Sad to hear of the disbanding of the wonderful St Lawrence String Quartet. Vivid memories of their premieres of my First and Second Quartets, and of Absolute Jest. Listen to their recording with MTT and SF Sym of Absolute Jest and get a jolt of their inimitable high energy.

Operas are rarely perfect first time out. (Ask Verdi!) I am immensely proud of this new, revised version of 'Girls of the Golden West,' and of the spectacular performance by the cast & LA Phil Do yourself a favor and buy the actual CD, created with such TLC by Nonesuch Records

Ummm...actually no. He's uptown, at Metropolitan Opera, aunque todavía un niño

'...Lileana Blain-Cruz’s vibrant and infectiously exultant production.' Yes, for sure! It's an astonishing work of stagecraft--and she has great collaborators.
nytimes.com/2024/04/24/art…

Kudos all around on the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams (@HellTweet)'s 'El Niño,' with Julia Bullock, Davóne, and conductor Marin Alsop all making their Met debuts!

Life if full of difficult challenges, among them is differentiating a flock of Virgins
nytimes.com/2024/04/23/sty…

How many opera stars make their Metropolitan Opera debut floating down mid-air from the ceiling?
nytimes.com/2024/04/22/art…

Act 1: “a greenish-blue floral jungle landscape that might be home to African or Caribbean people,” while Act 2 is dominated by “orangish fiery colors influenced by a more desert vision, like the borderlands of Texas.” apnews.com/article/opera-…

Getting ready for my The Juilliard School Orchestra concert April 20 in Geffen Hall with Debussy 'Iberia' Listen to Les Dissonances from Paris. (God, I love these French players...) youtube.com/watch?v=hn1uP_…

Happy news for Joshua but...how many more hits can our Bay Area classical music scene take? Will SFChronicle Datebook work hard to find as knowledgeable and capable a replacement? Probably not. More likely to go the way of LA Times. Classical music just doesn't win the analytics test.

This season she's the Virgin Mary; next season she'll make hungry where most she satisfies...

Not your standard night at the Met!

(from today's Corriere della Sera) Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Chechan Republic, wants to ban music outside a certain BPM (beats per minute) which he considers alien & unnatural. Specifically targeted: Feldman String Quartet #2 & last movement of Harmonielehre.

Part of an interview I did about El Niño for the forthcoming Metropolitan Opera production. Nice to have this, but I hope this doesn't put too dark a spin on the piece, which is more about birth and hope, esp. in this new riotously joyful & colorful production by Lileana Blaine-Cruz

Los Angeles Noir as seen (and heard) from Vienna.

Marin Alsop has always been ahead of her time and ahead of the curve. One of my favorite people. Will make her long-overdue Metropolitan Opera debut with El Niño April 23. sfcv.org/articles/artis…

Gotta say that Gabriella Smith's 'Breathing Forests' that I'm doing next week with Cleveland Orchestra is a truly inspired & utterly original creation. The best new music anywhere is coming from our young US composers. So, what's SF Sym doing? Why, cutting commissions, of course.

'it was a matter of wishful thinking combined with a faith in Salonen’s ability to galvanize Silicon Valley donors who have so far been largely immune to the lure of cultural giving' In other words, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

An in-depth consideration of Timo Andres remarkable new piano concerto, 'Made of Tunes' that I had the privilege to conduct with the ever-adventurous LA Phil

This doesn't happen all that often, at least to me: 2 orchestras on the same day in Disney Hall, each playing a big piece of mine. LA Phil in morning with City Noir and San Francisco Symphony Musicians SF Symphony with Esa-Pekka Salonen in evening playing Naive & Sentimental Music.