Mark Adamo Web Site Launched

I emerge from my summer blogging hiatus for long enough to spread the word that my friend Mark Adamo has finally launched his web site. Just like its owner, the site is informative, entertaining and well designed.

Update from NPAC

Stimulating, exhausting, fun, exhausting, interesting, exhausting. Useful? Maybe. (Did I mention exhausting?)

I’m in the middle of the National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, along with thousands of others from every imaginable performing arts discipline.

Here are some highlights in stream-of-consciousness order.

Erling Wold’s MORDAKE

My congratulations to San Francisco composer colleague Erling Wold on the premiere of his new opera Mordake. This is not a review, and so I’ll stop short of providing a lot of detail.

National Performing Arts Convention Coming Up

As you may or may not already know, the National Performing Arts Convention takes place next month in Denver. It is a major event for anyone professionally involved in music, theater or dance. As someone with an interest in opera, theater, orchestral and choral music, I am looking forward to attending this for the first time. I’ll probably be spending most of my time in the Opera America sphere.

Judging Student Composers

This evening I had the thoroughly enjoyable experience of sitting on a panel of judges for a competition at the San Francisco Conservatory. These opportunities to judge come up from time to time, and I’m always glad to do it, not just to help the parties involved, but because it forces me to really listen and to think critically, knowing there’s a lot at stake for the person on the other end. It’s definitely not easy!

More Bluebeard’s Castle

In the course of researching (read: obsessing over) Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle, I came across a Hungarian film adaptation of the piece on YouTube. It’s annoyingly divided into fourteen segments, but anyone familiar with the piece or interested should take a look.

Berkeley Bluebeard

I’d like to alert Bay Area readers to the upcoming performances by Berkeley Opera of my two favorite one-acts, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. These two composers are not particularly known for their dramatic works, but each work reveals the composer’s complete mastery of music for the stage. An evening consisting of both of these works is not to be missed.

Theremin Player

Well, I haven’t had much to blog about for a while, so just to keep this thing alive, here’s a kitty playing a theremin. Enjoy.

Real blogging to return soon.

Sondheim at Herbst Theater

This past Sunday was a date I’d been anticipating for months. As part of the City Arts and Lectures series here in San Francisco, Stephen Sondheim sat down with Frank Rich for a thoroughly spontaneous and entertaining hour-and-a-half discussion.

Now, I’ve read and heard so many interviews and similar Sondheim talks over the years, so there was very little new information for me, but this is my first opportunity to sit through one in person. Sondheim was upbeat, forthcoming and very funny; a true mensh.

Perusal Score Viewer (Maybe)

I discovered this service that converts any PDF into a slick browser-based document viewer, and immediately thought it might be a good way to present a score for cursory perusal. After playing around with it, I’m not so sure, but I’d love to know what others think. One of my complaints is that the icons are pretty inscrutable to those who aren’t up on the conventions.