I had returned to National Music Camp at Interlochen for a second summer in 1975. Not out of choice, but because my mother fell in love with the place, a music camp in northern Michigan surrounded by lakes and forests that offered a rich regimen of music and art classes. "Oh, if only I could be you," she'd intone at each visit. If it had been up to me, I'd have returned to Meadowmount. There I could at least have tested the waters of independence and crashed midnight parties. But at Interlochen there was little chance for enterprising escapes. I'd live in a rustic log cabin with eleven other girls my age under the watchful eye of a counselor, and partake in cabin clean up with my two friends: the broom and dust bin.

Though my violin ...

Remember when I told you that our intrepid Bulgarian software developers were working on an awesome new profile module that would allow you to promote your musical adventures right here at CMT?  No?  Doesn't matter.  The profiles are now working.  You can take a look at an example from a couple of promising newcomers here and then fill out your own.  If you're already registered, click on "My Profile" in the green dashboard box on the right and go to it.  If you're not registered, shame on you. If you're registered and don't know your user name or password because I set it up for you, send me an email and I'll try to remember what it is.    

It is with great sadness that the tuba world learned today of the passing of one of the greatest tuba artists, teachers, and advocates that ever lived. Harvey Phillips was personally responsible for hundreds of new works for the tuba and was our instrument’s number one promoter. As a founding member of the New York Brass Quintet, his contribution to the future of brass chamber music is immeasurable, as was his generous and inspiring leadership in all things tuba. I hope that in my lifetime, I can accomplish half as much as Harvey Phillips did. Rest in peace Harvey.

Among his many achievements and contributions are:

• Founder of TubaChristmas, dedicated to his teacher and famous Iowan tuba ...

Second in a series of posts in anticipation of Orchestra of the Swans’ performance and recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines farhenden Gesellen on November 19. Concert details here.

Gustav Mahler is a composer whose music again and again finds connectivity in contrast and contradiction. His music is full of starkly contrasting opposites, and yet he always seems to find connection and unity between light and dark, fast and slow, happy and sad, and beginnings and endings.

Mahler had a greater gift than almost anyone for creating powerful and effective connections between beginning and end from his first works. The ending of his First Symphony makes a glorious noise, but what makes it mean so much ...

We’ve all heard tons of song cycles for Appalachian folk singer and piano, right?  And almost all of them were perfectly suited for operatic tenor and piano, right?

Okay, I stand corrected.  Most of us have never heard such a piece.  But I have, as of last Friday, when I attended a Composition Seminar given by Kenneth Frazelle.  The subject was Songs in the Rearview Mirror, a piece that exists in both of these versions.  The one for Appalachian singer was written for Laurelyn Dossett; the tenor version was written for Anthony Dean Griffey.  Ms. Dossett is a founding member of the Polecats, featured on Prairie Home Companion.  Mr. Griffey is best known for his searing portrayal of Peter Grimes at ...

I can imagine going paperless, even Internet-less, but going musicless? Impossible! Thanks to people as energetic and creative as Juilliard-trained violinist, Mark Peskanov, this is unlikely to happen.

Peskanov is the man behind Brooklyn’s ‘Bargemusic’, a series attracting music mavens and sporadic music lovers alike. At least four times a week, the ancient 100-foot barge at Fulton Ferry Landing sways gently to the rhythm of Peskanov’s diverse program offerings featuring emerging, as well as sought-after, performers from the world of classical music and jazz.

This summer, the floating concert hall’s 176 seats were filled daily, sometimes even twice a day. “We present 52 weeks of continuous programming ...

By Mary Rowell

 

We ETHELs have performed in some unusual places. The Chicago Zoo. A sanitation plant. And now, in an immense red dress!

How to describe the goings-on in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, this past weekend? In a word, sumptuous.

ETHEL took part in the official re-opening concert for the city's Muziekgebouw. We arrived for rehearsals at Philips Hall 

Thursday morning and were amazed to find a slight Korean woman standing in the folds of an enormous red dress that completely covered the auditorium's concert stage. The woman was Aamu Song, the Helsinki-based designer who created the dress and the idea of the performance setting. In designing the dress, Aamu said she imagined a huge dress as the mother ...

What's the question?

A popular American television game show, cleverly named Jeopardy (an etymological play on the French root jeu, game) takes its game-ness from a linguistic reversal: the contestants' question is an answer; the answer must be formed as a question.

In the jazz world, we have answers. I don't know that we have the question.

I play jazz. I say I play jazz. People who play jazz, play with me. Jazz media write about me. Jazz radio spins me.

What kind of music do you play?

Jazz, answers the Pianobabbler.

But, what question am I really answering?

Uh oh. The Pianobabbler is wandering into the antique What is Jazz? room. Many have lost themselves in there. Few have emerged. Of ...