Three Jazz Veterans Score on CD
For every widely-celebrated jazz musician, there may be hundreds of often equally-gifted players who never received their due whether by bad luck or by...
It’s A Hit!
SANTA FE, NM: How often do you go into a concert hall or an opera house where a world premiere is happening and know...
John Adams on Record – Part Two
Here is Part Two of my updated, expanded, 70th birthday discographical survey of John Adams’s music, parts of which were originally published in the...
John Adams On Record – Part One
My most vivid memory of John Adams was way back near the beginning of his career, in 1983 in then-Avery Fisher Hall. His Grand...
Rattle and the Berlin: One More Time
“First, we’ll take Manhattan. Then we’ll take Berlin.”
– Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)
These words were ringing through my head the week before Thanksgiving as the Berlin...
A Steve Reich Recordings Survey As He Turns 80.
Steve Reich, the onetime outsider turned venerated new music master, turns 80 today – and to commemorate this milestone, here is the latest version of...
MTT Revisits Das Lied Von Der Erde – This Time With A Mezzo
SAN FRANCISCO — Das Lied Von Erde, Mahler’s gigantic unnumbered symphony disguised as a song cycle, played a big role in the emotional and...
The Chairman Turns 100
While making the rounds of local garage sales over the past weekend, I spotted a box packed with 30 Frank Sinatra CDs spanning nearly...
Pull Up A Chair at the Valley Performing Arts Center
Frequent concertgoers are used to enduring the usual welcome from some anonymous public-address announcer, followed by a plea to turn off our cellphones. Yet...
Peter Schickele and the Armadillo Quartet – 25 Years Together
Monday night, the Shatto Chapel within the massive First Congregational Church near Wilshire Blvd. was the latest site of a casually delightful, long-running Los...
Pierre Boulez on his 90th Birthday – A Personal Memoir
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
On Pierre Boulez’s 90th birthday, I’d like to share a few memories of watching this once-controversial,...
What do Pharrell Williams and Anton Bruckner Have In Common?
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Some rants about the verdict that a misguided jury slapped upon Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams...
It’s Back to the Future for Electric Keyboards at NAMM
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Last Saturday, on a wind-swept 81-degree winter’s day (ha!), I slipped behind the Orange Curtain to attend...
Figaro! (90210); It’s a Hoot … and it Works.
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Hallelujah! An opera update that works.
I am speaking of a romp called ¡Figaro! (90210), a surprisingly...
Charles Lloyd and Gabor Szabo Mix It Up, and the latest from Herb Alpert...
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Here are a handful of recent CD releases in jazz – or within striking distance of...
John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean Floats In on CD and DVD
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Pulitzer Prizes are no guarantee of quality or the lasting value of a piece of music,...
Hearing the Los Angeles Philharmonic Outdoors and iPalpiti Indoors
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
In the good old summertime in the Los Angeles area, classical music heads outdoors to Hollywood...
Lorin Maazel 1930-2014
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
It has not been a good year for followers of major maestros. First to fall in...
The Electric Don Ellis Remembered in a New Video
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Why isn’t Don Ellis up there in the pantheon of big band jazz icons with Duke,...
Kraftwerk Electrifies Disney Hall
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
The German electronic band Kraftwerk – which translates into "power station" in English – used to summon...
