Michael White of the London Telegraph noted a momentous occasion this week as one of the scions of classical music finally stepped down after fifty years and turned his magnificent creation formally over to a new generation.  Though ensemble and chamber orchestra certainly pre-dated him, Sir Neville Marriner has become inexorably linked with the […]... Read More

     The twentieth century was filled with many great classical music virtuosos brought forth by the power of the recording and television media. The gift of a audiovisual repository such as YouTube allows the faint memory of a great performer to once again for all of us to come into full bloom for his performing […]... Read More

     May 11th marks the birthday of the man who was born in Siberia but became the American Song Machine.   Irving Berlin would be 123 years old today.  It seems somewhat silly to consider a 123rd birthday, but Mr. Berlin ,as it is, lived to 101 and was prodigious to the very end.    His story […]... Read More

     The below the fold news of the day is in the musical world. The Philadelphia Orchestra, one one of the greatest vehicles in the world for the transmission of organized sound is considering a declaration of bankruptcy. Music performance has always been a precarious business, and in the mode of symphony orchestras, often a […]... Read More

     Something magical in the world of music that approaches Divine intervention occurred around the turn of the twentieth century in the the tight, crowded  tenements of New York City.  In the space of a few years, giants of lyric and melody that have defined the American Experience for over a century and have brought […]... Read More

     I enter this post with an appropriate amount of fear. What can possibly be further said about the Chairman of the Board, Francis Albert Sinatra? The entire pop musical experience of the twentieth century is essentially wrapped up in the song journey of this one man. How we listen to a song, how we […]... Read More