composer's notebook
essays & criticism on musical matters
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Friday, September 16, 2005
In no particular order
Items to be excited about this year, courtesy of the annual Season Preview in the NYT:
- Tobias Picker's Metropolitan Opera commission, An American Tragedy (yes, the Dreiser novel)
- Mark Adamo's Lysistrata at City Opera
- John Adams's Dr. Atomic at SF Opera (can't go, obviously, but awareness makes me feel involved)
- Susan Marshall's Cloudless, a new work at DTW
- Bill T. Jones's Blind Date new full-evening work
- Anne Terese de Keersmaeker solo show at The Joyce. Belgian Marvelousness.
- Finland's pastoral (my adjective) composer Einojuhani Rautavaara's Manhattan Trilogy, a premiere commissioned by Juilliard for the JO's 100th Anniversary Concert.
- Steven Bryant's Alchemy in Silent Spaces, orchestral premiere, commissioned by James DePreist for the Juilliard Orchestra this spring (OK, that wasn't listed in the paper, but I'm awfully excited about it)
- Richard Rodney Bennett's opera The Mines of Sulphur -- heard terrific things about it last summer after the Glimmerglass production.
- Arvo Pärt DVD documentary, 24 Preludes for a Fugue
- The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov at Lincoln Center. Golijov doesn't know how to write bad music.
- Everything is Illuminated, Liev Schrieber's movie adaptation of wunderkind Safran Foer's gorgeous and funny novel.
- Berlin Philharmonic NY premiere of Thomas Adés's ASYLA (a marvelous piece I've never heard live)
- London Symphony does Sibelius Kullervo, another work I've never heard live.
- 378 too many Mozart 250th Birthday Celebration concerts. 147 are probably plenty.
- The Wedding Singer, the musical
- The Color Purple, the musical
- Geena Davis is President
- Legally Blonde, the musical
- Catch Me If You Can, the musical. To be fair, I'm withholding judgement on this one...