This article has been written in reaction to hearing “I don’t like this [enter instrument, genre, artist etc.]” too often. As a composer, diversity in music is equal to the painter’s, who constantly seeks for new colours, or the chef’s

Francis Poulenc knew all the best poets, setting the works of Apollinaire and Éluard again and again. He set the poets to opera (Les Mamelles de Tiresias), for a cappella choir, for voice and piano, in a secular cantata (Figure

Meaning in music is elusive — in fact, there are those who have said that music has no meaningAlan Gilbert, conductor Must we always find “meaning” in music? Why can’t our listening experience simply be one of absorbing the sounds

Last year, I was invited to perform during a special week of commemoration and celebration upon the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, and the 70th anniversary of his appearance at the Displaced Persons camp in Landsberg, Germany. It’s a picturesque,

When we think of Austria and the Waltz, we think of the Strauss family (Johann, Johann II, Josef, and Eduard) but they didn’t hold the monopoly on waltz music in Vienna. Karl Michael Ziehrer (1843-1922) was one of their primary

Jean Rondeau records ‘Vertigo’ for harpsichord Asking whether the harpsichord is the greatest instrument ever, is like asking can fish swim? Now that I’ve answered my own question, here are 10 reasons why the harpsichord is the greatest instrument ever.

“I’ve always listened to my own voice. I was discontented with the kind of music that everyone said I should write – all clever and dissonant, intellectualised. I wanted to write music that was deeply felt, music that would move

A lonely and brave act of civil disobedience can have momentous consequences. In 1955, the seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus to a white man. Parks remembered, “Two policemen came on