Music

My preview of Donny McCaslin’s trio at 55 Bar (Tuesday, Dec. 23), in the current Time Out New York.

Quite a play of classical contrasts… Sunday brought the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale to Carnegie Hall for a reading of Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphonie, with Reinbert de Leeuw conducting. A gifted older maestro, young and hungry players — the mix couldn’t have been more combustible. The sprawling 10-movement work of the mid-’40s involves spine-tingling sustained crescendos and hints of Romanticism, and

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I’m back in Philly this Thursday, Dec. 18 to moderate a panel on improvisation across boundaries and cultures. Participants are Pauline Oliveros, Jason Moran, Jason Kao Hwang and Kiranavali Vidyasankar. Details here [pdf]. My workload is growing steadily more insane, so blogging is light. But stay tuned for top shows of 2008, year-in-review comments and other stuff.

I’ll be at the Philadelphia Art Museum tomorrow (Friday, December 12) to conduct a pre-concert interview with pianist-composer Jason Moran, who’ll be premiering new music inspired by this art exhibit. Interview and Q&A from 5:15-5:45pm, showtime 6pm.

My preview of Pete Robbins’s sILENT Z, at Cornelia Street Cafe Dec. 17, in this week’s Time Out New York.

~ Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez and her brave comrades have managed, despite open intimidation by the regime, to institute a clandestine bloggers’ “knowledge workshop.” Says Sánchez: “We ended up finding the cracks between the fingers of the censors, between which the fine sand of information and knowledge has managed to slip through.” Sean Penn, writing prominently for The Nation,

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My take on the intriguing jazz-multigenre concert initiative Revive Da Live, online at Jazz Times (and forthcoming in the next print edition).

I’m happy to announce my debut as a preview and feature writer for Time Out New York. First up: McCoy Tyner, starting Tuesday, Dec. 9 at the Blue Note.