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I first met John Corigliano 41 years ago over dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. I was a rather shy young guy, and I was out with some very worldly people, all of them friends of long standing, and all of them about fifteen years my senior. I'm not sure I...
I’ve spent the fall with the music of William Bolcom and John Corigliano, who are the leading men in my Juilliard concert this January. They are each about to turn 80 next year, which strikes me as impossible. How could two such fiery renegades be octogenarians? John...
These days I find that I don’t venture out much to hear the standard operas at the Met. For one thing, I’ve been familiar with them since my pre-teen years, and their music is now so familiar to me that they have become like mantras or prayers, part of my ongoing...
This week I thought I’d share some of the music that has filled my recent weeks. It is the Christmas season and we’re about to put up our traditional tree, a present we received at the end of the last century from Jim’s brother and sister. They had each been assigned...
Today is an auspicious double anniversary: the New York Festival of Song is thirty years old, and NYFOS’s Founding Advisor Leonard Bernstein is…well, nearly one hundred. He’ll officially round off his century mark on August 25, 2018. But centennial festivities are...
When I planned “Red, White, and Blues” I thought I was making a light summer entertainment: 10 French songs, 10 American songs, encore, done. A pitcher of musical sangria. Then I started working on the program, and got a little carried way with visions of sugarplums....