It must mean a lot that I can remember watching Sid Caesar’s “Show of Shows” on TV with my parents as a young child. For one thing, I don’t recall watching anything else as a family. For another, Caesar’s “Show of Shows” went off the air in 1954 and I was born in 1948. So I was all of six years old. The memory stuck. Caesar virtually disappeared from television when … [Read more...] about Was Sid Caesar’s Cancellation a Media Parable for Today?
Who Wrote “Porgy and Bess”?
It must mean something that the highest creative achievement in American classical music is permanently controversial. When Porgy and Bess premiered on Broadway in 1935, a typical critical reaction was: “What is it?” American-born classical musicians (unlike their European-born brethren) marginalized George Gershwin as an interloper, a gifted dilettante. Later, in the 1950s, … [Read more...] about Who Wrote “Porgy and Bess”?
The Music of the Future?
The current issue of The American Scholar includes a long piece of mine suggesting a possible new direction for contemporary classical music – versus the “makeshift music” that deluges our concert halls. I make reference to John Luther Adams, Charles Ives, Jean Sibelius, and Ferruccio Busoni. To read the whole piece, click here. To sample it, read on: The American arts are … [Read more...] about The Music of the Future?
Trump vs. the Kennedy Center
Mere hours before its board renamed the Kennedy Center for Donald Trump, Persuasion ran my online piece on Trump, the Kennedy Center, JFK, and Leonard Bernstein. I will be following up with a 50-minute "More than Music" feature on NPR, to run in January. Here's the Persuasion article: When people today ponder the assassination of John F. Kennedy 62 years ago, possibly the … [Read more...] about Trump vs. the Kennedy Center
“Never before has the perseverance of historical memory been more inspirational — or more necessary”
Following up on my NPR story about the Lakota Music Project, I write today for “Persuasion” online: In South Dakota, Bishop Scott Bullock of Rapid City wrote [of Pete Hegseth’s insistence on the heroism of American soldiers who slaughtered Lakotas at Wounded Knee in 1890]: “If we deny our part in history we deepen the harm. We cannot lie about the past without perpetuating … [Read more...] about “Never before has the perseverance of historical memory been more inspirational — or more necessary”