Fort Worth Texas might be the most conservative area of the country after Orange County California. Last June one of its few gay bars, the Rainbow Lounge, was raided by members of the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission. Seven people were arrested for drunkenness, though numerous reports say that the individuals were pulled from the crowd randomly and violently.  A 26-year old man was hospitalized...

For 33 years composer Gerald Busby has been a resident at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.  That means he’s pretty much outlasted every other artist who lived there or just passed through, from his mentor Virgil Thomson to Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, and Sid Vicious. Journalists and authors love to write about the famous hotel and Gerald is always there to give them a good interview. He’s...

It’s difficult categorizing the new disc “Three Fervent Travelers” from the young string trio Time for Three, on E1 Entertainment. Is it blue grass or country, jazz improvisation or some new kind of classical?  One thing’s for certain. It’s fabulous. Time for Three is made up of violinists Zachary De Pue and Nick Kendall and bassist Ranaan Meyer.  They started improvising together in the halls of the Curtis Institute...

With its ever growing arts district, the City of Dallas continues to think big. The same can be said for the Dallas Opera and its new Winspear Opera House. For the second half of its first season in the new house, the company commissioned and premiered Jack Heggie’s “Moby-Dick.” I attended the performance on Saturday May 8. The massive scale and varied themes of Melville’s classic novel have flummoxed many who’ve...

They’re a small town family. Robert, Tony and Annamaria. Maggio is on the faculty at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia. His partner Tony La Salle is an artist. They’ve been together since 1991 and adopted a daughter, Annamaria La Salle Maggio in 2001, when she was one month old. In 2003, they settled in Lambertville, New Jersey. “We wanted to live in a small community where we’d be known by everyone,”...

As a trombonist and composer Monique Buzzarté has performed in traditional orchestras and chamber music settings and collaborated in the most advanced realms of new compositional and experimental techniques.  Based in New York, she was dubbed a “Soloist Champion” by Meet the Composer in 2008 for her long advocacy of contemporary works.  Since 1983, her project New Music from Women: Trombone has commissioned...

“Moby Dick,” the latest opera from Jake Heggie (“Dead Man Walking”) premieres Friday April 30 at the Dallas Opera in its spiffy new Winspear Opera House. Ben Hepner leads the cast as Capt. Ahab.  Libretto is by Gene Sheer.  Patrick Summers conducts. Stage direction by Leonard Foglia. I’ll be attending a performance on May 8, as part of the annual convention of the Music Critics Association....

Tchaikovsky Spectacular Albany Symphony Orchestra, David Alan Miller, conductor with Joshua Roman, cello Palace Theatre, Albany, NY April 23, 2010 Spectacular. Advertising copywriters often use that adjective to describe concerts of Tchaikovsky, especially when his 1812 Overture is performed, with or without real cannons. The Albany Symphony Orchestra’s “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” Friday night at the Palace Theatre didn’t...

David Leisner can’t escape Spanish music. He’s a guitarist. “It’s been a crusade since early in my career to demonstrate that guitar programs don’t need to have Spanish music,” says Leisner.  “Most of the guitar repertoire is not Spanish at all! The pieces most people think of by Albeniz and Granados were originally piano pieces. “The majority of music written for the guitar before the 20th century...

I’m proud to introduce HudsonSounds.org, a new online resource for music in the upper Hudson Valley, New York’s Capital Region and The Berkshires. HudsonSounds.org provides calendar listings for hundreds of classical music events, and blogs by a dozen prominent and insight folks from the local musical community. There’s also links to music news headlines and a CD and DVD store. The listings are already full...