On Saturday night, I headed to Carnegie Hall to see Trey Anastasio, lead singer and guitarist of Phish, perform with the New York Philharmonic. But that—more on that later—was a sort of a tangent to the orchestra’s main event, which occurs four nights later. The Philharmonic’s opening-night gala will be on September 16, when they play for the first time with Alan Gilbert officially at the helm as music director—a starry affair with Renee Fleming, who will sing Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mì. on a concert that also includes a EXPO, a premiere by composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg, and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

It’s customary for orchestras to welcome new music directors with a fair amount of hoopla. Gilbert is no exception, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s young and doesn’t mind digging into the full spectrum of duties required by the modern-day music director of a symphony orchestra. Gilbert also has an especially strong connection to the Philharmonic; he grew up in the city, and his parents have both been violinists in the orchestra (his father retired in 2001, and his mother, Yoko Takebe, still plays in the Phil). The orchestra’s first international tour under Gilbert will be to Asia this October—a nice connection for Gilbert, since his mother is Japanese.

Wednesday night at the Philharmonic will be the kind of event that’s impossible to avoid if you have even the slightest interest in the arts. A certain number of exalted New Yorkers will attend the concert in person, of course, but you’ll also be able to watch it on TV on Live from Lincoln Center, and which will be simulcast on the soon-to-be-late-lamented WXQR radio (whose programming will move to WNYC at FM 105.9 on October 8, the same day the Philharmonic departs for Asia). For those that miss the Wednesday the 16th broadcast, this concert will also air for SundayArts September 20th at noon. read more

I’ve been kicking myself for having missed a number of music events in New York this spring featuring ETHEL, the New York-based amplified string quartet. They don’t do a huge number of gigs—like all working musicians they have packed schedules filled with other musical things, and don’t exclusively devote themselves to ETHEL-ing. So as it turns out, the only performance I actually caught was their world premiere performance—with laptop composer Jay Flower and hyper-accordionist Michael Ward Bergeman—of a new work by Osvaldo Golijov at the April opening of WNYC’s Greene Performance Space.

The latest self-kick came after hearing a stunning new CD called John the Revelator, Phil Kline’s eerie and strangely uplifting modern-day mass, on which ETHEL performs with the all-male a cappella group Lionheart (hear the third movement from John the Revelator after the jump). read more

At a concert this winter, I ran into a friend, a practicing lawyer who also holds a degree in music. She admits she is baffled by classical music reviews and wanted to know, “What is the point of music criticism, anyway?”

Um … what is the POINT? I was aghast. As someone who devours music criticism, I was also stumped to come up with an easy answer to a question that sounds simple, but is not. My friend allowed that she could see the point if future ticket sales were involved, as in a Broadway show or a four-week run of an opera, but she didn’t see why a historical account of a one-off concert that will never occur again was worth reading about.

This question is certainly not a new one; it came up recently during New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini’s February “Talk to the Newsroom” Q&A with readers, where he addressed this question, among many others. Tommasini wrote, “Do my reviews sell tickets? I honestly try not to dwell on that too much. With artists and composers I am excited by, especially if I feel that they are not getting their due, I certainly hope that my enthusiasm and advocacy will make a difference. When I really don’t like something, say a lame, clunky and clueless production of a Mozart opera, I do not think about actively discouraging people from going to it. I just try to describe it in a way that makes it sound as ridiculous as I found it to be.”

Clearly, Tommasini doesn’t see his main role as ticket-seller or buzz-killer—though ticket sales or lack thereof are an inevitable byproduct. read more

These days, when you hear news reports about the daunting challenges facing the arts and culture world, it’s typically problems of the financial sort being discussed. For the Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, who plays Middle Eastern music with his Kinan Azmeh Quartet tonight at St. Peter’s Church, it’s just one of many challenges he faces. (He wrote a song, “Airports,” as a response to his experience of international traveling with a Syrian passport.) Azmeh, born in Damascus in 1976, trained in Damascus and at Juilliard; he moves fluidly between classical, jazz, and traditional Syrian styles, and he performs frequently in the Middle East and in the West. His September 2008 performance at Merkin Hall got a rave review from Vivien Schweitzer in The New York Times. Azmeh has just come from Washington, D.C., where he was one of many artists to perform in “Arabesque,” the Kennedy Center’s three-week theater/dance/music festival celebrating Arab culture.

This week’s concert, “Music for Peace,” is part of a “Day for Peace” that includes poetry and prayers and is presented by Musicians For Harmony, Saint Peter’s Church, and Midtown Arts Common. The concert is a fundraiser for the Iraqi Student Project, which helps young Iraqi students get an education at American colleges; pianist Karam Salem, an Indiana University student sponsored by ISP, will also perform Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31, at the concert. The peace day was timed to mark the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq. read more