Music

Algis Valiunas remembers the composer of ‘Ave Maria’ and the opera ‘Faust’ on his bicentennial.

Orchestras and universities are working together to feed our hunger for community and a shared American identity

The King, who receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump Friday, was basically Nixon’s Kanye.

The King, who receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump Friday, was basically Nixon’s Kanye.

The King, who receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump Friday, was basically Nixon’s Kanye.

Dominic Green on a half-century of the marvelous, mixed-up mess that may be the Beatles’ greatest album.

Does 12 or 13 count as an early age to become disillusioned? Maybe it was once on the young side for lost innocence. On the other hand, maybe I was just a slow learner.

John Check explains how Willa Cather’s classic, now 100 years old, still sings and dances.

Bernie Taupin’s lyrics make him whole.

A vinyl pressing gone missing—and greatly missed.

Dominic Green on putting the saxophonist’s classic quartet’s ‘lost album’ in its context.

Plus, don't let the kids run social if you're a serious organization.

Plus, Corey Stewart touts his latest endorsement. But why?

Cathy Young on Simon Rattle: As he leaves the Berlin Philharmonic, what’s next for ‘the people’s conductor’?

How the YouTube powerhouse Postmodern Jukebox arose from one pianist’s knack for covering recent songs in vintage styles.

Peter Tonguette on Rodgers and Hammerstein in their day—and ours.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

In what may be the worst micro episode of all time, the Substandard discusses the true meaning behind Warrant's "Cherry Pie" and other suggestive songs from the 1980s. Plus an attempted conversation on the passing of Philip Roth. We warned you!

Mark Hemingway, guitar addict.

Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens of Turning Point USA, the influential conservative student group with more than 350 chapters on college and high school campuses nationally, canceled a speaking engagement hosted by students from Virginia Tech and Liberty University because of unforeseen travel…

The rapper has always been crass and annoying. But now he's the "wrong kind" of crass and annoying.

Leonard Bernstein prophesied an American classical music; his disillusionment and disappointments mirrored the nation’s.

The tenor saxophone has always been seen as jazz's muscle instrument. It so often provides the brawn of any ensemble's attack. Were we to contextualize this particular make of horn in sports terms, it would be the home run, the slam dunk, the slap shot.

When French president (then-candidate) Emmanuel Macron waxed lyrical about his passion for the composer Gioachino Rossini in spring 2017, the transatlantic chattering classes gushed in admiration (and made snide comparisons to Donald Trump). But when British foreign minister Boris Johnson was…

What would Leonardo have done with radiography? What might Michelangelo have accomplished had 3-D modeling been available? What heights of the mind would a neo-Platonist like Piero della Francesca have witnessed if he had lived long enough to see calculus?

The Issue with Steve Hayes. Want to know what is in this week's magazine? Lucky for you, our editor Steve Hayes is putting together a brief video preview. Check it out here.

On January 16, the New York Times ran a lovely piece on music therapy for the elderly. Kaitlyn Kelly, a music therapist at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in the Bronx, teaches residents, most of whom suffer from dementia, to write and sing their own songs.

The Amish help build America's biggest concerts. Who would have thought that some of the most technologically advanced live music shows out there are brought to you, in part, by Lancaster County's Amish population:

The most potent form of nostalgia is for a time you never knew in a place you do and imagine was at its peak before you came along. For me, that would be the 1950s in New York City, set to the cool, light strain of the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.” I can never get enough…

If you want to understand the weird and wacky world that David Bowie was inhabiting during what was undisputedly his golden period of creativity, a good place to begin is to watch the 1975 fly-on-the-wall BBC documentary Cracked Actor. It depicts an alien-like-skeleton-figure, with a snow-white…

From time to time I’m forced to confront the ugly little corollary to my heart-leaping, car-singing, year-round love of Christmas music. Forced usually by Muzak, and more times than ought to be strictly necessary by enthusiastic choirs at midnight mass, I admit that there are Christmas songs that I…

From time to time I’m forced to confront the ugly little corollary to my heart-leaping, car-singing, year-round love of Christmas music. Forced usually by Muzak, and more times than ought to be strictly necessary by enthusiastic choirs at midnight mass, I admit that there are Christmas songs that I…

Joe Hagan has written what promises to be the standard biography of Jann Wenner—standard, because it’s hard to imagine anyone working up the energy to take another stab at it. Fifty years ago, at the age of 21, Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine, and he’s been editor in chief ever since. Thanks…

Very few songs have joined the Pop Christmas Canon in the last forty years with only two at present being considered for inclusion, in my estimation: The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" and Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne." Both differ from most of the other songs in the oeuvre by the fact that…

Back in 2013, in my last weeks as a high school senior, with plenty of free time on my hands, I wrote a survival guide for future students. This tome, full of wit and wisdom, remains unpublished, safely stored on a laptop buried somewhere in my closet. Which is just as well. I now realize Tina Fey…

There's a song I’ve started to play on the piano. It’s called “Money,” a fairly straightforward arrangement by Burt Bacharach. The only problem is Liza Minnelli’s eyes. They keep staring back at me from the opposite page.

As a rule, I favor a strict separation between music and politics. Politics need not worm its way into every nook and cranny. Of course, sometimes composers like to impose politics on their music. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies declared that a string quartet of his was about the Iraq war: a depiction of…

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was relieved of his duties in June 1781 as court organist to Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, the 25-year-old had every reason to believe he would achieve great success on his own. Conditions in Salzburg, the city of his birth, had become unbearable, owing in…

"You are no good." These were not the words Gregor Piatigorsky, a nervous performer, needed to hear as he warmed up before playing a concerto with the New York Philharmonic. The man who uttered them, the conductor Arturo Toscanini, then said, “I am no good.” The effect on Piatigorsky was immediate…

Have there ever been unlikelier rock stars than Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the duo behind Steely Dan? The unabashedly intellectual Bard College grads—in high school, they were probably the bookish kids dressed in black, smoking cigarettes behind the gym—have certainly never looked the part:…

Potential Senate candidate Kid Rock, a term that never becomes any less weird each time you write it, said Tuesday that he will not challenge Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow in next year’s election.

Most of us think of jazz as a genre predicated on extemporization—the horn man breaking into an inspired chorus set apart from the rhythmic structure of the song, the pianist using an established chord progression for extended flights of improvisatory fancy.

A few years ago, some friends of mine, weekend musicians, started jamming together and formed a cover band called the Porch Lights. To be honest, their big world tour is a bit slow in developing. Conquering the globe one backyard at a time, they haven’t quite made it outside of our neighborhood,…

C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died on the same day as the JFK assassination. It's an odd bit of historical trivia that often gets cited to show how even important markers can get lost amid earth shattering news. It might be as stretch to compare Tom Petty to those intellectual titans, but it…

A few years ago, some friends of mine, weekend musicians, started jamming together and formed a cover band called the Porch Lights. To be honest, their big world tour is a bit slow in developing. Conquering the globe one backyard at a time, they haven’t quite made it outside of our neighborhood,…

In this latest episode, the Substandard discusses The Trip to Spain and ranks road trip movies. We also debate if ’90s rock music counts as classic rock. Special guest host Mike Warren saw Smash Mouth live. Vic saw Bell Biv DeVoe. And Sonny saw Sponge. Plus The Dark Knight on IMAX, spray painting…

Much ink has recently been spilled because of America’s statues of Confederate generals; in Charlottesville, wicked men flying Nazi flags caused blood to be spilled as well. In hopes of avoiding further violence, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, recently removed its Confederate statues in the…

Much ink has recently been spilled because of America’s statues of Confederate generals; in Charlottesville, wicked men flying Nazi flags caused blood to be spilled as well. In hopes of avoiding further violence, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, recently removed its Confederate statues in the…

Glen Campbell’s passing left me sad, and not just because I enjoy his music. Campbell was the first celebrity I ever met: Not only was our encounter memorable but it struck me later as an amazingly instructive lesson for how a person should conduct oneself when faced with an awkward situation.

Orkney, Scotland

Of all the unanswerable questions in the universe, there’s one that brings the brightest minds of Broadway and Hollywood to their knees: What makes one musical or movie musical a hit and another a flop? A veritable ocean of cocktails flows over this question. But during the 1940s, the Hollywood…

Of all the unanswerable questions in the universe, there’s one that brings the brightest minds of Broadway and Hollywood to their knees: What makes one musical or movie musical a hit and another a flop? A veritable ocean of cocktails flows over this question. But during the 1940s, the Hollywood…

Orkney, Scotland

My wife and I are record collectors. At the moment, we own 1,151 of them (I have an app on my phone cataloguing the collection), and that number has been growing at a good clip. There’s no real organizing principle—it’s a diverse collection of rock, classical, jazz, soul, and even a fair bit of…

My wife and I are record collectors. At the moment, we own 1,151 of them (I have an app on my phone cataloguing the collection), and that number has been growing at a good clip. There’s no real organizing principle—it’s a diverse collection of rock, classical, jazz, soul, and even a fair bit of…

When John Coltrane died 50 years ago this July, the New York Times wrote that he “was considered one of the most gifted modern jazz musicians of this decade.” It was a reserved, careful judgment​—​was considered not was; of this decade not of all time. In the years since, the qualifiers have all…

When John Coltrane died 50 years ago this July, the New York Times wrote that he “was considered one of the most gifted modern jazz musicians of this decade.” It was a reserved, careful judgment​—​was considered not was; of this decade not of all time. In the years since, the qualifiers have all…

Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Yes, and the intellectual ambitions of prog rockers.

‘You have to realize this is 2017 . . . and people will get upset about literally anything. It seems like we live in a world with smart phones and dumb people.”

Supreme arbiter and lawgiver of music, a master comparable in greatness of stature with Aristotle in philosophy and Leonardo da Vinci in art. No overstatement whatsoever attaches to this, the opening of the entry for Johann Sebastian Bach in Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. So vast and…

Reviews and News:

Joe Scarborough isn’t just a onetime congressman turned cable-TV talker, nor even just a handsome face. No, he is a rock ’n’ roller, a singer, a guitarist, and a (more than) prolific songwriter. He is—if the publicity hoo-ha accompanying his new extended-play recording is to be believed—“this…

Joe Scarborough isn’t just a onetime congressman turned cable-TV talker, nor even just a handsome face. No, he is a rock ’n’ roller, a singer, a guitarist, and a (more than) prolific songwriter. He is—if the publicity hoo-ha accompanying his new extended-play recording is to be believed—“this…

Supreme arbiter and lawgiver of music, a master comparable in greatness of stature with Aristotle in philosophy and Leonardo da Vinci in art. No overstatement whatsoever attaches to this, the opening of the entry for Johann Sebastian Bach in Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. So vast and…

Do we need another biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald? Since Arthur Mizener's inaugural one of 1951, there have been a number of successors including Andrew Turnbull's (1962) and, most commandingly, Matthew Bruccoli's "standard" one of 1981. This new one by David S. Brown concentrates, as the blurb…

Do we need another biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald? Since Arthur Mizener's inaugural one of 1951, there have been a number of successors including Andrew Turnbull's (1962) and, most commandingly, Matthew Bruccoli's "standard" one of 1981. This new one by David S. Brown concentrates, as the blurb…

Even in Texas, where everything's bigger, the little guys can still win one. In the latest case, the little guys are the nearly 40 private music museums across the Lone Star State. Their defeated foe? A plan backed by Governor Greg Abbott, Austin politicians, and the state's preservation board to…

Of the generation of pianists who became well-known in the 1970s, famous in the '80s and great in the '90s, Murray Perahia and Maurizio Pollini are the remaining twin pillars. On the weekend of May 20, both of them were in Manhattan, at Carnegie Hall, playing exceptional programs to packed houses.

I'm fascinated by the photograph of the Beatles in the open gatefold of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was released 50 years ago today. From left to right sit Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, clad in colorful psychedelic military garb against a yellow…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, senior writer Michael Warren and managing editor Eric Felten talk about how "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" holds up at half a century. Is it the Beatles' masterpiece?

Two musical forms dominated Beethoven's mind and rounded every chapter of his life: the piano sonata was his vanguard. The string quartet was the ultimate expression. Beethoven's five late quartets, the last works he wrote, represent more than his total subjugation of the most difficult frontier he…

It's been over six years since IBM's Watson bested a pair of Jeopardy! champions, and now another venerable game show is getting the man-vs.-computer treatment. Starting this month contestants will battle a music-recognition app on #BeatShazam, a digital-age update of Name That Tune—a show I found…

It's been over six years since IBM's Watson bested a pair of Jeopardy! champions, and now another venerable game show is getting the man-vs.-computer treatment. Starting this month contestants will battle a music-recognition app on #BeatShazam, a digital-age update of Name That Tune—a show I found…

Colonel Bruce Hampton, a four-star general of the South's jam band scene, contemporary of the Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead, influence and mentor to blues artists, occasional actor and constant character, passed away early Tuesday in Atlanta after collapsing onstage during a concert celebrating…

Last week, the New York Philharmonic presented Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto as part of a wide-ranging program under visiting Belfast-born conductor Courtney Lewis and pianist Jonathan Biss.

As dean of an arts school, I’m often asked where the arts stand at a time when so much attention has been focused on the value of the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Not too long ago, in a full-page ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Santa Clara University, a…

My attitude towards the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has always been one of casual indifference, but this year's enshrinement of the band Yes has changed my perspective.

It costs a bundle to attend Pitzer College, an elite liberal-arts institution in Claremont, California, that used to be a women's college and still skews female (57 percent of its 1,000 or so students). Tuition and fees alone are $48,670 a year, and when you throw in room and board, the price jumps…

"Ella Fitzgerald is the only performer with whom I’ve ever worked who made me nervous," Frank Sinatra admitted in a 1959 interview. "Because I try to work up to what she does. You know, try to pull myself up to that height—because I believe she is the greatest popular singer in the world, barring…

One of the greatest pianists who ever lived, Dinu Lipatti, was born 100 years ago yesterday, on March 19, 1917. Lipatti was a child prodigy, a virtuoso pianist and a Romanian who died at 33, just 15 years after his career began. Of course there are many child prodigies who become virtuoso pianists;…

J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows…

J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a lawyer whom President Reagan appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. As a judge who writes for his court, Wilkinson is, of course, a legal writer; but here he has written for a general audience. His topic is the 1960s, a decade he knows…

On Wednesday, March 1, the Boston Symphony Orchestra appeared at Carnegie Hall under conductor Andris Nelsons with pianist Emanuel Ax in what may have been the most remarkable performance of the season.

Playing Beethoven symphonies is what a symphony orchestra really ought to be doing most of the time. The New York Philharmonic performed Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies last week under American-born Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt. Blomstedt is an emeritus of the Swedish and Danish…

New York governor Andrew Cuomo pulled together a Spotify playlist, apparently following the lofty two-year tradition of President Barack Obama's summer playlists. But Cuomo, a likely 2020 presidential hopeful, might have put more thought into his. Obama's lists, tapestries of hidden meaning and…

Daniel Barenboim is at Carnegie Hall with the Staatskapelle Berlin conducting a Bruckner Symphony Cycle. So all is well with the world, except for the choice of music. Which is only to say that, of the three composers famous for writing nine symphonies, Bruckner would be our third choice. But I was…

To set the scene of the man who was on the stage: It's early April 1966, and for three days, Otis Redding is in residence at Los Angeles's Whisky A Go Go. He is far from his Chitlin' Circuit base back in the South, playing a club that would be at the epicenter of rock's psychedelic movement, where…

To set the scene of the man who was on the stage: It’s early April 1966, and for three days, Otis Redding is in residence at Los Angeles's Whisky A Go Go. He is far from his Chitlin' Circuit base back in the South, playing a club that would be at the epicenter of rock's psychedelic movement, where…

Nat Hentoff, the music critic and columnist, has died at the age of 91. His son reported Hentoff's death on Twitter:

Hillary Clinton could do worse than to take up the trombone.

Hillary Clinton could do worse than to take up the trombone.

Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam performed at Carnegie Hall last week under Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov. Because the venue is so well known and the performers are so good and the seats so expensive and hard to get, Carnegie's programmers are rather blasé on the question…

Bob Dylan's Nobel prize is a culturally revealing moment, not only about the miserable state of modern literature but the even-more-miserable state of modern music criticism. Let's get this straight: Dylan can't sing and can't play. The musicians who did most to disguise these facts, the Band, were…

Roger Waters—predictably—got there first. The uncomfortably dumb former Pink Floyd singer took a break from his usual anti-Semitic antics last weekend to instead lay into Donald Trump. Closing out the Desert Trip festival in Indio, California, on Sunday night, Surrey-born Waters branded the…

Arrington, Va.

I can't remember not being a mediocre piano player, though there must have been a time when I was worse. I wasn't born vamping through the easy movements of Best Loved Classics and burying their tricky parts in clouds of pedal. (Take that, Moonlight Sonata!) No, my kind of musician is made—by going…

I’m famous! Or, well, actually I'm completely obscure.

I can’t remember not being a mediocre piano player, though there must have been a time when I was worse. I wasn't born vamping through the easy movements of Best Loved Classics and burying their tricky parts in clouds of pedal. (Take that, Moonlight Sonata!) No, my kind of musician is made—by going…

Managing editor Eric Felten joined WNYC's On The Media to talk about the changing role of music in presidential campaigns.

It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught…wait, no, that's not right. What was 50 years ago on Monday was the last time the Beatles took to a stage to perform a concert. It might be argued that the January 1969 London rooftop jam session was the Beatles' last public performance, but their final…

The provocative subtitle of this new biography suggests that the author is going to explore the racier aspects of his subject’s life. He does not disappoint: Franz Liszt's flamboyant playing style and unconventional relationships represent a gold mine of sensationalistic material, and this book…

Now that campaigns are in full swing—from races for local sheriff to the long presidential slog—we won't be able to escape the silly season soundtrack, the music that underpins TV and radio attack ads and feel-good spots alike. You've heard it all before: the gloomy, grim, and portentous sounds…

Halfway through his Vineyard vacation, Obama staffers tweeted his second annual, and last ever, presidential playlist.

Cleveland

A California jury has decided that Led Zeppelin did not lift "Stairway to Heaven's" acoustic guitar riff from the band Spirit, whose instrumental composition "Taurus" bears similarity to the iconic rock song.

My favorite Prince song, I'm reticent to admit, is "Purple Rain." The choice is a bit clichéd—it's the title track from Prince's most successful album (and first film)—and it's hardly representative of Prince's eclectic musical style or risqué lyrics. But what I love about "Purple Rain" is the…

A 2014 lawsuit alleging that Led Zeppelin ripped off a lesser-known band to produce "Stairway to Heaven" will proceed to a jury trial, a California judge decided this week.

Take us down to the supergroup city.

Canada-born Texas senator Ted Cruz may be annoyed that Donald Trump has begun playing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." at his rallies. But one person evidently isn't: Mr. Springsteen himself.

Among the points the internet has in its favor is the way it organically remembers random artifacts of our pop culture. A few years ago, someone uploaded to YouTube a clip from Bing Crosby's 1977 Christmas special for CBS. In the clip, Crosby sings a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with, of all…

Two years ago, Forbes broke the news that famed rap group the Wu-Tang Clan had created, and would soon be auctioning, a single copy of their latest album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin. Literally, a single copy.

In the city where I live, one of the pop music radio stations shifts to an all-Christmas music format beginning in .  .  . oh, I don't know, late August?

As much as one loves Bob Dylan, it is always best to resist the temptation to write about him. He is a slippery fish, who is routinely put-off by the industrial-level attempts to access his soul through the interpretation of his lyrics. And if Dylan makes albums—at the rate of almost one a year—as…

The central Illinois music scene (the ostensible subject of my magazine piece this week) was amazingly fecund in the 1970s, and worthy of a self-indulgent blog post all its own. The alpha and omega of this time and place was REO Speedwagon, and Gary Richrath enjoyed an intensely loyal following…

Jon Bon Jovi is nobody’s idea of a conservative. Indeed, the hirsute rocker is a well-known Democrat. And yet, when Chris Christie announced his bid for the Republican nomination for president on Tuesday, and played a Bon Jovi tune in the process, the musician didn’t complain. Indeed, reports…

The band Well Strung has released a music video called "Chelsea's Mom," in support of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign:

On Tuesday, a big announcement was made by a publicity-seeking has-been with bad hair. Oh, and Donald Trump also declared that he was running for president.

With so many Republican candidates announcing their bids for the presidency these days, one our most hallowed election-year rituals can’t be far behind. I refer, of course, to when fading musical acts attempt to prove their progressive bona fides by making a stink when a candidate they disagree…

B.B. King, born Riley B. King and also called the Beale Street Blues Boy and the King of the Blues, has died at the age of 89. Earlier this month, he announced he was in hospice care due to complications from diabetes. (Nearly 15 years ago, B.B. had become a paid spokesman for a blood glucose test…

Charlie Parker never achieved stardom, at least not by the standards of the music business. He never had a gold record to hang on the wall or enjoyed a significant radio hit. He never had a contract with a major record label. His face didn’t appear, even in a bit role, in a Hollywood film. If you…

It's worth re-reading Fred Baumann on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was born 259 years ago today:

Musician Peter Himmelman, who is married to Bob Dylan's daughter Maria, has released a song taking the world to task for the reflexive attacks on Israel during the recent Gaza conflict. The song, produced for the StandWithUs Israel Fellowship, is called "Maximum Restraint":  

Millions of people get their music through Pandora and this being the age when no data is left unmined, the preferences of this vast audience will soon be used for political purposes.  As Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Wall Street Journal reports:

The State Department is presenting a global webcast on February 4, titled "From the Street to Mainstream: The Evolution of Rap/Hip Hop Music."  The host of the webcast, rapper and State Department Music Ambassador Toni Blackman, will be joined by Pras Michel, a founding member of the hip hop group…

In the East Room of the White House Sunday night, President Obama hosted the Kennedy Center Honors Reception to recognize five American artists: Martina Arroyo, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, Shirley MacLaine,  and Billy Joel.  The president gave a brief synopsis of each artist's career, including…

There's a black and white photo, a little grainy and slightly out of focus, of Igor Stravinsky greeting Mstislav Rostropovich at the Royal Academy of Music, London, in June 1964. Standing in the background in the upper left hand corner is a tall lanky figure, a 20-year-old music student named John…

Lou Reed died yesterday in Amagansett, N.Y., thus ending his life on the same island, Long Island, where it began more than 71 years ago in Kings County, better known as Brooklyn. For most of the time in between, Reed was all about Manhattan (he was, says this obituary in Spin Magazine, “the…

I met him once. Well, met in the loosest sense: I was introduced to Ray Manzarek at a Los Angeles restaurant in the 1980s and got to shake his hand. No more than that, but even at the time it felt like an encounter with passing greatness, a brush with the fading mythology of the age, and down…

David Tucker and Nathan Tucker have penned a brief at the American Enterprise Institute about the role music plays in American civic life. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

Willie Nelson turns 80 today.  As Kelly Phillips Erb writes in Forbes, it has been an interesting, prolific, and unusual career:

On Barack and Michelle Obama's schedule for today, this event is listed:

This morning, the State Department announced, "Hip Hop Group Audiopharmacy to Tour Southeast Asia and the Pacific with American Music Abroad."

I predicted on Fox News Sunday on December 30 that the Metropolitan Opera's production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda would be the entertainment event of the year. We had the good fortune to be invited by friends to see it at the Met last night, and it was spectacular. Bel canto doesn't get any…

Could Mozart write jingles? “Are you kidding,” responds the ad copy for a 1990s music marketing production house. “A Little Night Music had ‘beer commercial’ written all over it.”  

Discussions of what would prove to be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last years tend to fixate on his death. Much talk there is—for Christoph Wolff, too much talk—of Mozart’s decline or fall, of the quality of resignation that supposedly crept into his music, even of the “autumnal world” that his late…

Zuwarah, Libya

Ravel

Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan by Lawrence J. Epstein

Readers of a certain age may remember Phoebe Snow as a fabulously talented singer whose quirky hit "Poetry Man" topped the charts briefly in the spring of 1975. If she was less well known than she deserved to be, that is because, later that same year, she put her career on hold to devote herself…

At the Jazz Band Ball

There's a pretty good chance that you are one of the 63-million-plus (and counting) people who have watched 13-year-old Rebecca Black's video version of "Friday," a three-minute pop number recorded in January and posted on YouTube earlier this month. Rebecca Black is a California middle school…

One of the most sought-after classical singers in Europe, Magdalena Kozena has very little of the diva about her. The 37-year-old Czech-born, Berlin-based mezzo-soprano is warm and unpretentious, whether in interviews or in conversation with backstage visitors. A mother of two sons, ages five and…

Sometime in the mid-1980s a pop cultural landmark was reached when Baby Boomer journalists started writing columns complaining about the current state of rock music. This process might have been jump-started by the affront of Madonna to such people as Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe or Robert…