GoodSoundClub - Classical Music News

Wild Up, 'Stay On It'
The Los Angeles-based band refurbishes an enigmatic, but entrancing piece by the late Julius Eastman, whose music is enjoying a well-deserved resurgence. (18 May)

Mary Halvorson, 'Belladonna'
On the guitarist's first string quartet composition, she comes with a dramatic precision. (13 May)

Third Coast Percussion's borderless music finds inspiration in fleet-footed beats
On a new album, the most accessible so far, the Grammy-winning group reaches out to an EDM wizard, a famous film score composer and Philip Glass. (13 May)

ARC Ensemble: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Musicians from Canada's Royal Conservatory in Toronto introduce the spirited and overlooked music of Ukrainian composer Dmitri Klebanov. (11 May)

Meet Raven Chacon, the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music
A composer, performer and installation artist from the Navajo Nation, Chacon's winning piece, Voiceless Mass, was composed for chamber orchestra and a specific Milwaukee pipe organ. (10 May)

Can classical music really be inclusive? Composer Jessie Montgomery thinks so
With orchestras clamoring for her work, the rising artist feels a responsibility and opportunity to help reframe classical music and the institutions that present it. (2 May)

Third Coast Percussion, 'Derivative'
Hear the Chicago-based ensemble lay down a killer groove, composed by electronic music producer Jlin. (29 April)

Roger Eno: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Gentle music from the bucolic English countryside pervades this tranquil Tiny Desk (home) concert by Roger Eno, with a special appearance by his two daughters. (27 April)

claire rousay transforms the mundane into sonic abundance
On the largely wordless everything perfect is already here, the composer lets us experience the world through her ears with field recordings, strings and a little tenderness. (21 April)

Jason Vieaux, 'Bach: Violin Sonata No. 1: IV. Presto'
Classical guitarists can rock out, too. Hear a searing, joyful performance of Bach at its most shred-worthy and satisfying. (21 April)

Radu Lupu, celebrated Romanian pianist, dies at age 76
A pianist widely admired by his fellow artists, Radu Lupu was known for his interpretations of Brahms, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven, among others. Lupu retired from performing in 2019. (19 April)

Harrison Birtwistle, an influential English composer, has died at age 87
Known for his sonic brashness and unyielding artistic vision, Birtwistle was awarded a British knighthood in 1988. He was one of the U.K.'s most prominent composers for decades. (19 April)

Leif Ove Andsnes: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Hear the award-winning pianist offer two sides of Mozart's genius from inside the composer's own home in Vienna. (8 April)

OHYUNG, 'yes my weeping frame!'
OHYUNG is better known as a producer of hyperactive hip-hop and pop music, but on a new double cassette plays with shapes of tender ambient sound. (5 April)

Lavinia Meijer (feat. Iggy Pop), 'Mom & Dad'
A surprising collaboration between Iggy Pop and harpist Lavinia Meijer touches on the love, loss and regret between children and parents. (1 April)

George Floyd remembered in new choral work
In "A Knee on the Neck," composer Adolphus Hailstork and librettist Herbert Martin pay tribute to Floyd's memory and offer hope for the future – while wrestling with the realities of the present day. (25 March)

Critics want to shutter a new opera about Emmett Till. Here's what its creators say
While the creators of a a new opera about Emmett Till hope it will inspire white people to confront racism, others worry it depicts Black trauma for white entertainment while masquerading as activism. (24 March)

A new opera about Emmett Till is criticized for being created from a white perspective
While the creators of a a new opera about Emmett Till hope it will inspire white people to confront racism, others worry it depicts Black trauma for white entertainment while masquerading as activism. (23 March)

Disassembler, 'Dynasty'
From a series of texts and downloads, a meditative, electroacoustic oasis of calm emerges. (22 March)

Jóhann Jóhannsson, 'Take the Night Air'
The late Icelandic composer's magnum opus unfolds like a ritual, combining a potent mix of tradition and technology. (18 March)

At 97, Pianist Ruth Slenczynska has a new album — and plenty of stories
The ebullient nonagenarian's new recording features music she's been playing for nearly a century. (18 March)

Daniel Hope: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Watch violinist Daniel Hope play Beethoven from the composer's own birth house in Bonn, Germany. (17 March)

A Russian pianist's shows are canceled, even though he condemns the war in Ukraine
Alexander Malofeev, 20, had already arrived in Montreal when a series of his concerts in Canada had been canceled. (14 March)

Norwegian opera singer Lise Davidsen is on the verge of superstardom
The big-voiced soprano is in her mid-thirties, and she didn't even hear an opera live until she was in her twenties. Now, she's a sought-after opera singer. (14 March)

Yo-Yo Ma performs a musical protest outside the Russian Embassy
The world-famous cellist made a personal stand with Ukraine on Monday, setting up his instrument on the sidewalk in Washington, D.C., next to an improvised street sign reading, "Zelensky Way." (10 March)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
A fearless risk-taker who makes warhorses sound freshly minted, Kopatchinskaja, from her Vienna apartment, sets fire to Beethoven and offers rarely heard American music. (8 March)

Anna Netrebko, a Russian star tied to Putin, is out at the Metropolitan Opera
The famed New York opera house said Thursday that the soprano will not appear there this season or next, after she declined to distance herself from Russian President Vladimir Putin. (4 March)

As performing artists denounce or stay allied with Putin, history offers some lessons
While Russian artists and institutions grapple with how they are viewed internationally, American cultural organizations make what amounts to foreign policy decisions. (4 March)

New opera teaches a classical music class in the ongoing fight for civil rights
Tamar-kali, who composed the music for Mudbound and Shirley, has a new project: an opera that you can watch online. (3 March)

Michael Tilson Thomas discusses cancer and his scaled-back New World Symphony role
The conductor has announced his diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer and plans to step down as the group's artistic director. (3 March)

Joyce DiDonato's 'Eden' beckons humanity back to the garden
On her new album, the opera star suggests Mother Nature has a lot to teach us, if we'd only listen. (1 March)

Metropolitan Opera is among those severing ties with Putin-allied artists
Star performers at the famed New York opera house, including soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev, have been closely associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (1 March)

Russian conductor pulls out of New York concerts after supporters of Ukraine protest
Valery Gergiev, who is closely allied with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, was due to take part in a three-concert series at Carnegie Hall. Also stepping aside is Russian pianist Denis Matsuev. (28 February)

Metropolitan Opera says it will sever ties with Putin-allied artists
Star performers at the famed New York opera house, including soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev, have been closely associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (28 February)

Claremont Trio, 'Serenata'
Violin and cello are sparkling stand-ins for the Andean charango in an evocative serenade by Gabriela Lena Frank. (28 February)

Some Russian performing artists are speaking out against Putin
A number of Russian stars from the performing arts world are using their voices and international platforms to denounce the invasion of Ukraine and speak up against Russian President Vladimir Putin. (28 February)

At the Rothko Chapel, Tyshawn Sorey explores sound — and silence
Invited to write a new work for Houston's Rothko Chapel, the composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey created a work that is both intimate and vast, like those Mark Rothko paintings. (25 February)

Black Voices in American Music: The Playlist
Some of the first truly American music was created by Black voices. In this playlist, pianist Lara Downes offers a broad range of songs that speak to the irrepressible, irresistible sound of hope. (19 February)

Prison choirs sing in a reboot of Beethoven's opera about unjust incarceration
A New York City opera company created an updated version of Fidelio for the Black Lives Matter era. The performance features singers who are incarcerated in real life. (19 February)

Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Opera and cabaret comingle when two odd bedfellows bring music by Philip Glass, The Bangles, Peter Gabriel and Christoph Willibald Gluck to a "tiny apartment" in Manhattan. (15 February)

Jean Rondeau, 'Aria'
Hear the French harpsichordist's monument to silence in a luminous and expansive performance from Bach's Goldberg Variations. (15 February)

yMusic, 'Together'
Hear a sparkling new chamber piece that, by design, explores the idea of being together. (11 February)

Reconsidering Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer'
The king of ragtime published his hit tune 120 years ago. Pianist Lara Downes believes the piece helped shape the future of American music. (7 February)

George Crumb, an influential and deeply American composer, has died at age 92
The Pulitzer Prize winner, whose music enveloped everything from the horrors of the Vietnam War to the calls of humpback whales, died Sunday. (7 February)

'The Violin Conspiracy' shows what it can be like to play classical music while Black
NPR's Asma Khalid speaks with Brendan Slocumb, author of The Violin Conspiracy. The crime mystery finds a Black classical musician trying to recover his stolen instrument — among other challenges. (4 February)

Renowned conductor Marin Alsop's life explored in new documentary
Scott Simon speaks with conductor Marin Alsop about "The Conductor," a new film tracing her storied life and career in classical music. (1 February)

Renowned conductor Marin Alsop's life explored in new documentary
Scott Simon speaks with conductor Marin Alsop about the "The Conductor," a new film tracing her storied life and career in classical music. (31 January)

Daniel Wohl, 'Drift'
Hear an ode to the air we breathe from the innovative electro-acoustic composer, with an assist from a children's choir. (28 January)

Steven Beck, 'Piano Sonata No. 5' (George Walker)
George Walker's final Piano Sonata might be short in length, but it's long on ideas, unfolding in a colorful thicket of textures and episodes. (19 January)

Opera singer Maria Ewing, known for her dramatic intensity, has died at age 71
Acclaimed for her fearless performances in operas by Strauss and Bizet, Ewing also partly inspired Passing, a film written and directed by her daughter, Rebecca Hall. (12 January)

Yo-Yo Ma (feat. Tunde Olaniran), 'Doorway'
Pairing the classical cellist with the Michigan iconoclast makes a fair bit of sense: Neither cares much for genre boundaries. (30 December)

Hilary Hahn, 'Serenade for Life'
Hear the violinist, celebrated for her beautiful tone, in a surprise gift from a departed composer. (29 December)

Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Peteris Vasks: 'Vestijums'
The Latvian composer's epic battle of light and dark is a symphonic message about the relationship between humans and nature. (23 December)

Simone Dinnerstein, 'Doctors and Interns'
Listen to a highlight from composer Richard Danielpour's 15-movement piano cycle, which was inspired by essential workers' response to the pandemic. (23 December)

Simone Dinnerstein, 'Doctors & Interns'
Listen to a highlight from composer Richard Danielpour's 15-movement piano cycle, which was inspired by essential workers' response to the pandemic. (22 December)

Anthony Tommasini, classical critic for the Times, looks back ahead of retirement
NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Anthony Tommasini, chief classical music critic for The New York Times, about his storied career and pending retirement. (18 December)

Fleeing the Gilded Cage
Forget the diva stereotype: Opera careers are tough, and often strict. But as concert halls reopen after months of shutdown, more than a few singers are showing newfound creativity. (14 December)

Camerata Zürich, 'The Barn Owl has not Flown Away'
It's bad luck if a barn owl lands on your house and doesn't leave. The Swiss ensemble plays a colorful string arrangement of Leoš Janácek's haunting miniature. (14 December)

Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding crack open the old world in new opera
The pair took a close look at the subtexts of Euripides' sad, epic tale of Iphigenia — agency, testosterone, violence, faith — and, through a suite of new music, hold them up to the light. (10 December)

Arooj Aftab: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
Watch the Pakistan-born singer and her masterful band perform songs of love and loss in a decrepit, yet generously resonant, convent in Brooklyn. (8 December)

The Top 10 Classical Albums of 2021
Discover a broad range of the year's best classical albums, from groundbreaking teenage percussionists and innovative opera singers to fierce orchestral composers and brainy pianists. (8 December)

Olga Neuwirth's bold gender-bending opera has won the Grawemeyer Award
Neuwirth, an Austrian composer and multimedia artist known for works of elemental power, was honored for her opera 'Orlando,' produced by the Vienna State Opera in 2019. (6 December)

NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021 (10-1)
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality. (3 December)

NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021 (30-21)
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality. (3 December)

NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021 (40-31)
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality. (3 December)

NPR Music's 50 Best Albums Of 2021
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality. (3 December)

NPR Music's 100 Best Songs Of 2021 (40-21)
Think of the best songs of 2021 as a playlist catering to the most basic human urges. Within it, booties were called, muffins were buttered and bloody revenge was contemplated. It was quite a year. (3 December)

NPR Music's 100 Best Songs of 2021 (80-61)
Think of the best songs of 2021 as a playlist catering to the most basic human urges. Within it, booties were called, muffins were buttered and bloody revenge was contemplated. It was quite a year. (3 December)

The 100 Best Songs Of 2021
Think of the best songs of 2021 as a playlist catering to the most basic human urges. Within it, booties were called, muffins were buttered and bloody revenge was contemplated. It was quite a year. (2 December)

The 100 Best Songs of 2021
Think of the best songs of 2021 as a playlist catering to the most basic human urges. Within it, booties were called, muffins were buttered and bloody revenge was contemplated. It was quite a year. (2 December)

These NYC kids have written the history of an overlooked Black female composer
A group of sixth, seventh and eighth grade students realized there was no children's book about the composer Florence Price. So they wrote, illustrated and published their own. (2 December)

Alvin Lucier, inquisitive and innovative composer, has died at 90
Lucier changed the way we think about sound through monumental works like I Am Sitting in a Room and Music on a Long Thin Wire. (2 December)

The 50 Best Albums of 2021
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality. (1 December)

The 50 Best Albums Of 2021
NPR's annual list of the year's best albums is full of work by musicians who hit career peaks, discovered their voices or willed something new into reality. (1 December)

In 'Eurydice,' Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl recast opera's foundational myth
Composer, conductor and MacArthur "genius" Mathew Aucoin just debuted his opera, 'Eurydice,' at the Met. The new work reinterprets an ancient, archetypal myth from the perspective of its namesake. (23 November)

Four centuries of Black American history are told in new Kronos Quartet performance
Deep in the heart of Texas, the Kronos Quartet reflects on race relations and social unrest with At War with Ourselves – 400 Years of You, by composer Michael Abels and poet Nikky Finney. (18 November)

The fearless musical philosophy of Sofia Gubaidulina
A new album, marking the Russian composer's 90th birthday, is packed with probing works for huge symphonic forces. (18 November)

Wayne Shorter's operatic dream comes true, brought to life with Esperanza Spalding
Iconic jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter has completed a long-held dream, an opera based on the mythic Greek character Iphigenia, with help from singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding. (12 November)

For classical stars Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason, representation matters
Pianist Isata and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason are British sibling classical virtuosos. Still in their twenties, the star soloists have just released their first joint album. (11 November)

Anna Netrebko, 'Akh! istomilas ya gorem'
From her first solo album in five years, soprano Anna Netrebko discovers all the bittersweet beauty in an aria by Tchaikovsky. (5 November)

mastroKristo, 'A Ritual'
If you're one of the bleary-eyed millions who find falling asleep at night challenging, listen up. (2 November)

Ólafur Arnalds, 'Partisans'
"Partisans," a newly unearthed track from Icelandic composer-producer Ólafur Arnalds, is a beautiful and haunting song ready to transport you to another world. (28 October)

5 opera scenes to sweep you off your feet
For World Opera Day, watch scenes that will make you fall in love with the art form — from a crazy day at Mozart's diner to a trippy trip to China with Richard Nixon. (27 October)

Remembering Bernard Haitink, the anti-glamour conductor
Boston-based radio producer Brian Bell remembers Bernard Haitink, and the meticulous approach to music that defined one of the finest conductors of the past half-century. (27 October)

5 opera scenes to sweep you off your feet
On World Opera Day, watch scenes that will make you fall in love with the art form — from a crazy day at Mozart's diner to a trippy trip to China with Richard Nixon. (25 October)

Composer Huang Ruo gives voice to the dark history of Angel Island
Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo has teamed up with the Del Sol Quartet and vocal ensemble Volti to explore the struggles of Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island in the early 1900s. (23 October)

Renowned conductor Bernard Haitink, beloved for his modesty, has died at age 92
The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink had a six-decade career leading major orchestras across Europe, the U.S. and the U.K. He was hailed as a musician's musician, prizing the art well above glamor. (22 October)

Pianist Lara Downes re-centers the music of the Great Migration
Pianist Lara Downes' latest mini-album traces the story of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the south in the early to mid-20th century, with music by Florence Price and Harry T. Burleigh. (20 October)

For percussionist Bonnie Whiting, any object can be an instrument
Seattle percussionist and composer Bonnie Whiting speaks to the importance of independence and the close bond between voice and percussion. (20 October)

High Low Duo, 'The Enchanted Garden'
Like singing in close harmony, a pair of guitars intertwine, finishing each other's phrases with radiant transparency in Ravel's magic garden. (20 October)

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Classical events in Boston

AUG 2	Chamber Music in Har»
AUG 2	Tanglewood on Parade»
AUG 3	Danish String Quarte»
AUG 4	Festival of Contempo»
AUG 4	Musica Transalpina i»
AUG 5	Festival of Contempo»
AUG 5	Earle Lee, conductor»
AUG 6	Festival of Contempo»