Music of the late Yvar Mikhashoff is being remembered. Fitfully and occasionally. But those who knew Yvar are surely grateful. And based on the stunning performance by Winston Choi in this new CD on Albany Records there are also new generations finding beauty and power in the music. Let me admit that I enjoyed the notes by Nils Vigeland, Yvar’s former student, a pianist and a director of the Mikahshoff Trust, as much...

Perhaps there’s something about the humble guitar that brings people together. Take the case of Sharon Isbin.  Though widely regarded as the top classical guitar soloist of our time, she keeps teaming up with other artists, often from far a field the traditional realm of so-called concert music. One of her most recent collaborations is with heavy metal guitarist Steve Vai, better known for his work with Frank Zappa, David...

The internationally known opera director Francesca Zambello has been named the new general and artistic director of Glimmerglass Opera. She assumes her post in Cooperstown on September 1st, succeeding Michael MacLeod who leaves at the end of the summer season after a five-year tenure. “Francesca Zambello brings a wealth of experience.  She will take the company to a new level of excellence,” said Elizabeth Eveillard,...

“Dear Mother: I have written to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now, without any nonsense. To begin with I was not meant to be an athlete…” Sounds like the beginning of a coming out letter (and a life of shame) doesn’t it? Actually, the 9-year old Samuel Barber wrote these words to his mother and...

Ten years ago pianist Christopher O’Riley needed something to play as filler for the “station identification” breaks during the first season of “From the Top,” the weekly syndicated radio show about young musicians.  He started dabbling with piano arrangements of songs by Radio Head, the alternative rock band.  His imaginative treatments of the music — ruminative, stirring and colorful — opened up an...

Let me be honest. I “read” OUT Magazine for the pictures.  And the March issue is particularly sexy with more photos (in ads and editorial) of shirtless young men than usual.  This month’s cover boy is a gritty Ewan McGregor. But the issue actually has something worth spending a bit of time and thought on – a 22-page spread called “80 American Classics” celebrating “the spectrum of queer talent...

“The Other Mendelssohn” is the name of musicologist R. Larry Todd’s latest book, a thorough-going biography of Fanny Mendessohn Hensel that uncovers lots of unknown material, perhaps most importantly about the large number of her own works as a composer. If you’re currently busy surfing the web, then you may be like me and not have sat down, turned off the media and read a good music biography in more...

Where would church music be without the centuries of contributions from gay men? Actually where would the church itself be, including the priesthood… but that’s another discussion. Virgil Thomson wrote his share of sacred music and a big batch of it is included in the new collection “Heaven is Music,” (Albany Records).  The performances by the Gregg Smith Singers are from throughout the choir’s long history, presumably...

Cellist Eric Edberg trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Juilliard School, SUNY Stony Brook, and Florida State University and is a faculty member at the DePauw University School of Music in Greencastle, Indiana. He writes a marvelous blog about whatever musical matters are on his mind and sometimes they also involve being gay. That caught My Big Gay Eye and I reached out to him by email. Little did I know...

On the night of January 12 in Minneapolis, Jeffrey Brooks had a dream in which his friend and fellow composer Eleanor Hovda appeared, informed him that she had died, and urged him to pass on word to David Lang, another close friend and the co-founder of Bang on a Can in New York. Hovda had indeed passed away, exactly two months prior, after eight years of declining health and a three-month stay in a hospice in northern Arkansas. ...