Chinese musical tradition evolved mostly independently from that of the West, and, until the détente of the 1970s, there were few attempts to bring the two traditions together. Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing exchange of music and musicians between China and the rest of the world, and today, more and […]
Music
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Guitar goddess
The big-boned gal with strawberry-blonde hair arrived by bike at my moving-from-Seattle-to-the-sunny-South sale. Dressed like a trailer-trash gypsy–part exotic, part quixotic and just a touch tacky–she perused the plants, books, CDs and discarded clothing (most of which would have fit her style perfectly), finally settling on a piece of my mother’s old furniture. But how […]
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Romeo, Romeo
Among the casualties of this week’s blizzard was a rare performance by the North Carolina Symphony of orchestral excerpts from Hector Berlioz’s “dramatic symphony,” Roméo et Juliette. We were planning to give the pre-concert lecture for Friday’s performance. Now, with lots of space and nothing to review, we thought we’d share some of our musings […]
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Well-kept secrets
It was with good reason that bass Thomas Woodman, as the villainous governor Pizarro in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, jumped back a few feet when Dinah Bryant, as Fidelio/Leonore, cried out Tôd’t erst sein Weib! (First kill his wife). Bryant packs quite a wallop with an enormous voice that belies her diminutive frame. In fact, strong, […]
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Anarchy in the Piedmont
If you were to asked where the coolest, funkiest place to live in the Triangle was, Wake Forest, the quaint, tree-lined home of the conservative Southeastern Theological Seminary, probably wouldn’t be the first town to come to mind. But if you took a walk down one of those tree-lined streets, on a cold, rainy Sunday, […]