by Nicholas Stevens
Building on shared qualities, musicians from divergent traditions and genres can achieve synthesis in sound. This is the premise behind Avital Meets Avital, an album and touring program devised by two unrelated holders of the same Moroccan-Jewish surname. The premise of such cross-genre collaborations implies that musical matter fired from opposing directions will fuse, but still generate the hot glow of differences reconciled. In a recent performance in Cleveland, however, no such glimmer of inter-genre friction remained. [Read more…]
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an unlikely folk hero. Her law career has spanned six decades, with more than 25 years on the Supreme Court. Now 86, she has written a notable series of blistering dissents. This has endeared her to a younger generation on her side of the political fence, and earned her an unexpected nickname: Notorious RBG.
Utter the phrase “brass quintet” to the average listener, and expect a reply that references particular kinds of music, from Renaissance church polyphony and Bach fugues to modernist movements and jazz arrangements. The instrumentation remains common enough to come with such associations, but rare enough that many audiences only get to experience its core repertoire.
