Picture this: The back room of Branded Saloon, a queer bar in Brooklyn, is filled to capacity. Beer sloshes as a server raises a tray high above the crowd. People in rainbow masks stand on Doc Marten–ed toes to catch a glimpse of the stage. But there isn’t a guitar or a drum set in sight.
Instead, violinist Rafa Prendergast and cellist Jules Biber play Arcangelo Corelli’s “La Folia” variations to hoots and hollers. A merch table sells T-shirts that … Read more
If I were making my usual yearly list of memorable live performances, I would include Michael Tilson Thomas’s buoyant concerts at the L.A. Philharmonic, in January; the première of Salvatore Sciarrino’s enigmatically radiant opera “Venere e Adone,” in Hamburg, in May; Andrew McIntosh’s heady traversal of Heinrich Biber’s Rosary Sonatas, in Pasadena, in July; and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s feisty farewell at Geffen Hall, in August, with Louis Langrée all but giving the finger to the oblivious leaders of
The door had barely closed when the world-renowned trumpet player who had invited 13-year-old Agnes Green to his room lunged at her, pinning her to the ground, tearing off her jeans and underwear.
In an instant, the man she’d revered, who’d been teaching her the instrument during the week-long programme run by one of Britain’s foremost music schools was gone; in his place, a violent stranger more than twice her age trying to rape her.
‘I was terrified. I didn’t
The case against the music-streaming industry is as damning as ever. The leading services pay pittances to artists—usually, less than one cent per play. In a textbook demonstration of monopoly economics, megastars magnify their wealth while everyone else struggles to break even. Streaming technology is environmentally destructive, resulting in the release of up to 1.57 million metric tons of carbon per day. On the apps, music is atomized into bits, stripped of biography, history, and iconography. Even from a predatory
Early in Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation, Roosevelt Montas describes an intellectual origin story that I found strikingly familiar. Montas, a fatherless teenager who had recently immigrated to the Bronx from the sticks of the Dominican Republic and was still learning to read in English, found himself on a winter evening faced with a pile of discarded books, some ornately decorated with gold-edged pages, waiting for
‘Wokeness’ is a threat to classical music, as to other pursuits. Horror stories pile up. Alarm becomes more justified.
Editor’s Note: The below is an expanded version of an essay that appears in the current issue of National Review.
Almost like a pandemic, “wokeness” has attacked academia and spilled out into the wider world: business, media, etc. Classical music is not immune. Every
Before the altar of the church stood a large screen displaying the words “recital no. 1: mass,” in black letters on a white background. The singer entered from the back, walking slowly, delivering an a-cappella setting of the Kyrie from the traditional Mass, by the contemporary composer Caroline Shaw: “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.” The light was low, almost séance-like. The singer wore a black suit jacket over a black tank top, with a pearl rosary around
