Check out Lloyd Grove’s latest piece at The Daily Beast, “Is [Roger] Ailes Finished at Fox?” It follows on the heels of Grove’s Saturday column and this Sunday New York Times profile of Ailes. One factor that Grove neglects to mention in his newest piece is Ailes’s latest project, the laughable failure that is FOX Business Channel. Bank on this: within two months of Ailes being out the door at NewsCorp, you’ll see at least two of FOX News Channel’s “marquee” names quickly expunged from a cable outlet that will get serious about actual journalism agreeing to an amicable parting from the cable outlet, perhaps even joining Ailes at his next Media Mordor.
Category Archives: Blog
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Monday Morning Laugh: Saint Peter Meets a Musician
Via Gerald-Kocher-via-Richard-Schneider:
A doctor dies and just before the gates of heaven he meets the gatekeeper St. Peter. St Peter asks…
Continue reading Monday Morning Laugh: Saint Peter Meets a Musician
Papa Pierre
Half a century ago, classical musicians – including then-fireband of the avant garde Pierre Boulez – would have immediately associated that nickname with one of the greatest maestros of all time, Pierre Monteux. The Sunday New York Times profiles Boulez, now one of classical music’s most respected mentors and esenior statesmen.
Music headlines: Good news, bad news
Gramophone and The New York Times report that Russian-born American pianist Kirill Gerstein has won the quadrenially-granted $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. I’ve been mightily impressed by his debut CD recording for OehmsClassics, and hopefully this award will bring the name of this mightily worthy pianist to a broader audience.
The Boston Globe and AP are reporting that conductor Seizi Ozawa has been diagnosed with esophageal cancer — the same disease that claimed ny dad’s life — and has cancelled all of his scheduled appearances for the next six months to undergo treatment. Esophageal cancer is tough and persistent, but judging from the news reports it was caught early, a factor that is likely to greatly improve Maestro Ozawa’s prognosis.
Spelunking for Well-digitized Vinyl
If you have not yet stumbled upon Grumpy’s Classics Cave, you are depriving yourself of some extremely rare aural treats. Yes, a bit of time is required to download Grumpy’s lossless .flac files, but your patience will be well rewarded. His latest offering from the cave is an exceptional vintage recording of lute music by John Dowland played with pre-historically-informed, almost neo-Romantic passion by Mildred Clary.
ECM at 40
The New York Times‘s Steve Smith profiles the groundbreaking German record label and its iconoclastic founder Manfred Eicher.
Happy Holidays and the Rest Is Nuts…
How can I not steer you to a blog post at Classical Iconoclast that touches on Christmas greetings from the late Karlheinz Stockhausen and takes a controversial swipe at Alex Ross’s much-praised The Rest Is Noise?
Vintage Holiday Cheer
Yes, I know it’s from an Easter oratorio. Yes, you’d expect me to post an historically informed version. But no! Here’s a 1938 aircheck of the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Handel’s Messiah (in what sounds to me to be Mozart’s arrangement) performed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Tonkunstkoor conducted by Willem Mengelberg, with a little bit of audio restoration from a so-so source by yours truly.
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Hear last year’s early electrical holiday cheer here.
Piano Gems from the Glorious Socialist Workers’ Paradise
A surprisingly good confluence of solo piano music from the former Soviet Union has found its way to the CD, SACD, and DVD formats in 2009. Four of these releases are of particular merit, and one of them made my Best of 2009 list.
Continue reading Piano Gems from the Glorious Socialist Workers’ Paradise
Best Recordings of 2009: More Critics Weigh In
Now that you’ve had a chance to take in my modest, understated views on this year’s best classical recordings, I feel it only fair to point to a few other top ten lists:
Continue reading Best Recordings of 2009: More Critics Weigh In