Steven Takasugi’s Piano Concerto will be premiered by Roger Admiral, Ingo Metzmacher, and the SWR Symphonieorchester in collaboration with the SWR Experimentalstudio on October 22. It will be the final work of the 2023 Donaueschingen Music Days, a festival for contemporary music in southwestern Germany. The following texts were extracted from an interview held at […]
Author Archives: Ty Bouque
… writes about opera: its slippery histories, its sensual bodies, and the work of mourning for a dead genre. Elsewhere, Bouque sings in various solo, ensemble, and opera configurations around the world. Bouque lives in Chicago.
Posted inEssay
Hopelessly Devoted
Paul and I say our goodbyes in the dingy half-light of a Berlin bar. His fastidious punctuality has given way to a soft fatigue brought on by the end of long night’s work, but his professional guard remains firmly in place. The hug is cordial, measured in its familiarity. We ask one another the unobtrusive […]
Posted inOpinion
The Problem with Peter
Rain is hardly a deterrent in Paris. It’s opening night for a new staging of the John Adams warhorse “Nixon in China,” and the imposing stone walls of the Opéra Bastille are framed by a quickly-brewing storm. Under trickling March skies, the house bears an uncanny resemblance to the military stronghold from which it gets […]
Posted inEssay
How to Measure Love
New music mourns with a strange and violent passion. Each announcement of the death of a major composer sparks a river of public grief that is always torrential at its mouth—floods of tributes, letters, anecdotes, love notes, lessons, all offered in the reification of the dead. In the days that follow, the artist’s work receives […]