Nobody should have to write again that classical music has a race problem. We find ourselves here time and again, overseers of an all-too slow change, making the repeated case for equality. But my recent discovery of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi forum Stormfront’s penchant for classical music got me thinking a little more about how to […]
Author Archives: Zack Ferriday
Posted inReview
I Tried To Exercise With “Classical Music For Exercising” Videos
Things didn’t go so well last time: studying to classical music left me a nervous wreck, lying in a figurative fetal position, and imagining the walls closing in around me. Nevertheless, there apparently remain yet more unintended purposes for orchestras, and we shall not stop until we’ve tested all of them. So what, then, of […]
Posted inReview
I Tried To Study With “Classical Music for Studying” Videos
While discussing what would or would not be permitted in their Kallipolis, the hypothetical philosopher’s state, Plato and Socrates decided that music should for the most part be banished altogether. Today, music can accompany you at every single moment of your life: YouTube is full of classical concerts and playlists for sleeping, running, waking up, […]
Posted inInterview
Movement/Stasis
One of Jessica Ekomane’s works imagines what a church bell might sound like inside a baby’s mouth; another explores our perception of rhythm through a spatial field with quadrophonic sound. The later example was from a performance at the We Make Waves festival a couple of weeks ago in Berlin, an event that was fully […]
Posted inProfile
Composites
Saturday night in one of Europe’s big cities, and concertgoers pour out of underground stations and cabs, tickets and programs in hand, dressed to the nines—a star-spangled cavalcade of cultural exchange and high-brow entertainment. Some will trace what they hear with prepared anticipation, some might not know what will be played at all, but all […]
Posted inReview
Nestled
Heinz Holliger sits on the edge of his seat, moving his hands knowingly to the atonal wanderings of Frédérique Cambreling’s harp. His face cycles between anticipation, excitement, and a little thrilled relief. Holliger is watching the world premiere of the full version of his Partita No. 2 for Harp, which is stretching both the limits […]
Posted inReview
Playing God With Sound
In film and childhood memories, concert halls darken and the audience murmurs. They begin exerting force on you long before the first note is played. So why can watching a live orchestra—with its reverent circumstance—feel a little like sitting in an elaborate wedding cake or complicated wicker-basket? Maybe it’s because getting acoustic music to fill […]
Posted inReport
Global Scales
Say a full-sized, London-based symphony orchestra wants to play a concert in Berlin. It needs more or less an entire airplane, an Airbus A320 or a Boeing B737, to do so. “Curbing emissions from aviation is a non-trivial piece of the puzzle in reducing the risks of climate change,” according to Yale Climate Connections, a […]