME/ALAANA/diverse composers, the programming of these composers has not significantly increased.
Macklemore: Music Saved Me, And Now I Want To Save Kids
“I want to give them that magic that is hearing yourself on headphones for the first time. Like, that is a spiritual experience. If you are an artist, if you are a rapper, a singer and you hear your voice on headphones for the first time, that’s God right there.”
Six Activist Women Musicians Fighting For The Environment
How do artists bend their art to help fight climate change and degradation of the environment? These six musicians have banded together to figure it out.
How Pittsburgh Symphony Musicians Are Fighting Food Waste
Musicians began volunteering with 412 in September 2016, when violinist Lorien Benet Hart reached out to the food rescue organization in search of a way for musicians to contribute to the community during a two-month musicians’ labor strike. Since then, she has coordinated with 412 to send different groups of musicians and — starting a few months back — symphony staff members on a run or two a month to help connect good food that would have gone to waste with organizations that put it to better use than filling dumpsters.
Inside Europe’s First Classical Orchestra Composed Of All Black Musicians
BBC What’s New? visits the Chineke! Orchestra and speaks to to two members of their youth orchestra, Betania Johnny and Didier Osindero. (video)
The Music And Poetry Supposedly Of And For The Working Class Isn’t Actually Tuned Into What That Means
Folk music and pastoral poetry are both fantasy – there’s nothing of the actual folk or the actual pastoral about them. It might be time for “post-folk” thinking, composing, and writing.