Category: Uncategorized

Finally, I Can Walk from My Apartment to a Concert

My wife and I play “Riverdale Would Be Better If” a lot. Thanks to Mark Mandarano, the game just got a little easier (or harder; we have one less answer, at any rate). 
This past Sunday, I went to hear his Sinfonietta of Riverdale. They played some typically facile French music–and Varese, sticking out like the most beautiful sore thumb I’ve ever seen. Although I have my suspicions that Mandarano was trying to hide Octandre from ticket buyers (the piece was conspicuously absent from the website), he doesn’t typically shy away from programming interesting, challenging music. 
Up next for the group: Wagner and Schoenberg on May 15 at the Riverdale Temple. If you’re interested, check out their website or follow them on Facebook. 

I’ve Kind of Been Wondering the Same Thing

If you want to know how rock died, go to Steven Hyden’s 10-part series Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation?. It takes forever–I’m only halfway through–but it’s worth it.  

I particularly appreciated his evenhanded assessment of Guns N’ Roses: in revealing how fraudulent metal bands had become, they were a psychotic precursor to Nirvana.

Yes, it helped that I was only 10 at the time, but GNR was unnerving in a way that even the scariest of metal bands couldn’t touch … Nirvana is credited with making ’80s hair-metal bands look silly with Nevermind, but GNR had already done that with the “Welcome To The Jungle” video several years earlier.


It’s this GNR that I remember–not those purveyors of cheese that brought us Use Your Illusion. Only a couple of weeks after the band filmed that “Jungle” video, I saw them open for The Cult in Halifax. They were loud, crude, clearly drunk. Best of all, they weren’t Poison.

Better Know a Composer: Wallingford Riegger (Part II)

In addition to Dichotomy, it’s important to mention the piece that made Riegger’s name, Study in Sonority. He wrote it in 1927 for his Ithaca Conservatory summer-term orchestra; the group had mostly violins, so he wrote for 10 violinists. At Eastman, Howard Hanson programmed the work before Stokowski got a hold of it and performed it with the Philadelphia Orchestra strings in 1929 at Carnegie Hall and in their home city.
The New York Philharmonic played the piece a couple of times in the 1960s, and in 1994 at the American Eccentrics festival. There’s nary a commercial recording to be had, but you can view the score on the New York Philharmonic’s digital archives.

Free Downloads from New York Public Library

If you’re a New York Public Library member, you can now download tracks from the Sony catalog for free through the Freegal music service. That’s a lot of music. They’ve Isaac Stern playing Rochberg’s Violin Concerto and Mumford & Sons, Miles Davis and Justin Timberlake.

The good news is that the tracks are DRM-free: you can play them on anything. The bad news is that you can only download three tracks a week. So think hard about what you want to listen to.

O Say Did You Know?

David Hildebrand pointed out on the Society for American Music listserv that “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the official US national anthem 80 years ago today. The BBC interviewed him for World Update (at about 47:40). I haven’t seen much about it in the American news yet; I’m sure the Canadians will have something to say about it.

You probably know that the “The Star-Spangled Banner” got its melody from a drinking song. But do you know which one? And did you know that Francis Scott Key’s lyrics first appeared in September 1814 as a broadside in Baltimore?

The Smithsonian Museum of American History has a great section on its website where you can find out a bunch of stuff about our national anthem. Check it out and impress your friends.

And whatever you do, make sure you know the lyrics.

Perlman Leaves Westchester Phil

Itzhak Perlman, whose contract was up in June, resigned today as music director of the Westchester Philharmonic.

The orchestra is facing serious financial troubles, and is late with their paychecks to both Perlman and orchestra musicians. Clearly, having Perlman didn’t help the bottom line: he started in 2007, and contributions fell 31% between 2008 and 2009.
There is no replacement conductor for the April 16 and 17 concerts; Jaime Laredo will step in to conduct on May 14 and 15.
Back in November, I took the family to hear the orchestra at Purchase College with Chelsea Tipton. Tipton’s not famous, but the orchestra sounded crisp and spirited with him, and the program was stimulating. The Westchester Philharmonic can’t afford big names anyway; building on the strength of the orchestra and interesting programing is probably the way to go.