Live Music
The BBC recently released an article about music and “skin orgasms.” The article claims great music carries with it a sensual element that can become addictive. Science tends to do this with classical music — …
Who would like to listen to an hour of of Mozart? How about 127 hours of Mozart? There is a now a playlist which will give you that. Open Culture mentioned this little gem which …
I’m feeling a tad sheepish here about my classical music knowledge. I did not realized that Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 was written for orchestra, chorus and soloists. I was listening along on Spotify to Mendelssohn …
I try to make it down to the Spreckels Organ Pavilion at least once during summer. There is a concert at the Organ Pavilion every Monday night at 7:30 p.m. through August 31. On Monday …
Let’s get a little crazy and combine a summer piece of music with the esoteric pick of the week. The power of this concept is overwhelming me. It’s the perfect summer storm. Faure composed his …
The importance of human voices coming together has become less and less valued. There was a time when voices coming together was much more important to society. There is a coming together in a choir …
Concerning the court composer or orchestral organization composer and compensation. Almost every orchestra has a donor or 20 with guest houses somewhere in the city. The composer would receive housing. The donor gets to possibly …
Why not bring back the court composer? Way back when, aristocrats used to have their own orchestras and composers who wrote music for those orchestras. Why not bring that model back? What if the San …
Jon Vickers died on July 10, 2015. He had been retired since 1988 and had a prolonged struggle with Alzheimer’s. It’s a strange phenomenon when an artist of his stature dies. The first reaction, if …
There is a series of "summer sings" at Mission Valley Methodist Church over the next several weeks. I went to the first one on Wednesday, July 8. The piece for the concert was Gabriel Faure's …
Last year, San Diego almost had no opera company. Now it has two. This is a feat New York City couldn't pull off. New York City Opera closed down in 2013, leaving that city with …
Let us talk "Star-Spangled Banner." First, the tune is a British drinking song — people would sing this while they got drunk and nobody had a problem with making this the national anthem of the …
When considering classical music with a summer theme, sometimes the title gives a clue — as in Frank Bridge's Summer. There is also Summer by Glazunov and Vivaldi. See there? Now, what do all three …
Our recent little thunderstorm reminded me of what is probably the best piece of summer music: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6. There are fives sections of the symphony, one of which is a thunderstorm which passes …
Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Is there a more nostalgic title? It evokes a yearning for simpler times, a time when fathers watered their lawns by hose in the evening, after supper, while children played and …