Night After Night

Daily Kyle.

I try to keep up with current political events to the best of my abilities: I'm on all the right mailing lists, I scan breaking news headlines every chance I get, and I've recently started reading The Nation and The New Republic on a regular basis for the first time since my immediate post-college years. The times in which we're living frankly call for no less vigilance.

I have to confess, however, that I spend less time reading Daily Kos, Huffington and the like than I'd wish to. That's why I'm so appreciative that Kyle Gann is peppering his customary musical wonderment with a steady stream of political asides. The most inspiring thing Kyle has presented just recently was a fiery indictment of the Bush justice department written by John S. Koppel, a civil appellate attorney with the D.O.J. since 1981, which appeared in the Denver Post on July 5. But this pithy little bit at the end of Kyle's latest post caught my eye this morning:

There was a wonderfully telling moment in Sara Taylor's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that doesn't seem to have gotten much attention. She started out saying that, as a deputy assistant to the president, she "took an oath. And I take that oath to the president very seriously." Senator Leahy was forced to point out to her that the oath she took was not to the president, but to the Constitution. She conceded her error. Doesn't that just about sum up everything that's been wrong with the Justice Department?

Playlist:

King Crimson - Live in Los Angeles, July 1, 1995 and Live in Warsaw, June 11, 2000 (DGM)

David Garland - Noise in You (Family Vineyard)

Claude Debussy - Préludes - Steven Osborne (Hyperion)

Franz Liszt - Piano Music - Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (MD+G)

Roger Sessions - Violin Concerto; James Bolle - Ritual - Ole Böhn, Monadnock Festival Orchestra/James Bolle (Albany)

An American tragedy.

Jerry Hadley, an American opera tenor fallen on hard times, attempted to commit suicide this morning, and is currently lingering near death in a Poughkeepsie hospital. Dan Wakin has the details on the New York Times web site. Our sincere condolences go out to the loved ones Hadley seems likely to leave behind.

Weekend activities.

Philip Miller's REWind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony at the Prospect Park Bandshell

and

Gli Altri at the Noguchi Museum
The New York Times, Jul 10, 2007

Over at wordsandmusic, Rod Warner has posted a detailed description of the epochal reunion that took place in London over the weekend: Cecil Taylor, William Parker and Tony Oxley, a.k.a. the Feel Trio, with Anthony Braxton added. Charles M, who surfed in and posted a comment elsewhere on this site, was decidedly less impressed. You'll soon be able to hear for yourself: BBC Radio 3 will be webcasting the show for a week, starting this Friday, July 13.

Playlist:

Jeroen van Veen - Minimal Piano Collection (Brilliant Classics)

Giuseppe Verdi - Il Trovatore - Leontyne Price, Fiorenza Cossotto, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, New Philharmonia Orchestra/Zubin Mehta (RCA Victor Red Seal)

David Garland - Noise in You (Family Vineyard)

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 2 - Heather Harper, Helen Watts, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Georg Solti (Decca)

Giuseppe Verdi - Il Trovatore - Maria Callas, Fedora Barbieri, Giuseppe di Stefano, Rolando Panerai, Chorus and Orchestra of La Scala, Milan/Herbert von Karajan

Philip Glass - the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down - Act V: The Rome Section - Sondra Radvanovsky, Denyce Graves, Giuseppe Sabatini, Zheng Zhou, Stephen Morscheck, Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson, Morgan State University Choir, American Composers Orchestra/Dennis Russell Davies (Nonesuch)

King Crimson - Live in Philadelphia, July 30, 1982 (DGM)

Prince - "Guitar" from Planet Earth (Sony BMG, due July 24)

Independence day.

"Rebel Composers on a Rock Tour of Sorts"
The New York Times, July 4, 2007

An article about The End of New Music, a short documentary about a November 2005 tour of rock clubs and alternative spaces undertaken by two groups, Now Ensemble and Newspeak, under the umbrella of the composers' collective Free Speech Zone: Missy Mazzoli, Judd Greenstein and David T. Little (from left in photo). The film, by Stephen S. Taylor, depicts the ins and outs of the road trip, and delves into the concept of composers asserting control over the means and manner by which their music is presented to its audience.

The film will be screened tonight at 7pm at Anthology Film Archives in Greenwich Village. Future screenings are currently in planning stages. You can see clips from the film here (and also on YouTube), and order a DVD copy here. You can also visit the composers' websites to hear more of their music: here's Missy, here's Judd and here's David.

Happy Fourth of July!

Lincoln Center honors Beverly Sills.

(Posted this afternoon on the TONY Blog)

Further to our post from this morning regarding the passing of beloved opera singer Beverly Sills, we're posting verbatim a late-breaking press release from Lincoln Center regarding its own plans to remember her:

In response to the news today of the death of opera star and Lincoln Center leader Beverly Sills, a number of the constituents at Lincoln Center will pay tribute tonight, Tuesday, July 3, to her.

At 7:30 PM the thousands of dancers who gather on Josie Robertson Plaza for Midsummer Night Swing will be asked to observe a minute of silence.

At the same time, inside Avery Fisher Hall, the New York Philharmonic will begin its concert with a performance of Bernstein's Overture to Candide. In a tradition that began with the death of Bernstein, it will be performed without a conductor. Zarin Mehta will speak from the stage. The Philharmonic chose the music because its celebratory nature matched Miss Sills’s zest for life.

At the same time, the house lights at Avery Fisher Hall and at the New York State Theater will be shut off for one minute.

The Metropolitan Opera on Sirius Satellite Radio (Channel 85) will broadcast tribute performances this week, beginning tonight (July 3) at 9 p.m. with a broadcast of The Siege of Corinth by Rossini, from Sills’s debut season (1975). Host Margaret Juntwait will give a special introduction about Sills. The tribute continues on Thursday night (July 5) at 9 p.m. with Sills’s Met broadcast of Massenet’s Thais, and again on Friday night (July 6) at 8 p.m. with a repeat of The Siege of Corinth.

Bubbles.

(Posted this morning on the TONY Blog)

Today, the music world mourns the loss of American opera singer, arts administrator and public figure Beverly Sills, who succumbed to inoperable lung cancer on Monday night at the age of 78. Born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, the soprano known as Bubbles was far more than one of America’s most admired classical-music performers: For a time, she was the public face of opera in this country. She was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1971, and her numerous appearances on the Tonight Show — not just as a guest, but as a substitute host for Johnny Carson — made her the most recognizable figure in opera since Enrico Caruso.

Adding to Sills’s legend was the pluck that saw her become the house diva at New York City Opera during the long years in which American singers not trained abroad were unwelcome at the Metropolitan Opera. At City Opera, she played a major role in the revival of bel canto works by Donizetti, and was closely associated with the title role in American composer Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe. Sills finally made her long-overdue Met debut in 1975, in Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth. It wouldn’t be the biggest role Sills would assume for the company — but that was still some years away.

In 1980, Sills retired from the stage, and began the second great phase of her career. As an administrator, she became the general director of New York City Opera, ushering in the supertitles that made opera in foreign languages accessible to general audiences.

From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. Following a six-month “retirement,” she returned as chairman of the Met, a position she gave up in 2005 to tend to the mounting needs of her family. Even then, Sills couldn’t avoid the spotlight. In 2006, baritone Nathan Gunn was named winner of the Met’s first annual Beverly Sills Artist Award. This year, the honor went to mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, a singer whose artistry, effervescence and charm pays the ultimate tribute to Sills.

Operabloggers have been quick to pay their respects. Per classical blog-star Alex Ross’s survey, you’ll find a moving tribute at My Favorite Intermissions, a long list of operaphile tributes at Parterre Box, and a terrific collection of YouTube clips at The Standing Room.