“Bach’s Passion continues to move audiences nearly three centuries after it was first heard in St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Germany. Standing as one of the pillars of Western sacred music, it is at once monumental and intimate, deeply sorrowful and powerful.”
For the full story, please see NPR.org.
It is that time of the year–time for Musical America’s list of summer music festivals! Check this list against your summer calendar.
John Luther Adams for “Become Ocean”. See the full list of winners and finalists at the Pulitzer.org.
“Accoustic engineer Trevor Cox was inspired to embark on his life’s grandest quest when he climbed down to the bottom of a sewer.
An expert who designs treatments to optimize the acoustics of concert halls and lecture rooms, Cox was participating in a TV interview on the acoustics of sewers when he was struck by something. “I heard something interesting down there, a sound sprialing around the sewer,” he says. “It kind of took me by surprise, and it got me thinking: what other remarkable sounds are out there?“
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-are-acoustic-wonders-world-180950043/#PmjTt2rp1rezf0B9.99
“What is music? There’s no end to the parade of philosophers who have wondered about this, but most of us feel confident saying: ‘I know it when I hear it.’ Still, judgments of musicality are notoriously malleable. That new club tune, obnoxious at first, might become toe-tappingly likeable after a few hearings. Put the most music-apathetic individual in a household where someone is rehearsing for a contemporary music recital and they will leave whistling Ligeti. The simple act of repetition can serve as a quasi-magical agent of musicalisation. Instead of asking: ‘What is music?’ we might have an easier time asking: ‘What do we hear as music?’ And a remarkably large part of the answer appears to be: ‘I know it when I hear it again.’”
For the full story, please see aeon.
“Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 94.”
Read about Seeger’s life in The New York Times.
“Fifty years ago, the governor of Indiana banned the Kingsmen’s Louie Louie for being obscene. The FBI then spent two years investigating its lyrics, cementing the song’s reputation as rock’s ultimate rebel anthem, recorded by everyone from the Stooges to the Clash”
Read the full story at The Guardian.
Blues guitarist Tommy Bankhead rubbed shoulders with some of the genre’s royalty, from Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James to Albert King and Sonny Boy Williamson. But visitors to the overgrown St. Louis cemetery where Bankhead was buried more than a decade ago would never know his musical legacy. Or his name. Read more at ctvnews.ca
Beneath the shimmering lights of a bar in western Beijing, a group of roughly two dozen retirees fell still under the baton of the 64-year-old choir conductor Li Xiaojin. With a flick of his wrist, Mr. Li sent the Beijing Founding Figures Group into a sonorous rendition of “Longing for the Red Army,” a well-known Communist revolutionary number. Read more at the New York Times
Those who are bothered by the idea that young Mainers may never have been exposed to a regional Maine accent might be cheered to hear that a pair of central Maine songwriters hope to buck the trend by injecting a strong dose of Maine-isms into the chorus rooms of schools across the state. Read more at the Portland Press-Herald.