Monthly Archives: May 2003

Backstage at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall – one of the world’s less-inviting concert venues – the usual day-before-the-concert chaos reigns on a Monday night in late April. The critics and the connoisseurs have come to town for the premiere of … Continue reading →

Just at the moment when our ears were most in need of refreshment and a thorough cleaning out, along came MicroFest to accomplish exactly that. Month after month the gnrr had piled up in our auricular canals: all those turgidities … Continue reading →

In March 1984 I lived through a week forever memorable. In Rome I sat in on rehearsals for Act 5 of Robert Wilson’s the CIVIL warS to Philip Glass’ music, at the time when there were plans for all five … Continue reading →

Illustration courtesy the Bettmann Archive, New York The Philharmonic’s celebration of Dmitri Shostakovich – all 15 symphonies performed over five years, with all 15 string quartets as a welcome supplement – is now two years along. The observance may have … Continue reading →

H.K. (as in Heinz Karl) Gruber paid us a welcome return visit last week, while memories of last year’s trumpet concerto – appropriately titled Aerial — continue their happy throb. At the season’s final Green Umbrella, he unfurled his Zeitfluren … Continue reading →