Once again, I spot the lively gait of Matthew Shlomowitz walking towards me on a busy London road. Over the past year, I’ve come to know him better thanks to several shared projects. Behind the composer, co-director of the Plus-Minus Ensemble, and co-host of the Soundmaking podcast lies a supportive and passionate personality, one that […]
Category: Interview
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Fluid Like Water
Calixto Bieito is responsible for some of the most indelible images in recent memory on the European opera stage. I’ll never forget his version of “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” at the Komische Oper Berlin. Mozart’s music and the contemporary brothel setting rubbed off unsettlingly on one another—the composition acquired a layer of mysterious grime, […]
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The New Needs Friends
“A revolting, nauseating slog,” “a quarter of an hour’s worth of relentless, faceless, arbitrary blarney,” “stunningly pointless and stupid,” “five minutes of mindless, superficial prolefeed,” “hackneyed, dated, superficial rubbish,” and “empty vessels of cheap, surface-deep, musically moribund sound masquerading as something bold and individual” are just some of the many colorful phrases writer Simon Cummings […]
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Create an Aura
In the composer Utku Asuroglu’s pieces, colors joust like a child battling with their plastic toys: passages of extreme, artificial, neon intensity sit alongside moments of sensitive beauty, moving from Starburst-candy orange to oceanic blues and grays. Lo-fi electronic glissandi and kazoos unravel into bare tendrils of melody. Many of his works traverse great textural […]
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Built on Sand
In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never came out. A journalist for The Washington Post and Middle East Eye who was fiercely critical of his country’s regime, Khashoggi was ambushed by a 15-man Saudi hit team; he was suffocated to death and his body was dismembered with a bone […]
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The Opposite of Generic
Veteran opera manager Anthony Freud has led the Welsh National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and most recently the Lyric Opera of Chicago. This summer, he is retiring and returning to his home in London. On a Zoom call, we looked back at his long, varied career in opera. Freud spoke with practiced eloquence about […]
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“All They Have is Their Culture”
The total population of Estonia is just 1.3 million, but the diversity of its cultural scene belies the country’s small size. Estonian classical music alone boasts the renowned Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, several opera ensembles, an active choral scene, and groups specialized in early and contemporary music. Composers have often taken on roles as public […]
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Blood and Milk
In 2019, Janvier Murenzi wrote “Mata y’ amaraso,” a composition to commemorate the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda. Murenzi lives in Huye, in the south of the country. The 62-year-old is a lecturer at the University of Rwanda, where he teaches courses in social thought, philosophy, and political thought. He is also a music […]
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In Defense
Any day now, Stas Nevmerzhytskyi, the editor-in-chief of The Claquers, an independent Ukrainian online classical music magazine, will join the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A musicologist specializing in early music by training—“I graduated from the National Music Academy in Kyiv, which, unfortunately, still bears the name of Tchaikovsky,” he said—Nevmerzhytskyi founded the publication, with articles […]
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“When I Came Out All of This Tension Went Away”
Sam Taskinen recently celebrated the premiere of a new staging of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” playing the giant Fasolt, in Erfurt, Germany. Possessing a warm, sonorous bass-baritone, she has sung many of the important roles for her voice type: Fra Melitone in Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” Kaspar in Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” and Angelotti in Puccini’s […]