Archive for October, 2008
The New Music
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Proving once again that Yo-Yo Ma is pretty hip (meant sans irony thank you) he’s announced a cool contest in collaboration with Indaba Music wherein you can collaborate with him virtually. He’s making available the classic tune “Dona Nobis Pacem” onto which composers and musicians can graft their collaborations. On Songs [...]
Yo-Yo Ma and the Fabs, Sweet Baby James as Bonus
By Daniel Felsenfeld
In the last few weeks I’ve been ensconced at a place called Yaddo, which for those who do not know is a paradisiacal establishment in Upstate New York wherein the artists blessed enough to be accepted come to gather, dine, and, primarily, to work very hard. We’re given a little cabin in [...]
The Hat
By Daniel Felsenfeld
If I had to pick one Sondheim show that speaks most directly to me, it would absolutely be Sunday in the Park With George, the brilliantly-conceived show (written with James Lapine) wherein the Tableau of George Seraut’s Sunday on the Island of Le grande jatte becomes especially vivant. Characters emerge from the [...]
More on Sondheim: The Story So Far
By Daniel Felsenfeld
As I said in an earlier post, one of the prizes of The Story So Far is the original cast recording of Evening Primrose, one of Sondheim’s best—and strangest—offerings. It was written for television, and though I’ve tried for years to get hold of it on video, I’ve never managed (not [...]
My Three Hours with Stephen Sondheim
By Daniel Felsenfeld
As a young composer, I aspired to the Broadway stage, like my two heroes Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Bernstein having passed a year or so before, I decided, brash 22-year-old that I was, to write a letter to Stephen Sondheim asking him if he took private students. I was pretty sure I [...]
Enter to Win a Chance to Record with Yo-Yo Ma!!
VERY SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY FOR FANS AND MUSICIANS… READ ON!!
Today, Indaba Music, the leading online music collaboration web application, announced an opportunity for musicians to collaborate with world-class artists through a new program titled, “Celebrate and Collaborate with Yo-Yo Ma”. Starting today, Mr. Ma is making available a pre-recorded melody of the classic piece, “Dona Nobis [...]
Assassins, A Little Night Music, etc. from Sondheim “The Story So Far”
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Personally, I like theatre to go to extremes. In college, I loved Tenessee Williams, Wedekind, Joe Orton, Howard Barker, Howard Korder, the Peter Brook production of Marat/Sade, and Bertolt Brecht (especially his collaborations with Kurt Weill). They seemed to not just show the same thing onstage that we could see in life but [...]
Daniel Felsenfeld on WNYC Tonight
I wanted to alert readers that yours truly will be the guest on WNYC’s program EVENING MUSIC on Wednesday, October 1, as part of their Bernstein proceedings and I’ll be talking about Mass. The piece is a hot New York topic because of an upcoming performance of the piece at Carnegie Hall but, as I’ve [...]