Cafe Aman

KING's new infamy

From today's headlines:  officials in Tacoma, Washington, are making an amazing bid to cultivate a young audience for classical music.

So don't forget, kids: If we really hate you, we'll make you listen to live broadcasts of the Seattle Opera!

(Or, as one astute youngster observed, they can always go loiter by the local Babies R Us instead. Now *there* is a cool hang for sure...)

Live event: Q&A at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Wednesday night

If you're in NYC this coming Wednesday night (August 1st--kalo mina!), come by the pre-concert event at the Mostly Mozart Festival. I'll be interviewing composer Osvaldo Golijov, whose newly revised cello concerto, Azul, will be played later that evening by soloist Alisa Weilerstein at Avery Fisher Hall. (The rest of the program is Mozart's "Linz" Symphony and the Beethoven "Emperor" Concerto, played by Paul Lewis, with Louis Langree conducting.)

The ever-lovely and self-effacing Osvaldo & I will be chatting at the Kaplan Penthouse (never mind the construction, you can find your way there easily enough!) beginning at 6:45 PM; the concert follows at 8 PM.

Strange (touring) bedfellows

An odd commingling from the world of so-called "adult music" (yes, you read that right--it's a marketing coinage which at some point deserves an essay/entry; in short, despite the whiff of porn inherent in the expression, it is supposed to mean pretty much any genre that appeals to an over-20 crowd)...

Of all people, Angelique Kidjo (whose website is grindingly slow, so be forewarned), is currently on the road with Josh Groban. What's next--Andrea Bocelli and Tartit?

Hits from the Z playlist (@10 months)

Some recent favorites heard at home, in the car, and out and about...

• Sly and the Family Stone: Stand! (recently reissued by Legacy). I'll leave you to guess which tracks we've skipping over in the interest of parental responsibility, but Z just can't get enough of the title track and "I Want to Take You Higher."
• They Might Be Giants: No! (Rounder). While TMBG's later kids album, Here Come the ABCs (Disney) still reigns supreme in both Z's estimation and ours, No! reveals some gems, including "Clap Your Hands," "Where Do They Make Balloons?" and "The Edison Museum," which includes these immortal lines: "So when your children quarrel, and nothing seems to quell them/Just tell them that you'll take them to the Edison Museum/The largest independently owned and operated mausoleum."
• Theatre of Voices/Paul Hillier: Stockhausen, Stimmung (Harmonia Mundi, not yet released). Z has been dancing furiously dancing to this (unprompted), I swear.

At a moment of sadness, another of great levity

In writing about Jerry Hadley in the aftermath of his tragedy, I've been going back through his recordings and interviews. A few nights ago, MMFCC and I were in utter stitches reading Hadley's account, first printed in Opera News, of his big debut at NYCO. It could have been a Marx Brothers film.

Alan Gilbert's the new NY Philharmonic music director

(Following their custom, the NY Phil gave first access on this one to the Times while hastily calling a press conference for tomorrow morning for everyone else...and of course Wikipedia already contains the news.)

So it wasn't Daniel Barenboim after all...And, for the first time since Bernstein, a homegrown *and* young conductor ascends the podium as music director of the New York Philharmonic. ("Homegrown" in the most local of ways, of course, what with Gilbert's personal and lifelong associations with the Phil.)

I'm thrilled with the prospect of what Gilbert brings to the table, and hopefully behind us now are the days of many critics gloomily shuffling out of the Phil's annual press conferences in despair of the thoroughly lackluster programming announced for the upcoming season. On the other hand, this announcement comes with all the strictures and caveats of a modern music director: Gilbert will be conducting for a grand total of twelve weeks of the season, and Daniel Wakin reports the 40-year-old as saying that " it was premature to say whether he would move back to New York."