I want to thank all the folks who showed up for the inaugural Rest Is Noise Reading Group at the Tap Room Tuesday night. It's exciting to see a roomful of people who want to learn more about, talk about, and listen to music of the 20th century. I know there will be more soon-to-be RIN fans for the next session, which meets Tuesday, October 28, 7-8:30pm. We're going to move upstairs to the Club Room for that session (we'll be there on November 18 as well) to get away from the jukebox, although I found something appealing about AC/DC blasting in the bar while we talked about a 1928 conversation between Alban Berg and George Gershwin. I found it all entirely fitting. Chapters 4-6 next week.
Last night I promised to provide a link to Alex Ross'
recent New Yorker piece about how the
classical music performance got to be the way it is, and here it is.
Judging from this morning's rehearsal of Messiaen's Les Offrande oubliées (The Forgotten Offerings)--this weekend's classical music performance will be thrilling. A
few of us had this "What is that?"
response to the sound over the speakers--sheer beauty coming from an orchestra
that is really hitting an early season stride. By the way, when guest conductor
Ingo Metzmacher doesn't have his hair combed back, he doesn't look so much like
Sean Penn as he does in some of his publicity shots, but you can still see the
resemblance in the face.
