British composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Ades, 39, is no stranger to Carnegie Hall. He and/or his music seems to be there multiple times every season lately.  And on Saturday March 27, he makes his piano recital debut in the big hall, Stern Auditorium. His program features a “concert paraphrase” (sounds like Liszt) of his own opera, “Powder Her Face” (1995).  Can’t forget that when the...

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,...

It’s been talked about for months.  The 28-year old composer Nico Muhly has been at work on a new opera with playwright Craig Lucas for the Met.  The project is one of several pieces in development but not yet scheduled for debut by playwrights/composer teams. On Thursday, the Met committed to the piece for the 2013-14 season.  It will be co-produced by the English National Opera in London where it premieres next June. ...

Disappointed that the Naxos recording of Bernstein’s Mass with Jubilant Sykes as the celebrant and Marin Alsop conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra didn’t win a Grammy last Sunday. I heard the performance at Carnegie Hall in October 2008 and loved it.  But it was a weird weekend in Manhattan, with the joy of Mass one night followed by the deadly experience of Adam’s Doctor Atomic the next (full review). Mass...

Chris Lastovicka swears that she never thought of the gay allegory in her opera about UFOs and alien abduction until I asked.  Maybe I’ve just been exposed to too much queer theory and too many “gay readings” of the Harry Potter books, in which the magically gifted (GLTB folks) are hopelessly lost among the muggles (straights). But the opera “Crossing the Horizon” is, after all, a collaboration between two lesbian...

A Brooklyn resident and Texas native, Corey Dargel is a 32 year-old composer and singer.  His music has appeared on NPR and even merited a Tweet from Rachel Maddow. After catching a performance of Dargel at Here in Manhattan, Alex Ross wrote: “Gaunt in appearance and impish in spirit, he sings in a plaintive, innocent-sounding voice, his texts zigzagging between raw confession and cerebral absurdity.” What are you working...

Mark Adamo’s “Late Victorians” comes from the large body of musical works that somehow or other address AIDS.  Composers — primarily if not exclusively gay composers — have been grappling with the subject for 25 years now.  According to my research for the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, the first work in the genre was “Inquiries of Hope: Ten Poems of Kirby Congdon” (1984) by the late Louis Weingarden. ...

A FULL EVENING OF ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BY HENRY COWELL When’s the last time that’s happened anywhere? Leave it to Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra to make it happen. 8 p.m. Friday January 29, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center (pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m.) The program: Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 3 (1944) Atlantis (1931) ( NY Premiere ) Variations for Orchestra (1959) Symphony No. 2, “Anthropos”...

But he does seem to have trouble with the whole “living composer” thing. The evidence? He recently started a fundraising endeavor aimed at producing more concerts and recordings of his music and named it “Martin Hennessy is Dead!” Martin’s frustrations with the music business are common, of course. After all, not everybody can be a John Corigliano or Jennifer Higdon.  It’s a given that being an artist...

Conrad Cummings’s fourth opera is “The Golden Gate” based on the best selling “novel in verse” by his old friend Vikram Seth.  The action takes place in the early ’80s in San Francisco, which is where the composer and novelist first became acquainted.  Set in two acts with a libretto by the composer, the opera has been in the works since 2006 and, as Conrad discusses on his web site,...