"DownBeat' magazine at 75

Jazz vs. religion? No contest

Sister John, my grimly serious music teacher, whomped my knuckles when I tried to imitate Harry James on trumpet. By contrast, Mahalia Jackson, Marshall Stearns and DownBeat Magazine introduced me to a world that still resonates today.

Patrick D. Hazard

Dec 04, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

How to save the Philadelphia Orchestra

To save the Orchestra, learn from General Motors

Just how many classical music lovers live in the Delaware Valley? Enough to make a difference for the survival of the genre, not to mention the Philadelphia Orchestra? Equally important, are the necessary tools available? I would answer yes on both counts— if only the Orchestra's bean counters would get out of the way.

Clarence Faulcon

Nov 29, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Hazing scandal at Florida A & M's band

A great college band, if its musicians survive

Florida A & M is justly proud of its Marching 100 band, a famous innovator in band choreography. But a litany of hazing abuses suggests that here's another case of a campus organization that's become bigger than its school.

Maria Thompson Corley

Nov 28, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

Philip Glass's 'Satyagraha' at the Met

Gandhi's humble philosophy (for $345 a ticket)

Mohandas Gandhi understood how to mobilize the oppressed masses against the elites of his day. Philip Glass's Satyagraha, for all its ethereal music and purported veneration of Gandhi, seems designed to alienate the masses while deliberately appealing to an elite niche audience.

Steve Cohen

Nov 27, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Gardiner and Jurowski: Two period pieces (2nd review)

Authentic period pieces? Ain't no such thing

Sir John Eliot Gardiner led his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in an all-Beethoven program on period instruments, followed two days later by Vladimir Jurowski's magisterial reading of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. That performance, too, had a period feel, but for quite different reasons.

Robert Zaller

Nov 26, 2011 · Articles · 8 minute read

Orchestre Révolutionnaire at Verizon Hall (1st review)

Another way to hear Beethoven

When this orchestra plays, the needle is always in the danger zone, lending a bracing, edgy quality to the performances that enhances the truly revolutionary spirit of Beethoven's music.

Nov 20, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

AVA's "Tales of Hoffman'

With a little (posthumous) help from Offenbach's friends

The new and more authentic version of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman resulted in a dramatically improved story as well as melodious music to replace those old bogus tunes that musicologists have expunged.

Steve Cohen

Nov 15, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Dolce Suono's Holocaust concert

What we lost in the Holocaust

Dolce Suono's Holocaust concert passed the ultimate test for a concert devoted to an emotionally charged historic event.

Tom Purdom

Nov 15, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Met's "Siegfried' in HD-TV Live

Broad shoulders and a waterfall, too

In Siegfried, Robert Lepage and the Metropolitan Opera have at last come up with a spectacular Ring production that realizes the potential we expected from that director and that company.

Steve Cohen

Nov 13, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Network For New Music at World Café Live

Can poets and musicians get along?

The Network for New Music presented its first concert at the World Café, surrounded the music with a touch of the era of lung cancer and lengthy tirades against the restraints of middle class society.

Tom Purdom

Nov 08, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read