by David Evan Thomas | Aug 23, 2021 | Composers, Composition, Musicianship |
Reading the Bach chorales If you’ve ever wondered how there can be 1126 works in Wolfgang Schmieder’s Bach Werke Verzeichnis, it’s because the first 224 are cantatas and Nos. 250–438 are chorale harmonizations. The chorales are little worlds unto themselves,...
by David Evan Thomas | Sep 29, 2019 | Composers, Musicians, My Blog, Performers, Poets, Singers |
Listening to Anna Tivel Idon’t remember how I discovered the songs of the Portland-based folk-singer Anna Tivel. It was probably through Folk Alley, an internet radio station that keeps me company while I’m doing computer work. I admired the clear harmony and...
by David Evan Thomas | Mar 20, 2019 | Composers, Friends of DET, My Blog |
One month ago, on February 20, 2019, we lost master composer Dominick Argento. The affection I felt for the man and the respect I had for his art can’t be neatly summarized, but here is an appreciation adapted from words at a concert of his music at Hill House in...
by David Evan Thomas | May 6, 2018 | Composers, Concerts, My Blog, Performers |
In two recent and marvelous Schubert Club International Artist Series recitals with harpsichordist Richard Egarr, cellist Steven Isserlis played Bach’s 5th Cello Suite, BWV 1011. That work includes a singular sarabande, shown here in in Anna Magdalena Bach’s...
by David Evan Thomas | Aug 30, 2016 | Composers, Concerts, Musicians, My Blog, Public figures |
August, 2016 As a kid, I enjoyed the syndicated column of Sidney J. Harris (1917-1986), which appeared on the same page with Ann Landers and Erma Bombeck. Like those writers, Harris helped you navigate the real world with insight and humor. One of his regular features...
by David Evan Thomas | May 13, 2016 | Composers, Concerts, Friends of DET, My Blog |
Now! Hear the songs! I know not what are the words But they sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved. A number of the American modernists developed their art under the aegis of another profession. Poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a physician....
by David Evan Thomas | Apr 1, 2016 | Composers, My Blog |
How one American embraced, forsook, embraced, forsook, and ultimately EMBRACED… …the tonal processes that drive us all! Sylvester Stallone is cast against type as the mild-mannered Copland. With Harvey Keitel as the inscrutable Roger Sessions, and as Nadia Boulanger…...
by David Evan Thomas | Mar 25, 2016 | Composers, Concerts |
At a recent Schubert Club concert… Barry Kempton and I agreed about the Howells Clarinet Sonata: as a piece it is not quite satisfactory. Barry mentioned a recent conversation with pianist Michael McHale in which McHale compared editors of music and the word. Writers...
by David Evan Thomas | Mar 19, 2016 | Composers, Concerts, Friends of DET, My Blog |
Clarinetist Michael Collins and pianist Michael McHale will give the second of two recitals at the Ordway Concert Hall in Saint Paul tonight. It’s the first clarinet recital on the Schubert Club International Artist Series, and it’s a doozy: four sonatas and two...
by David Evan Thomas | Jan 22, 2016 | Composers, Musicians, My Blog |
I come from New York, but Upstate. Only after living in Saint Paul, Minn. did I realize that my hometown of Rochester, N.Y.—which was first nicknamed “The Flour City,” then “The Flower City” when the mills moved west—was essentially a...
by David Evan Thomas | Jan 8, 2016 | Composers, Musicians, My Blog |
When I heard of Pierre Boulez’s death the other day, I realized that I had already begun to forget him—Boulez the composer, that is; his recordings as a conductor are everywhere. Boulez once figured ever so slightly in my musical geography. I’ve lived in four cities,...
