“You’ve decided what you’re going to do, and it’s all you can think about. Everything else is a bother. Going to work is a bother. Going out to get something to eat is a bother.” Albany artist Kevin Bruce is describing his feelings when in the midst of creating. “You can spend a whole day painting and not eat and suddenly feel really faint and nauseous and dizzy and sick,” he says. “And you’ll...

In the 10 years since classical guitarist Sharon Isbin came out publicly as a lesbian, she’s won a Grammy Award, and has had one recording after another hit the Billboard charts. So much for the dangers of living an open life. Isbin has become the preeminent classical guitarist of our time on her own terms – by studying Bach but also embracing world music, and by commissioning some of today’s most adventuresome composers...

It was in the basement of a Seattle church in the early 1970s that Pleasant DeSpain knew for sure his commitment to becoming a professional storyteller was going to work out. “I had my hat by the door, and I told stories for two hours,” he says. “At the end of that night, there was $27.68 in that hat. And rent for a decent apartment was $100 back then. I knew then that there was no turning back.” DeSpain has been telling...

The increasing longevity of humans has advantages for composers. Because the music world gets obsessed with birthdays and anniversaries, composers who make it to age 70 and beyond can expect tribute concerts at least every five years, and heightened attention to their music in general. Performers and audiences are led to think, “There’s a living master in our midst we best pay attention.” Two who fit that bill are...

It’s easy to drive right past the town without even noticing it. A smattering of old buildings on Route 29 northeast of Greenwich in Washington County, Battenville sits beside the Batten Kill and was briefly the home of Susan B. Anthony, who taught school there in 1826. In 1971, artists Robert Nunnelley and Gerald Coble bought an 18th-century house to serve as their country home and studio. Since then, the two men –...

The Dixie Chicks should take heart. Although they have had their songs dropped from radio stations and been booed at awards shows because of their statements against President Bush, a fellow Texan, they are not alone in the annals of American music for being shunned because of their politics. In his day, the great American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) also faced the difficulties of being a politically engaged artist. In...

“Very often I have invitations to go to dinner parties with heads of states or royalty or ambassadors or whoever and I’ll always say I have a companion with me and I’d like him to be invited,” says the French classical pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, 41. “And though I don’t say it, what that basically means is if he’s not invited I’ll not come.” In demand around the globe,...

Composer Lou Harrison, who died in February at age 85, was sometimes called the Santa Claus of contemporary music. He certainly looked the part, with a big belly and a white mustache and beard.  The nickname was apt for other reasons as well: He was a joyous and generous man, and all his life he carried a big bag of toys. That’s what he called his many interests and pursuits. “From the start,” he often said, “I...

“I would like to think that I had a significant insight into the girls in Little Women because I wasn’t bound by gender roles. On the other hand maybe the answer is – I had two sisters and we grew up in the same house!” Out composer Mark Adamo’s triumphant hit opera  Little Women – with twenty-four productions in less than five years – has astounded critics and endeared audiences to...

Imagine a music that is created more by listening than by playing notes. The sounds are determined by the time and place in which the musicians gather, and the players are guided not so much by a score but by their heightened sensitivities to each other, their environment and their common values of collaboration. Such is the sonic universe of Pauline Oliveros, a 70-year-old composer and accordionist, internationally known...