Make Music, Drink Wine, and Be Nice to Animals

I am in agreement with Stephen Hawking and James Lovelock – one has only to glance at the last decades’ rates of extinctions, deforestation and the hockey stick-like graph of the human explosion to realize that something’s going to have to give very soon. It’s extremely doubtful that humanity is going to find a solution…

Open Letter to the Canadian Cultural Attaché of Mexico

Dear Mr. Bailey, I enjoyed, last week, a wonderful and successful time in the city and country in which you are presently the Canadian Cultural Attaché: Mexico. I represented Canada for the opening concerts of the Festivál del Centro Histórico, performing as soloist with the National Symphony of Mexico on March 31 and April 2.…

My First Nutcracker (a review)

Some unqualified reviewing by someone who refuses to read program notes and only goes to Lincoln Center when Mom visits. NUTCRACKER: NYCBallet, Dec 23, 2016 Lincoln Center, 2 PM Matinee  We sat down in what resembled a supervised kindergarten on Princess Day but I am delighted to report that little folks are just as taken by…

Gender Bias in Classical Music, the Berliner Morgenpost and beyond!

(Want to read this in German? Click hier!) The criticism of art is just opinion, and a reviewer has a right to her or his own. Though I may disagree from time to time, my public responses have been due only to factual errors. Earlier this May I read a review (English translation here) by Herr Felix…

English translaion of the MoPo review

Original post is HERE A Fascinating, Troubling Violinist BERLINER MORGENPOST 02 MAY.2015 CLASSICAL REVIEW The Canadian Lara St. John performs at the Kammermusiksaal By Felix Stephan Lara St. John plays Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in an arrangement created especially for her. One can hardly turn eye nor ear away from her. The Canadian is…

Mozart in the Cannibal Jungle

Some folks might remember that a while ago, Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times went to a young violinist’s concert at Le Poisson Rouge, panned it; loads of my colleagues on social media went around reposting the review, usually humblebragging (“Oooh, thank god this didn’t happen to me when I got a Times review!”);…

Rejoinder to the Washington Post reviews of Mozart in the Jungle

Comments on Occasional Factual Errors of the Washington Post’s two Reviews of the Amazon Series Mozart In the Jungle. Here are the complete WP articles: Critique # 1 and Critique # 2. Washington Post: “So it is remarkable to me that no one bothered to run the script by anybody who could point out its significant divergences from fact or,…

The making of Holiday Card 2013

From the 1700 (or so) folks who receive my Holiday Card in their non-virtual actual real physical mailbox each year, I generally get two reactions: “How cute!!” (meaning, of course, my baby dragon in his various get-ups) and: “Nice photoshop!” Someone who is so old-fashioned as to make a card, write in it, put it in an…