First there was life; then death and then life again. Perhaps that’s because human have a natural tendency to aspire...
If a record label – or imprint – were to be considered an “unfillable” library in the sense that the great Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges...
Ana-Marija Markovina: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Complete Works for Piano [Solo] Few composers – artistic geniuses at that – have had their entire careers disparaged, their...
John Cage The Complete Etudes Australes – Grete Sultan: pf Guru to some, charlatan to others, John Cage constantly challenged the very idea of music, using randomness as a...
Thanks to the existential – and mind-numbing – angst of the world’s worst health catastrophe in 100 years Music in the Barns has had to live...
The story of Music in the Barns is like a story worthy of the pen of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known as Lewis Carroll. “Why,” you...
In an ideal world we would have no cause to refer to Solomiya Ivakhiv as a “Ukrainian” violinist and pedagogue, which she is. But she is...
There appear to be no hard borders that separate styles, dialects and – it now seems even unique national traditions and cultural topographies – in music...
“Nationalism” has a rather bad connotation today, thanks to the rise of the far-right. In music, though – especially in classical music in the 18th and...
A preview of Simon Thacker’s World Premiere of Pashyanti on Guitar features special guest dancer Aishwarya Raut. I cannot think of a guitarist of our time...
The nature of exile [παρεπιδημος or parepidémos] is rooted in both mythology and history and is often expressed as a fate worse than death. Exile is...
All music – indeed all art itself – is a conceit in which the artist perpetrates one or another act of beautiful or decorous vanity upon...
For someone who plays the cello with such maturity and profound beauty, it’s odd to think that Hee-Young Lim might have once chosen not to be...
If you are new not just to the kind of Carnatic (South Indian) music on the Aditya Prakash Ensemble’s Diaspora Kid, but to Indian music in...
The unvarnished beauty that ensues when art and science meet and then go hand in hand is sometimes expressed via the magisterium of the intellect –...
Michael Colgrass – Side by Side: 1: Letter from Mozart; 2:Side by Side; 3: Schubert Birds Boston Modern Orchestra Project – Gil Rose: cond; Andrew Lamb:...
The Canadian calendar – just like those in the US and Europe and like the Holy Roman Empire – is full of holidays celebrating some patron...
With this epic double disc, Trikala Simon Thacker has elevated his musicianship into a rarefied realm. He is alone among guitarists who have been able to...
The nine hundred and fourth at Toronto’s Koerner Hall happened on the eve of one of the coldest (and snowiest) days in Canada. But it was...
“We have come a long, long way but we still have a long, long way to go.” (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) For two hours...
If a record label – or imprint – were to be considered an “unfillable” library in the sense that the...
Ana-Marija Markovina: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Complete Works for Piano [Solo] Few composers – artistic geniuses at that – have...
John Cage The Complete Etudes Australes – Grete Sultan: pf Guru to some, charlatan to others, John Cage constantly challenged the very idea...
There has been a plethora of re-issued recordings in the past few years, but none quite like this on –...
The brilliant young guitarist Plínio Fernandes proves once again [although he probably did not set out to do so] that...
Mozart Sonatas K.282, K.283, K.310, K.331, K332, K545 & K576 If classical radio stations [in Toronto, at any rate] are...
Nella Rojas, or simply Nella, is a new voice hailing from the Venezuelan Island of Margarita Born in Venezuela, Nella...
Rail Band of the Train Station Hotel, Ambassadeurs of the Motel of Bamako, Ambassadeurs Internationaux, and lately, Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux: so many bands that...
His sugarcane-sweet melodies, pop-soul hooks and powerful guitar riffs, relinquish a conventional stereotype that exemplifies much of the Latin music...