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Yuja Wang Explains It All

10/11/2011

Pianist Yuja Wang.

My interview with Yuja Wang was slightly truncated in today’s Houston Chronicle. Here’s the whole thing. (She plays at Houston’s Jones Hall on October 12.)

When Chinese pianist Yuja Wang plays here Wednesday, she’ll be playing works by Franz Liszt, Sergei Prokofiev and Alexander Scriabin – the same program as her October 20 her Carnegie Hall recital debut.

Judging by the acclaim this rising star has received in recent years, it’s a pretty safe bet it will be an evening to remember.

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Hilary Hahn Talks to Jascha Heifish

10/10/2011

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Hahn and her fishy interview.

Not too long ago, violinist Hilary Hahn posted a video on YouTube of an interview she conducted with a fish. (I’ve re-posted it below.) Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, it seems that the fish’s microphone wasn’t working very well, and only Hahn’s questions can be clearly heard on the video clip. However, with the aid of some advanced sound-enhancement technology, I was able to just barely make out the fish’s responses. Here’s a transcript of the complete interview.

HH: Hello, this is Hilary Hahn. I’m here in a dressing room in Paris, to interview –

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Against "Important"

10/8/2011

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Don't ask why: it just is.

Today, let’s look at a few sentences that I’ve plucked from three different music articles. The first caught my eye just a couple of weeks ago.

“Boulez founded a centre for musical research in the bowels of the Centre Pompidou … a laboratory at the furthest frontiers of mixing computers with instruments that made him the most important person in the life of international contemporary music.” (The Guardian, September 22, 2011.)

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We Are Not Alone

10/4/2011

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Plenty going on here.

I just finished writing an article about the current state of music-and-the-brain research for the New York-based magazine Listen. (My article should appear in the Winter issue.) This is a topic on which I’m hardly an expert – so to give my words some credibility I interviewed several scientists who are deeply involved in this kind of research.

One of these was Aniruddh Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. Patel kindly agreed to talk with me about his research on how humans process music. However, we didn’t talk exclusively about humans: our conversation also touched on Snowball, the dancing cockatoo.

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When Words Fail

10/2/2011

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Gotta

This just in: on Thursday, the New York Times used an “emoticon” in a headline. The article, by Benedict Carey, is a charming little exposé on a study of people’s moods throughout the day, as examined by several distinguished scholars. The headline reads, “Study of Twitter Messages Tracks When We Are :)”.

So emoticons – or “smileys,” as they are sometimes called in non-academic circles – have arrived, and are now a respectable component of high-class journalism. I’d like to commemorate this exciting new development with what I believe is the first concert review ever written entirely in emoticons.

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More on Jonathan Crow

10/1/2011

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Jonathan Crow.

If Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Peter Oundjian hadn’t become a musician, he’d probably be a talk show host on television. Even after conducting a big program on Thursday night, he easily slipped into “interview mode” – chatting from the stage with the TSO’s new concertmaster, Jonathan Crow, for the benefit of people who stayed to learn more about him.

The concert that preceded this little interview was one of the best I’ve ever heard the TSO play. (You can read my Globe and Mail review here.) And it featured Crow in a soloistic role, performing Beethoven’s Romance No. 2 in F Major.

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Forward>>

Yuja Wang Explains It All

Hilary Hahn Talks to Jascha Heifish

Against "Important"

We Are Not Alone

When Words Fail

More on Jonathan Crow

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