Born on Jan. 6th

So, out of morbid curiosity upon becoming a semi-centurion (and not, the dreaded AARP mailing hasn’t shown up yet!), I wondered what other music types were born on Twelfth Night: This is what I found, mostly thanks to the so-called “intelligence aggegator” NNBD.com:

Maurice Abravanel

Conductor
6-Jan-1903
22-Sept.-1993
Music Director, Utah Symphony 1947-1979

Syd Barrett
Singer, songwriter, guitarist

6-Jan-1946
7-Jul-2006
Pink [...]

Read Full Post »

Cleveland Rocks!

Disclaimer: This is posted by a card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation, now smarting over a 3-1 deficit in the ALCS…
Monday was a good night for Cleveland at the Jake and at the Ken Cen, where yours truly got the chance to see the fabled Cleveland Orchestra up close and personal. [...]

Read Full Post »

The Madonna Model or the Radiohead Revolution?

So Madonna has given Warner Brothers the boot in favor of concert promoter Live Nation, while at the same time Radiohead has devised a pay-what-you’d-like scheme for their latest self-produced, self-distributed release, thumbing their noses at long-time label EMI. All in the space of a few days. [...]

Read Full Post »

Michael Jackson (The Beer Hunter) 1942-2007

In Himmel gibt’s kein Bier
So, trink das Bier hier ist
“In Heaven, there is no Beer, so drink the Beer’s that’s Here.”
Somehow those words from an old German beer-drinking song came to mind when I read of the passing of the “other” Michael Jackson (“My name is Michael Jackson but I don’t sing, don’t drink Pepsi, [...]

Read Full Post »

Fireworks on the Radio – A Capitol Fourth

One of my summertime rituals during my days at the downtown network was to produce the radio version of A Capitol Fourth, the annual music, dance, and fireworks extravaganza originating from the West Lawn of the Capitol building and broadcast around the world. And, in truth, it was an event I produced with [...]

Read Full Post »

In The Steppes of Glorious West-Central Kazakhstan

When I first read in the London Daily Telegraph the news that “Borat’s Brother,” composer Erran Baron Cohen, was commissioned by something called the Turan Alem Philharmonic Orchestra of Kazakhstan to write a piece for the orchestra’s London debut, I figured it was at best a savvy publicity stunt, and at worst a total hoax. [...]

Read Full Post »

Rostropovich R.I.P.

A lot of folks in the music world, including your humble correspondent, knew that Mstislav Rostropovich was gravely ill when his 80th birthday rolled around in late March. Hence the cheering in the media was probably a little longer and louder than it might otherwise have been — we knew that he wasn’t going [...]

Read Full Post »

Slava!

Can’t forget to note that today is also the 80th birthday of Russian cellist & conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. Performance Today is doing a series of tributes all this week – today featuring a brief interview with Emerson quartet cellist David Finckel, along with a classic Slava performance (from 1964) of the finale of [...]

Read Full Post »

Oscar Night

All right, everyone’s got an opinion about the movies, so today’s lead is a few observations from last night’s Oscar roundup:
*I work in radio, not TV, but I was profoundly impressed with the originality and creativity of the production. There were more new (and mostly good!) ideas on the show that I’ve seen [...]

Read Full Post »