The Three Johns

“It would be nice to hear someone say, ‘Look at that gas station in the moonlight. It’s pure John Adams.’ ” — John Adams, composer of  Nixon in China. [1] New Yorker music critic Alex Ross recently blogged about two different composers named John Adams, distinguished by their middle names of Luther and Coolidge. This common …

Read more »

Great Conversations in Music

This week marks the birthday of two of the participants in Great Conversations in Music, a series of interviews hosted by Eugene Istomin (1925-2003). Video clips from the entire series can be viewed on the Performing Arts Encyclopedia, and are organized by The Pianists,  The Composers,  Chamber Music,  The Virtuosos, and The Conductors. One of those conductors …

Read more »

Tweeting Our Own Flute

This post is adapted from notes by Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford, Exhibition Curator, Music Division. The exhibition As the Old Sing, So the Young Twitter takes its inspiration from the musical and verbal relationship between birds and flutes.  In the often archaic definition of words like “twitter,” “chatter,” “record,” and “warble” are links between birdsong and human music …

Read more »