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Christmas in Music: Memory, Wonder, and Tradition

November 1, 2026

Below are the program notes I wrote for the December 1, 2026 Holiday Concert by the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. Tickets can be purchased here. Christmas and music are inextricably connected. Holiday concerts are an annual event throughout the Western world. The repertory is enormous. A song written for a Hollywood film can become as much […]

Pene Pati – Nessun Dorma

October 27, 2026

Puccini’s last tenor aria is the title of a 2024 album by Samoan tenor Pene Pati. Pati was born in Samoa in 1987 and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. He studied at the Wales International Academy of Voice in Cardiff and subsequently trained in San Francisco Opera’s Merola and Adler programs. In 2015 he […]

Schumpeter and Amazon – Coming and Going

September 15, 2026

The Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) is famous for his use of the concept of Creative Destruction. It describes how capitalism advances: new products, technologies, and business methods displace established ones. The innovations that create wealth and improve productivity also destroy older businesses and jobs. For Schumpeter, this continual upheaval was the central engine of […]

The Rigoletto Quartet

September 1, 2026

Rigoletto was Verdi’s seventeenth opera. Julian Budden, author of the definitive three-volume study of Verdi’s operas, compares Rigoletto’s place in Verdi’s development with that of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. The opera marks the beginning of Verdi’s mature period, in which nearly every subsequent work would be a masterpiece. As Benjamin Britten remarked, “Verdi seemed to have […]

The Metropolitan Opera Archives

August 16, 2026

The performance history (1883-1985) of the Met was compiled in print and released in the massive Annals of the Metropolitan Opera in 1989. It was published in two volumes. The first was Chronology 1883-1985, while the second was Tables 1883-1985. I had a copy of the print edition that I used frequently. In 2005 the […]

LSO Concert Celebrating America’s 250th

July 12, 2026

A video of the second half of the Lubbock Symphony’s May 23, 2026 concert is below. The conductor is David Cho, the LSO’s music director.

Charles Craig – English tenor

July 7, 2026

Charles Craig was born in London on December 3, 1919, and died on January 23, 1997. He came from a large, unmusical family – he was the youngest of fifteen children. As a child, he was fond of the recordings of Enrico Caruso, though he didn’t consider a career as a singer. Craig worked in […]

El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego in HD

May 30, 2026

The Met’s new production of Gabriela Lena Frank’s opera El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego was telecast today. It was the final show of the 25-26 series of broadcasts. The opera takes place on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), November 2, 1957, the year of Diego Rivera’s death and three years […]

Michael Tilson Thomas Dies

April 28, 2026

Conductor, composer, and educator Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) passed away on April 22, 2026, at age 81 at his San Francisco home, following a battle with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain cancer. As the San Francisco Symphony’s music director laureate, he was celebrated for his transformative 25-year tenure (1995–2020), which established the orchestra as a […]

Music for America’s 250th Birthday

April 13, 2026

The program notes for the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra’s May 23, 2026, concert marking America’s 250th birthday are below. Tickets can be purchased here. American Salute Composed in 1942 at the height of World War II, American Salute by Morton Gould stands as one of the most exuberant and enduring expressions of American musical patriotism. The […]

De Minimis

March 27, 2026

A small, bright life once pranced about my hand,A surge of joy that filled each silent room;With darting eyes that seemed to understand,He chased away the darkness and the gloom. With steps so light that left their mark so deep,Each move a grace upon my heart’s constraintAnd now the silence where he used to leapFalls […]

The Greatest Musical Composition Ever – VII

March 16, 2026

I already covered this piece four years ago. It’s so grand that I decided to do it again with a musical analysis and a different solist and transcription. The Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 is likely the greatest work in Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ repertoire and therefore the greatest work for the […]

The Met’s 26-27 Season

February 19, 2026

The Metropolitan Opera officially announced its 2026–27 season today, revealing a scaled-back schedule of 17 productions – the fewest in over 60 years due to ongoing financial constraints. There are also three special events. General Manager Peter Gelb announced he will retire in 2030. He noted that the reduced season is a response to budget […]

New Insight Into the Cause of Lupus

January 9, 2026

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks healthy tissues and organs, causing widespread inflammation affecting skin, joints, kidneys, heart, lungs, and brain, with symptoms like fatigue, fever, rashes (especially a butterfly-shaped facial rash), joint pain, and mouth sores that vary in severity and occur in flares and remissions, […]

Program Notes for Falla, Márquez, and Lalo

December 8, 2025

The program notes I wrote for the upcoming Lubbock Symphony Orchestra concert (January 24, 2026) are below. Tickets can be purchased here. The Three-Cornered Hat Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929) was a Russian art critic, patron, and impresario who founded the Ballets Russes company in 1909. Over the next 20 years he commissioned some of the leading composers of his […]