My new album Désordre (New Focus Recordings: FCR 269) features music by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti and includes the first two books of his piano études along with his horn trio. The recording comes over twenty years after I first became familiar with his piano music.

Is there a right way to listen to an album? How literally should a listener take the track layout of an album? Does learning the intended listening experience of the composer bring you closer to a work? What is innate to a work, what is perspective and how does listening order impact an interpretation? These are some of the questions rummaging through my mind after speaking with Du Yun about her album A Cockroach’s Tarantella, performed marvelously by JACK Quartet with Du Yun.

Pianist Natalia Kazaryan interviews Composer/Pianist Gabriela Lena Frank to discuss her latest album Her Own Wings, compositional language, and career at-large . Both artists studied under Logan Skelton at University of Michigan, where each received a DMA (in different eras).

Contemporary music duo New Morse Code, comprised of Hannah Collins (cello) and Michael Compitello (percussion) joins Classical Post for a special video premiere of composer Thomas Kotcheff’s “then and then and then this”. They discuss the collaborative process, filming, matching timbre and what’s coming up next.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja has long been one of my favorite musicians. It somehow seems off the mark, not quite enough, to call her a violinist (not only because she has frequently performed the role of singer/speaker in Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire) though her capabilities on the instrument—technical, sonic, coloristic—are virtually matchless. Yes, she most often appears on stage with violin in hand, but her musical spirit reaches far beyond the scope of the instrument itself: she digs new tunnels into familiar repertoire and makes a striking, often bold case for each piece she brings into her sphere. The resulting performances, both live and on record, brim with electricity, risk, and an aliveness the scope of which words can only communicate a small part.

For the last 90+ years PYP has held a biennial Piano Concerto Competition with the prize of performing with the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Once again, Portland Piano International / SOLO will be presenting the biennial Piano Concerto Competition that selects the soloists for upcoming Portland Youth Philharmonic performances.

In the last year, several prominent artists released albums highlighting their life-long journeys through an endlessly vast musical literature. Deutsche Grammophon released its long-awaited first solo album of acclaimed pianist Sergei Babayan, coinciding with the release of a duo album with his superstar student Daniil Trifonov. Two younger artists also made news this year. Pianist Jonathan Biss released his final volume of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and pianist Adam Golka is soon to release his first volume of the same monumental cycle. In the orchestral world, the San Francisco Symphony provided MTT’s Keeping Score to virtual audiences free of charge during the closing of concert halls worldwide. The Tetzlaff Quartet’s new Beethoven album was also released on the Ondine label to great critical acclaim.

21st-century audiences reap enormous benefits of current technology when it comes to recordings, and never more so as during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public concerts have been shelved for safety concerns. Modern audiences also enjoy nearly limitless access to recordings from decades and even a century ago through YouTube, Spotify, and various archival projects, such as those of Allan Evans for Arbiter Records and Ward Marston for Marston Records. Over a hundred years of technological advances have created a world of difference in recording quality, yet today’s musicians are still encouraged to explore the mesmerizing performances of Cortot, Kreisler, and Casals, and even earlier performers such as Rachmaninoff, Leschetizky, and Toscanini. Beneficiaries of modern recording technology may very well ask, why ought one to listen to historical recordings with seemingly shoddy audio quality, narrow or distorted sound, and less accurate playing?

Times of crisis call for radical action. Clearly we can all agree we’re in a state of emergency as a global society, but specifically in the arts and live entertainment. As we’re already months into the problem, there are not many concrete answers. As the situation prolongs, we wait patiently for a recovery to “the good old days” of attending live concerts and events in-person. This is anxiously anticipated, obviously, but it does seem short-sighted from what I’ve seen and heard working within this space.

Conductor Marlon Daniel is the leading scholar on the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He joins Classical Post to discuss premiering “Anonymous Lover”, documenting Saint-Georges works, The Festival International de Musique Saint-Georges and more.

On April 26, 2020 the Emruz Festival: Virtual Series presented “Iranian Female Composers Association Meet Up: Conversation & Music Performance” via Zoom. Around 30 members of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) joined Bridgid Bergin (panel moderator) for an hour-long conversation. The conversation led to a longer form piece, showcasing how composers have been navigating quarantine life, interrogating gender identity and societal issues in Iran (as well as the broader new music scene), and highlights how IFCA has cultivated a community all within the digital realm, becoming an organization that truly amplifies and celebrates Iranian female-identifying composer voices.

Pulitzer Prize finalist composer Chris Cerrone and triple-Grammy-winning flutist Tim Munro discuss collaborating on Cerrone’s latest work, “Liminal Highway”.

Abigail Rollins’ first year as Executive Director of Berkshire Opera Festival has not gone as expected. The company initially pivoted their Mainstage Don Giovanni to a concert version of the work and now finally to a digital performance featuring the original cast but different music entirely. Despite these tumultuous times, Rollins and the BOF team have prioritized supporting their artists.

Grammy-winning composer Richard Danielpour has been commissioned by Oregon Bach Festival to compose a set of fifteen miniatures for celebrated pianist Simone Dinnerstein to be premiered on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at 2 PM PST.

April, 2020: It’s a few weeks into quarantine, and the music students are getting restless. While most other college programs continued virtually after the sweeping March shutdown, conservatories cut their semesters short and canceled all remaining rehearsals and performances, citing the infeasibility of conducting them online. I felt as though I had been unceremoniously plucked from my life of rehearsing string quartets and memorizing concertos and thrust into a vacuum. Mere weeks from the end of my graduate degree, my already-uncertain future was now on indefinite hold, and it seemed like my life in music would never look the way I expected.

Legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica “Flicka” von Stade returned to the stage on July 30 and August 1 for Classical Tahoe’s adapted 2020 season to sing works by Offenbach, Mahler, and Heggie for an intimate 25-person audience. Classical Tahoe ensemble members include principal New York City Metropolitan Opera Orchestra musicians Nathan Hughes (oboe) and Milan Milisavljević (viola). Frederica von Stade joins Classical Post to discuss this moving experience, which young opera singers have the most star power, what she’s been watching on Netflix and more.

Anderson & Roe Piano Duo discuss Musical Mixology, their upcoming Virtual Piano Extravaganza in collaboration with Portland Piano International, and share a special cocktail recipe for our 21+ readers to enjoy.

Leeds Competition winner Eric Lu replaced pianist/composer Michael Brown at 92Y’s opening concert of its streamed summer series coined Time and Other Travel – wishing Michael a speedy recovery.

A remarkable aspect about Ted Hearne, Saul Williams and Patricia McGregor’s 80-minute staged oratorio, Place, is that it holds so many stories and opens the door to numerous conversations. Writings about this work could be centered around how the performers in Place faced the effects of gentrification in their own lives, converting the work into a video piece during COVID-19, how Hearne composed the music, I could go on. But one aspect which gripped me is the collaborative process between Saul Williams and Ted Hearne in creating a libretto for Place. I spoke with Saul Williams and Ted Hearne separately about Place and this collaborative process and have created this piece in the spirit of that dialogue, allowing the reader to alternate between the perspectives of Williams and Hearne.

“Sad, moody, happy, funny or none of it,“ Lambert, German songwriter and musician describes the freedom to be “everything at the same time.” Releasing lovely works for several years, eliciting tranquility, many who know and love the music “see the visual part as the perfect description,“ despite some contradictions as darkness and loneliness are portrayed in accompanied videos such as one of our favorites “Sweet Apocalypse.” We were lucky enough to have a few questions answered by Lambert and look forward to following and listening closely as the Lambiverse evolves.

Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s playing throughout his debut orchestral album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Incantation, is brilliant, effusive and gripping. He glides above the orchestra while maintaining a core to the tone and unfolding gorgeous intricate phrases. But it is the depth of his relationship with the material, unique combination of works and history behind why he programmed this CD the way that he did that make this album exceptional. History had silenced Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s family violin. Through Incantation, the violin sings again in an unfurling of seemingly contradictory emotions which are all centered around melancholy.