Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra Ozawa Hall, August 16, 2010 Who better than a 102-year old man to ask the question, “What are years?” Composer Elliott Carter, who’s centennial was celebrated two summers ago at Tanglewood, was back again Monday night for the finale of the annual Festival of Contemporary Music in Ozawa Hall.  One of his newest pieces is a setting of five poems by Marianne Moore and uses her line, “What...

Alan Pierson, artistic director, conductor and keyboardist of the group Alarm Will Sound, and his partner David Scott Herszenson, a physician, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times announcements of  weddings/celebrations. The couple “affirmed their partnership” in a ceremony in Chicago. Congratulations!

All Gershwin. All good. That pretty much describes the line-up as well as the outcome of Wednesday night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. It was Charles Dutoit’s penultimate program as artistic director and principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s annual summer season and also a rare immersion into all-American terrain. Opening the program was “An American in Paris.” The honking...

Most music lovers are interested in composers’ notes, but Vivian Perlis is obsessed with their words.  Interviewing all manner of figures in American music over the past forty years, she’s been a leader in the once emerging, now established field of “oral history.” Perlis’ ten-year association with the late Aaron Copland resulted in their co-authoring his two-volume autobiography.  She’ll give a talk about the...

The name of the opera is “The Distant Sound.”  Yet the new production at Bard College’s SummerScape, which opens Friday night, will probably focus on plenty more than just sound.  If it holds true to the festival’s recent track record, it will also be spectacular to look at. Last year’s staging of “The Huguenots” was a feast of visual wonder with enormous set pieces, imaginative costumes and, most memorably,...

My friend Chester Biscardi says he wishes he had something gay to tell me about his recent trip to China in May. But two weeks of performances of your music on the other side of the planet is nothing to apologize for. He was featured composer at the Beijing Modern Music Festival and from the look of the photos, he was treated very well.  He kept a detailed journal of the experience and the folks at Sarah Lawrence College,...

The late composer Aaron Copland created a signature American sound in just a few distinctive orchestral works, including Appalachian Spring, Rodeo and Fanfare for the Common Man.  Pungent excerpts from these pieces are a part of every presidential inauguration. But his catalog is deep and not everything in it was one for the ages.  His only full length opera “The Tender Land,” which is currently playing at Glimmerglass...

With his solo rendition of “Beowulf,” coming up on Wednesday at Ozawa Hall, Benjamin Bagby may be the only musician during the Tanglewood season who will perform an entire evening without any written music. It’s not that he’s memorized a composition and left the sheet music at home. Yet the essence of his material is more than 1,000 years old. “Nothing that I’m performing is notated. I’m...

The concert hall in the woods just outside Woodstock is fondly known as The Maverick. But its summer presentations are often rather traditional servings of chamber music and solo recitals. This Saturday night, pianist Pedja Muzijevic will present a program wildly varied enough to be described as mavericky. Along with Schumann’s “Carnaval” and some little sonatas by Scarlatti, there will be transcriptions of Wager and...

GLIMMERGLASS OPERA Cooperstown, New York PUCCINI: TOSCA Friday, July 9, 2010 (opening night) Big changes are underway at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, with a new general and artistic director waiting in the wings to take over in the fall.  The internationally known stage director Francesca Zambello plans an expanded array of events for next year when the whole enterprise will become known as The Glimmerglass Festival. Yet...