Emory’s Schwartz Center brought the Kronos Quartet to Atlanta last night for an evening of transcendent, or as we used to say in the ’60s, mind-blowing music. In addition, the audience had a chance to see the Azerbaijan Alim Qasimov Ensemble, whose Mugham indigenous classical music included spirited vocal duets accompanied by the tar, a long-necked [...]

When I’m painting, my preference of background music is usually classical, new contemporary music or jazz. But if I just want to listen, one of my favorite soulful balladeers is Tom Waits – especially his early work from the mid 1970′s that reeks of heartbreak and romance and hopefulness. A true original, Waits was one [...]

This past friday evening I saw Dr. Kakali Bandyopadhyay on sitar and Anjaneya Sastry on tabla at the Schwartz Center. Both are fantastic musicians and it was a free program. Bandyopadhyay, who has been playing for twenty years, teaches sitar and North Indian classical music at Emory. Her training included classes with Ravi Shankar and [...]

Last week my pal Arthur and I had the pleasure of seeing the Eduardo Tami Trio and Dancers at GA State, sponsored by their Center for Collaborative and International Arts (Cencia) program. Dr. Fernando Reati, Chair of Modern and Classical Languages at GA State, gave a fascinating introduction on tango’s origins as a dance form in [...]

I spent all weekend at the Decatur Book Festival, reputed to be the largest independent book fest in the country. In its sixth year, the festival is now attended by more than 70,000 people who get the opportunity to hear 300 authors speak. Begun by Daren Wang and Tom Bell in 2005, this is my [...]

Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center presented Sonic Palooza yesterday, June 25th, a 10 hour free festival of contemporary music that went on until midnight. I spent an hour or so over in the galleria and caught the first program; Steve Reich, David Lang, Tristan Perich and Philip Glass. All compositions were performed by Sonic Generator & Friends, [...]

Last night I saw the young Vega String Quartet perform Beethoven’s String Quartet in E Minor, op. 59, No. 2 – or the Razumovsky quartet – at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on the Emory campus. This was an 1805 commissioned work by Count Razumovsky, a Russian ambassador in Vienna, who was also one [...]

Kate McGarrigle died of cancer on monday, she was only 63. I discovered the McGarrigle sisters when I bought their debut album, ‘Kate and Anna McGarrigle’ in 1975. One of my favorite songs on that lp, ‘Talk to me of Mendocino’, presaged my long held dream to move to California, which I did – from 1997 to [...]

…inspired by a full moon and Joe Zawinul’s ‘Midnight Mood’. I seem to gravitate towards titling my work after tunes I love. Bill Evans plays this on his 1968 ‘Alone’ CD and it’s an exquisite interpretation.  I saw Zawinul play a riveting and energetic set at the Perugia Jazz Festival in 2005.  Midnight Mood, oil [...]

UCTV out of Berkeley, CA has some of the best cultural programming you’ll find on television. Here’s a wonderful hour talk with the composer Philip Glass and the music critic Tim Page. In the mid ’60′s Glass studied in Paris with my own piano teacher’s famous teacher, Nadia Boulanger. She evidently never revealed what she [...]