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Unanswered Question

Joe Horowitz on music

Joe Horowitz

Cultural Diplomacy in South Africa Continued: the University of Michigan Concert Orchestra Goes to Soweto

May 24, 2025 by Joe Horowitz Leave a Comment

The Soweto audience erupts. Video by Mathew Pimental Among my most telling experiences of South Africa, when I first visited in 2023, was encountering a group of uniformed schoolchildren passing through security at the Johannesburg airport. They were all singing, beautifully and happily. It is a singing country. Jeremy Silver, Director of Opera at the University of Cape … [Read more...] about Cultural Diplomacy in South Africa Continued: the University of Michigan Concert Orchestra Goes to Soweto

American Cultural Diplomacy in South Africa Right Now, Courtesy of the University of Michigan

May 21, 2025 by Joe Horowitz 3 Comments

Video by Mathew Pimental At the precise moment that US President Donald Trump was accusing South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of denying acts of racial persecution, the University of Michigan Orchestra began a five-concert tour of South Africa with a smashing two and half hour program at the University of Pretoria.  The main work on the program was a neglected … [Read more...] about American Cultural Diplomacy in South Africa Right Now, Courtesy of the University of Michigan

What Ails Today’s Metropolitan Opera? — It’s in the Pit

May 8, 2025 by Joe Horowitz 3 Comments

The current issue of the “New York Review of Books” carries my review of the Metropolitan Opera’s current “Aida” – a new production given fourteen times this season. It features one of the company’s heralded young stars – the soprano Angel Blue – and it’s mainly conducted by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin. The result is tepid. As “Aida” is the … [Read more...] about What Ails Today’s Metropolitan Opera? — It’s in the Pit

Three Who Quit: Ives, Elgar, Sibelius and the Crisis of Modernism

April 18, 2025 by Joe Horowitz Leave a Comment

The current "Musical Opinion" (UK) carries an essay of mine: “Three Who Quit: Ives, Elgar, Sibelius, and the Crisis of Modernism.” Strange bedfellows? Think again. Ultimately, my topic is the dead end afflicting twentieth century classical music. My final sentences read: “The dialectical tension between present and past, long the mainspring for musical creativity, has gone … [Read more...] about Three Who Quit: Ives, Elgar, Sibelius and the Crisis of Modernism

Bernstein, Balanchine, Ellington and the Waning of “Soft Power”

April 15, 2025 by Joe Horowitz 2 Comments

Today’s online Persuasion/The American Purpose runs an essay of mine building on the growing awareness that “soft power” diplomacy, long vital to American foreign policy, seems suddenly in abeyance. Referencing the three most potent cultural ambassadors to the USSR during the Cold War, I write in part:  If American diplomacy cannot today deploy a Leonard Bernstein, George … [Read more...] about Bernstein, Balanchine, Ellington and the Waning of “Soft Power”

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About Joe Horowitz

Joseph Horowitz is an award-winning author, concert producer, film-maker, broadcaster, and pianist/composer. He is one of the most prominent and widely published writers on topics in American music. As an orchestral administrator and advisor, he has been a pioneering force in the development of … [more] about Joseph Horowitz

About Unanswered Question

When a few years ago Doug McLennan invited me to write an ArtsJournal blog, I thought about it and said no. Having been born as long ago as 1948, I remain somewhat a stranger to the internet. And, as I am always writing a book (a form of therapy) when I am not producing concerts, I felt I didn't … [more] about The Unanswered Question

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