One of the most arresting objects on display in the musical instruments galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a 2,000-year-old bell from Japan that was built to be mute. Dotaku bells such as this one still puzzle historians, but we know they were made without clappers and buried in earth, probably as part of a ritual designed to bless crops.
NEW YORK — The Tradfather was holding court at the 11th St. Bar in the East Village during a pause between jigs when his mood temporarily darkened. Amid the small cluster of regulars who flock to this live Irish music session on Sundays was a newcomer who, beer in hand, was flirting with one of the musicians.
Marilyn Mason, a concert organist who championed living composers and shaped generations of organists over a record-breaking 67 years on the faculty at the University of Michigan, died on April 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She was 93.
NEW YORK — “La Clemenza di Tito,” Mozart’s least-loved opera, returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday evening to an auditorium yawning with empty seats.
NEW YORK — A listener sitting through the whole of the “Ring” — Wagner’s four-opera epos about the birth and destruction of a civilization — has to wait 2 1/2 hours for the first relatable human interaction.
Mutter has built her career on a rich, glossy tone and glamorous stage presence. She is one of the few violinists who can pull off solo recitals in Carnegie’s big hall.
It happened twice, actually, in the finale of a glittering performance on Sunday afternoon of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, where the composer writes in a short silence before a fortissimo onslaught.
NEW YORK — In the age of the camera, some acts of cultural destruction have been seared into our collective memory: the bonfires of books forbidden by Nazis, the smashing of Chinese treasures during the Cultural Revolution, the Taliban detonation of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.
NEW YORK — Of all the things that inspire music, one of the most paradoxically productive is death. Whether the sounds it brings forth are meant to console, to offer catharsis, or to build a bridge to the soul of the departed, common to all is a refusal to accept that definitive silence.
For the cast, though, it’s a different story. With the exception of the noble but impotent Don Ottavio, a tenor part, the male roles all call for low voices that are potentially interchangeable.
As a young violinist growing up in Beirut, Layale Chaker moved between two musical worlds. At the city’s conservatory, she studied Mozart and Ravel with teachers imported from Eastern Europe. She knew there were young people studying Arabic violin in the same school, but the programs were segregated. On her walk home, she was engulfed by the sounds of Lebanese music filtering out of car radios and stores.
NEW YORK — They showed up in Mardi Gras headdresses, fedoras and tutus paired with combat boots. They drummed on darbukas, djembes and congas. And many of the performers at Sunday’s GlobalFest also brought grievances with them along with their costumes and instruments: against occupation, the erasure of indigenous voices, walls.
NEW YORK — In 1675, François Joseph de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, died after hitting his head when he fell from the arm of his nurse. He was 4 years old and, following the early death of his father, was the last heir to his illustrious French dynasty.
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