Scanning life through the picture window

Reviewing the Calder Quartet.
Boston Globe, February 23, 2015.

Wandle, wandle deine Bahnen; Nur betrachten deinen Schein

Reviewing Renée Fleming and Olga Kern.
Boston Globe, February 10, 2015.

Fly-By-Wire

Reviewing Paavali Jumppanen, Jeffrey Means, and Hans Tutschku.
Boston Globe, February 6, 2015.

Schematics

Digital to Analog: Poems and Histories. Andrew Pekler, Vicky Chow, and technologies evident and hidden.
NewMusicBox, February 4, 2015.

For Andrew Patner

Francis Poulenc's VIIème Improvisation en ut majeur (recorded with my phone on my out-of-tune piano):



Andrew approached culture the way Julia Child approached food: as an object of exacting yet unassuming erudition; as an avenue of elegant, unfailing generosity; and as a source of immoderate pleasure. Like everyone else who ever met him, I will miss him.

Karamu, fiesta, forever

Reviewing the Cantata Singers.
Boston Globe, February 2, 2015.

Sing a song, it'll make your day

Reviewing Anne Sofie von Otter and Angela Hewitt.
Boston Globe, January 26, 2015.

In the lane, snow is glistening

Reviewing Ian Bostridge's Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession.
Boston Globe, January 25, 2015.

All-Access

Reviewing the Green Mountain Project.
Boston Globe, January 14, 2015.

A Better Tomorrow

Reviewing the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.
Boston Globe, January 13, 2015.

The occasions' sound of mirth puts cap on the start of another yuletide song (8)

New Music Boxes: Wring Out the Old. A musical cryptic crossword for year's end.
NewMusicBox, December 23, 2014.

Sinners, reconciled

arr. Guerrieri: The Wexford Carol (PDF, 99Kb)



Happy holidays from everyone at Soho the Dog HQ! Here's a carol arrangement to cleanse your aural palate in between walls of indiscriminate seasonal noise. Honestly, this has been one of those years when I think Christmas might be better off as, say, a quadrennial affair, like the World Cup. You know how the World Cup comes along, and people with no previous interest in the sport are straightaway really into it, to an unprecedented degree? Imagine if you could pull that off with platitudinous Christmas sentiments. ("Peace on earth? Goodwill to all? I suddenly find these notions INTRIGUINGLY COMPELLING" *strokes chin as eyes widen and flash*) Comfort and/or joy to everyone out there.

BONUS STOCKING STUFFER

"Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" (descant and harmonization by me, 2014) (PDF, 57 Kb)
The same thing in a lower key (PDF, 57 Kb)



A characteristically nutty descant I wrote for an otherwise beloved carol. I like my angels heralding in screaming bright G major, but that might be just a bit high for the end of a full lessons-and-carols service, and a half-century of Presbyterian hymnals have insisted on F, so take your pick.

In the flesh

Reviewing Schola Cantorum Boston.
Boston Globe, December 16, 2014.

You belong with

This Year's Model (or, That's What They Don't See). On In C, Taylor Swift, Heinrich Heine, Nazarene painters, Duke Ellington, and the canon.
NewMusicBox, December 12, 2014.

Universal adapter

Reviewing Charles Rosen, The Complete Columbia and Epic Album Collection.
Boston Globe, December 7, 2014.

Arrival gate

Boston: Passports and Layovers. Reviewing the Lorelei Ensemble and Roomful of Teeth.
NewMusicBox, December 5, 2014.

Something borrowed, something blue

Reviewing Odyssey Opera.
Boston Globe, November 24, 2014.

Squeeze theorem

Reviewing an evening with Michael Pisaro.
Boston Globe, November 13, 2014.

Organic fruit

Reviewing the Cantata Singers and Ensemble.
Boston Globe, November 11, 2014.

Reflecting telescope

Reviewing Richard Goode.
Boston Globe, November 4, 2014.