Alma Mahler was a witty socialite with an appetite for sex and an eye for talent. By early adulthood, she had become a prolific composer. More than anything, she aspired to be Great, with a capital G. But Alma’s claim to fame, so eloquently outlined in her obituaries, is the long list of geniuses with […]
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A Music and Chess Playlist
When he wasn’t busy scoring for the likes of Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Elio Petri, Brian De Palma and Terrence Malick, Ennio Morricone could be found hunched over a chessboard. He was a good enough player to hold former world champion Boris Spassky—who famously lost to Bobby Fischer in 1972—to […]
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A Spectator to Yourself
The reality outside the virtual reality is this: a blindingly sunny pre-fall day on Glasgow’s South Side gives way to a dark, almost bare studio in Offline (formerly Glasgow Artists’ Moving Image Studios). The room is divided into two halves, each with a square, slightly soft, and pleasingly bumpy fabric covering, and a stool for […]
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The Interpenetration of Things
Inspired by the ancient legend of Indra’s net, which depicts the Buddhist concept of interpenetration, Meredith Monk’s latest work metaphorizes the interdependency of humans with the natural world. “Indra’s Net” meditates on the earth’s vulnerability through a multimodal interplay of sound, silence, gesture, space, and time. Throughout the performance, Monk, her cohort of seven other […]
Posted inBreaking
The UK government closes its review into Arts Council England
The fate of the Archer review into Arts Council England (ACE) has been unclear for some time. After a government review of ACE was announced in March—led by Mary Archer, a former chair of the Science Museum Group—the public review was paused before the general election in July. After an email from a Labour government […]
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Befores and Afters
I know, I imagine that this unanalyzable feeling changed what there remained for him of existence. As if the death outside of him could only henceforth collide with the death in him. “I am alive. No, you are dead.”—Maurice Blanchot, “The Instant of My Death” When a poet puts off an old style… he or […]
Posted inOpinion
The Case for a New Music Theater
I. “You Want to Stop Listening” 1996, Bregenz Festival. The semi-staged world premiere of my opera “Nacht” on texts by Friedrich Hölderlin. The journalist Reinhard Kager predicted that the work would have a great future. Looking back, I understand why. Thanks to the spare scenic means (different plot strands were illuminated using different kinds of […]
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Welcome to Shorworld
“Fortune is like a bird in a wood. If we know how to whistle to her she will come to us.” —from pianist Ashley Wass’s biography on X, unattributed I: The Amateur About two years ago, a renowned European musician received a call from his agency with an offer for an unusual gig. A Dubai […]
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Heads Will Roll
We do not speak of horror. (Well, not in public, anyway.) It has been the tacit agreement of two generations of new music that cinematic horror is the forbidden aesthetic referent: a real and prevalent influence but one whose admittance is generally deemed more detrimental to the cause than worth its expository fruit. In private conversation, […]
Posted inInterview
Open Garten
Walter Zimmermann’s music has a rare combination of stasis and flow. It wanders without being lost. It communicates calm curiosity and curious calm. Many composers have written music about nature, but Zimmermann’s is one of the few musics that seems as if nature itself could have created it. In April, he turned 75. On Friday, […]