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Miriam Makeba

Over the weekend I heard two concerts: first, a performance celebrating the 50th birthday of composer/clarinetist Don Byron. I also attended a musical celebration for vocalist Miriam Makeba, who passed away last weekend. In both cases, their respective fans were in celebration mode and the music certainly fit the bill.
The outpouring of love and […]

The Conductor in Chief?

President-elect Barack Obama will inherit, as he put it, “two wars, a planet in peril and the worst financial crisis in a century.” The new president will also inherit a house band of more than 100 professional musicians. The United States Marine Band, also known as “The President’s Own,” is the oldest […]

Being a recent transplant from Atlanta, I voted there this past Friday. In total the process took nearly six hours, three of which were spent standing outside. We talked and laughed, read books, ordered pizzas and many sought out like-minded voters for private conversations. What struck me the most was the unprecedented enthusiasm […]

Haitian-American violinist, pianist, and composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) has created a genre unto himself by fusing his classical music roots with a myriad of soundscapes. Roumain sat in with me in the studio to play his music and talk about his new vocal chamber concerto, Darwin’s Meditation for the People of Lincoln, which is […]

A week ago, one Evening Music Listener asked me to name my ten favorite composers. Aside from the difficulty of trying to narrow the list to ten, that query led me to question the variety of music and composers regularly represented on the show (perhaps I’m not as musically inclusive as I’d like to believe).
Based […]

Bernstein at the Wailing Wall

Leonard Bernstein’s life and his music embraced an enormous amount of influences, and his religious compositions were no exception. As many New Yorkers and people of Jewish faith and heritage around the world acknowledge the High Holy Days — Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — we’ll provide a musical backdrop […]

We’re in the thick of our 13 day celebration of the musical legacy of Leonard Bernstein, one of the most important figures in the history of American Music. Bernstein touched the lives of so many people, and especially New Yorkers — so if you have one, we want to hear your own Lenny story. Enter […]