Isserlis+Denk+Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

David Nice’s terrific Russian Music Course started up again last week, with Steven Isserlis and Elizabeth Wilson as guests. “But Saint-Saëns isn’t Russian,” you might say, and you would be right.

My Year in Music, 2014

Contemporaneous “Living Toys” Concert at Roulette (David Bloom conducting)

I’ve had a particularly memorable “year in music” this year. While I’ve listed a “Prufrock’s Dozen” of CDs, this year-end post isn’t a “best of” list in the usual sense, but rather an opportunity to gather together the “best of” my musical experiences throughout the year. The post is divided into three sections: A “Prufrock’s Dozen” of CDs, Live Performances, and Other Significant Music-Related Activities.

My Year In Music 2013

This year, I’m even more relieved than last year that I’m not a professional critic assigned to assemble a “top ten” music list for 2013. Instead, here is a year-end offering of highlights from my personal musical journey throughout the year.

I also want to recognize the composer and musicians who participated in This Life in Music profiles during 2013: Maxwell J McKee, Sabrina Tabby, Dávid Adam Nagy, Lucy Dhegrae, and Amy Garapic, as well as composer Dylan Mattingly, for his guest post on his new work, The Bakkhai (a report on the premiere of The Bakkhai is included in this post). It was a pleasure and privilege to present each of them on Prufrock’s Dilemma. Thanks to all!

Just Walking Around in John Adams’s City Noir

Melodies appear as inexplicably as a dirty blond in Philip Marlowe’s office.
—Mark Swed, reviewing City Noir

The first time I visited Los Angeles, a friend took me to a favorite taco place, a low-slung building trapped under a freeway labyrinth. Another time, I was part of a Writers Guild negotiations team. In my infirm recollection, nighttime had a feel at once seedy and glamorous: swank hotels cheek by jowl with crumbling stucco buildings, sidewalks empty of walkers, sulfurous street lamps piercing the dark. The city seemed an unnavigable maze, with a culture I couldn’t fathom.

This Life in Music: Bassoonist Dávid Adam Nagy

Bassoonist Dávid Adam Nagy (photograph by János Sutyák)

One thing I’ve particularly enjoyed about my explorations into contemporary classical/new music is the chance to hear instruments in soloist positions that aren’t often heard in that role. I first encountered bassoonist Dávid Adam Nagy in a solo role in Contemporaneous’s world premiere performance of Dylan Mattingly’s A Way A Lone A Last A Loved A Long the Riverrun. Nagy’s accomplished performance led me to race to hear him when I learned that, as a winner of the 2011 Bard College Conservatory of Music Concerto Competition, he’d be performing as soloist with Bard’s American Symphony Orchestra.