Reviewing DBR and DJ Scientific.
Boston Globe, September 24, 2007.

“Bodacious,” huh? No, I don’t write the headlines. I would imagine the more accurate bit of 80s argot would be “fresh.” Still, I always liked “bodacious” because I could imagine its etymology to be improbably but appropriately descended from “Boadicea.”

Reviewing Gonzalo Xavier Ruiz and the Boston Museum Trio.
Boston Globe, September 19, 2007.

Reviewing Soundscape 2007.
Boston Globe, September 19, 2007.

Reviewing Intermezzo Opera’s The Inman Diaries.
Boston Globe, September 17, 2007.

Merger mania. Previewing Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s “Don Juan Giovanni” and “Figaro.”
Boston Globe, August 31, 2007.

For pure sound, a clear choice. The making of a glass harmonica.
Boston Globe, August 26, 2007.

I wanted badly to include this clip with the online version of the article, but for various reasons, it was not to be. So I’ll post it here:

W. A. Mozart: Adagio in C major for glass harmonica, K. 357 (617a) (MP3, 3.7 MB)
Dean Shostak, glass harmonica

Other links:

G. Finkenbeiner, Inc.
Cecilia Brauer

Reviewing the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Boston Globe, August 8, 2007.

Reviewing Boston Midsummer Opera.
Boston Globe, August 3, 2007.

Reviewing the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Boston Globe, August 2, 2007.

Two generations of composers at Tanglewood.
Boston Globe, July 29, 2007.

DVD extras:

John Harbison on choosing between jazz and classical: “There was this instance of mistaken identity. I won an award, but, by mistake, they gave it to another guy in my [jazz] group. By the time it was straightened out, I had already started [studying classical music] at Harvard.”

Joan Tower on performing vs. composing: “I thought playing the piano was much more fun [than composing]. You’d have the music right there—you’d just do what it told you, and music came out. Composing is so much harder…. Luckily, I kept changing environments. My father was a mining engineer, so we moved around a lot. I kept changing teachers, which wasn’t a good thing, but it helped me later in life not to have a definite career as a pianist. These things work out sometimes.”

Asaf Peres on computer playback: “I had a girlfriend who was a composer, and I would be embarrassed when she would play things back [through the computer] for me. It would sound really bad, and I would think, what am I going to do? But then you hear the live performance, and it sounds amazing.”

William Bolcom on Everett, Washington, where he grew up: “Everett was a little socialist town, so it had very good libraries. So I could go, and they had recordings! And scores! And I would start with the ‘A’ section—I would look at scores and auralize them, learn to hear them in my head.”

Alexandra Fol (a native of Bulgaria) on smuggling music across the Iron Curtain: “I remember that. I was very young, and I remember my parents smuggled Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar between their underwear, these black vinyl records.”

Correction (7/31): I originally had my pronouns mixed up in Asaf’s quote (see comments).