I include here two very interesting articles that have gone viral among classical musicians. They address the circumstances of classical musicians who are not born in environments where classical music is part of the family culture or profession, but still invest intense creative effort and monetary resources to achieve exalted proficiency in an art they love above all. They are not always rewarded for their devotion. It is a complex issue that does not deserve pandering answers of any kind, […]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/arts/music/george-crumb-90th-birthday.html We begin what I hope will be a oceanic wave of homages to George Crumb, who is turning 90 years old. When I was very young, he was among the living composers who ignited my love of newly composed music belonging to our time. Somehow he was both ancient and utterly futuristic. I thank the teacher who first pointed me to him, Dr. Mary Wennerstrom, at Indiana University. It has been the love of a lifetime.

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Pianist Yael Weiss has embarked in a thoughtful and timely project in preparation for the 250’s anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020. At some point she reached out to me about women composers from Venezuela and Cuba, but at that moment I did not realize the full impact of her concept.  Beethoven was, after all, a man who espoused and defended the ideals of liberty and justice;  the famed anecdote tells of his tearing the original dedication of his Third […]

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            In 2015, I visited my colleague, Associate Professor of Liturgical Studies Michael Driscoll, for a casual conversation in his office at the University of Notre Dame.  I was struck by a new book on his desk.  It was a volume edited by Notre Dame’s Associate Professor of Italian Studies and Dante Studies Vittorio Montemaggi, titled Dante’s Commedia: Theology as Poetry. It immediately sparked in me a curiosity to find if the Commedia could become […]

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In the ongoing production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Teatro Nacional Sucre of Quito, Ecuador, the opera takes a new garb in my transcription for an orchestra of Andean instruments, following the foundational concept of 2008 by the music director of the Orquesta de Instrumentos Andinos, Segundo Condor, who died without completing it.  The process enjoyed wonderful assistance by artists affiliated to the Teatro and the Orquesta, Tadashi Maeda and Leonardo Cárdenas, among others. The paradigm of the […]

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Last weekend, April 26-28, I was fortunate to participate as an invited presenter on Arvo Pärt in the conference “1968 in Europe and Latin America”, organized by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame.  Brilliantly designed by Professor James McAdams, somehow the conference helped me understand the direction of my life and the values I hold. It was amazing to trade insights with a fantastic roster of speakers and engage in a conversation about Hans Werner Henze  with […]

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