Gathering Note

Notes from the concert hall

Tag: Metropolitan Opera

  • What comes after

    It’s a strange thing to survive a mass shooting and, years later, feel grateful for the knowledge it leaves behind. Grateful for understanding what comes after, and how that single event reshapes every life it touches. Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence is built entirely from that “after.” I’ve just returned from seeing it in New York, and…

  • Classical music’s youth movement grows up, grows wise

    Classical music’s youth movement grows up, grows wise

    Classical music has an uneasy relationship with youth. The very word “classical” suggests age, tradition, dust on velvet seats. Yet the field periodically becomes infatuated with young conductors, as if a twenty-something on the podium might rescue an art form everyone agrees is perpetually dying. The counterargument is equally familiar: conducting requires life experience, the…