Podcasts about q2 music

It's a format as old as time: two guys sit down to play music and talk about it. Soundward, a continuing collaboration between Relevant Tones and Q2 Music, features lively conversation, new releases from composers around the globe and interesting new discoveries. Hosted by Seth Boustead and Phil Kline Produced by Sarah Zwinklis and Hannis Brown Music Canticles of the Holy Wind, mvt. I Sky With Four Suns by John Luther Adams The Crossing chamber choir; Donald Nally, conductor Crumbling Arches by Vytautas Germanavičius Trio Kaskados: Albina Šikšniūtė, piano; Rusnė Mataitytė, violin; Edmundas Kulikauskas, cello A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke: Uncut Emeralds by Vijay Iyer Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet; Vijay Iyer, piano and electronics Songlines by Michael Ippolito Attacca Quartet: Amy Schroeder, violin; Keiko Tokunaga, violin; Nathan Schram, viola; Andrew Yee, cello Canticles of the Holy Wind, mvt. IV Hour of the Doves by John Luther Adams The Crossing chamber choir; Donald Nally, conductor

Henry Threadgill’s music and community can’t be separated; there is no boundary: challenge and failure and growth in music are the same as challenge and failure and growth in life. This Meet the Composer bonus track shares an exclusive performance by Henry Threadgill's Zooid ensemble of I Never, recorded live by Q2 Music at the Village Vanguard on Oct. 2, 2016. Throughout his career, Threadgill has led countless ensembles with diverse instrumentations and personalities. And in each of them, he finds a way to unearth a type of asymmetry – a blend of unease and transcendence that comes across in his remarkably structured compositions. He unites musicians in the same way as he composes: with affection for the mysterious, embrace of the unexpected, and spontaneity guided by a rigorous intellect. As Threadgill has said, “Improvisation is a way to live your life and solve problems.” Music is one outlet, one way to activate this philosophy, which is something we hear echoed often from his collaborators. In this recording, we hear the 2016 Pulitzer Prize laureate leading his longest standing chamber ensemble, Zooid, in a live performance inside the legendary New York City underground jazz venue, the Village Vanguard. Performers: Henry Threadgill, alto saxLiberty Ellman, tresChristopher Hoffman, celloJosé Davila, tubaElliot Humberto Kavee, drums, percussion This live recording was produced by Curtis Macdonald and engineered by Edward Haber (technical director and remix), Irene Trudel, Duke Markos, Bill Moss and Curtis Macdonald.

Q2 Music's Phil Kline joins us to chat about music that strikes a chord. The newest recordings that are certain to become a classic. Hosted by Seth Boustead and Phil Kline Produced by Sarah Zwinklis Music Double Happiness by Christopher Cerrone Duet with Shifting Ground by Meredith Monk Pavement Steps by Meredith Monk Dark, Light 2 by Meredith Monk Expectancy by Marcin Bortnowski Tassel by Anna Meredith Symphony No. 2 Innerspace, mvt. IV Fast by Jonathan Leshnoff

Meet the Composer is thrilled to bring you a world-premiere recording as our first bonus track of Season Three! Our previous episode The Performer: Part One featured, among other things, a really fascinating conversation with the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas (if you haven’t heard the episode yet, go check it out!). As we are a talk show about music, we are always dying to simply play some music, and so today we bring you our exclusive, first recording of Haas’ 9th String Quartet. The whole thing! Featuring the fantastic JACK Quartet. The JACK Quartet has spent years performing and championing an older piece of Haas’, his 3rd String Quartet. They played it so well, in fact, Haas decided to write his 9th quartet specifically for the JACKs, taking full advantage of their superpower: just intonation. So we figured, what could be better than having the JACKs over to Q2 Music to bring this piece to life? Like his 3rd String Quartet, this piece comes with an unusual stipulation: it is to be performed in complete, india ink, can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face darkness. So turn out the lights and join Meet the Composer and the JACKs for the first-ever recording of this spectacular piece of oddly-tuned awesome. –Nadia Sirota

It's a format as old as time: two guys sit down to play music and talk about it. Soundward, a continuing collaboration between Relevant Tones and Q2 Music, features lively conversation, new releases from composers around the globe and interesting new discoveries. Hosted by Seth Boustead and Phil Kline Produced by Sarah Zwinklis

From the home of the Peabody Award-winning Meet the Composer, Q2 Music is proud today to launch the first season of a 10-part podcast, Helga. Hosted by internationally acclaimed singer Helga Davis, Helga features probing conversations with creative and performing artists who have fiercely unique voice and a stake in the matter of social change. The premiere episode features opera and theater director Peter Sellars, one of the most all-around inspiring people you'll ever come across. The acclaimed, unconventional Sellars invites himself and audiences to embrace challenge and push their emotional and spiritual boundaries. His outlook on life and creativity is informed by the belief that hell is just a branch of heaven when correctly viewed. Davis and Sellars talk about his work with the Flexn dancers and Bach's St. Matthew Passion, his sister who runs a dance machine arcade for teenagers in Las Vegas, and how he still isn't sure what he's been put here for. “The actual script of your life is way better than the script you wrote. What you had in mind is just not interesting compared to what happened. And always what happened is way deeper, way more challenging in one way but always way more pleasurable in another, because you do have to surrender and you just have to enjoy falling forward and not being able to catch yourself.” –Peter Sellars Subscribe to Helga on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow Helga Davis on facebook. Watch: Helga Davis hosts "Peter Sellars and Friends from The Greene Space at WQXR."

Q2 Music is thrilled to offer an advance listen to Helga, a new podcast that features conversations with diverse, uncompromising and socially conscious artists across the creative and performing arts spectrum. Launching next week with two episodes — acclaimed opera director Peter Sellars (Monday, Nov. 14) and singer and My Brightest Diamond bandleader Shara Nova (Tuesday, Nov. 15) — Helga's first season will continue with 10 episodes released Mondays through Jan. 9. Get a sneak peek of excerpts from the first few episodes in the audio above, and please help new audiences discover Helga by giving the show a rating and review on iTunes. “Artists play an important role on the front lines of social change, often confronting issues in ways that touch people more intimately than political rhetoric. I couldn’t be more excited (and nervous!) to launch this podcast, and to speak with artists across the creative spectrum who display a radical autonomy in their work, and actively push against their place in the larger community and culture — and show us how we can too.” — Helga Davis Subscribe to Helga on iTunes. About the host: Helga Davis is a sought-after vocalist for anyone who had something experimental or difficult to communicate. She has collaborated with noted musicians including Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Nona Hendryx, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Shara Nova and Paola Prestini — who in 2012, wrote the chamber opera Oceanic Verses for her. During that year, she was also chosen from among 40 performers to star as principal in the international revival of Robert Wilson’s and Philip Glass’s landmark opera Einstein on the Beach. Read more.

The second season of Q2 Music's LPR Live podcast launches with a performance from composer and Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld. Her album The Ridge melds elements of classical, folk and pop and at times even simulates the sounds of electronic looping, but in an all-acoustic setup. We caught up with her on the last show of her tour promoting The Ridge to discuss the influence of yoga on her music and the importance of daily discipline. Then we join the audience at Le Poisson Rouge for a performance of the title track with Colin Stetson on the electronic wind instrument the Lyricon and drummer (and fellow Belle Orchestre member) Stefan Schneider. The Ridge is Neufeld's second album, following her debut Hero Brother. In addition to performing solo and with Arcade Fire, she is a founding member of Montréal's Bell Orchestre and of a new duo with her husband, the saxophonist Colin Stetson. This performance was recorded April 15, 2016 at Le Poisson Rouge.

Back by popular demand! Seth welcomes Phil Kline, host on Q2 Music and composer who makes music in many genres and contexts, into a rousing debate and conversation about newly released music like Abrahamsen's Let Me Tell You while rediscovering old favorites like Satie's Portrait De Socrate. Another exciting installment of Soundward! Check out Phil Kline weekdays at 11am – with repeat presentations at 7 pm – on Q2 Music Hosted by Seth Boustead and Phil Kline Produced by Sarah Zwinklis and Hannis Brown Music Let Me Tell You, by Hans Abrahamsen Voice-Barbara Hannigan, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Andris Nelsons Four Visions, by Thiago Cury Epifania Piano Trio There Are Neither Wholes Nor Parts, by Scott McLaughlin Trio Scordatura “At Least Two Things” String Quartet No. 8, Night Descending Like Smoke, mvt. IV Night Descending, by Per Nørgård The Kroger Quartet Socrate, Part 1, by Erik Satie Voice-Barbara Hannigan, Piano-Reinbert de Leeuw

On this week's Snacky Tunes, Greg Bresnitz interviews Claire Wadsworth of the restaurant La Copine. La Copine began as a pop-up kitchen in 2009. Chef Nikki Hill partnered with singer-songwriter Claire Wadsworth in Philadelphia, where they started their business serving farm-to-table brunch on a food cart. In 2012, Nikki and Claire moved to California. Now living in Yucca Valley, they have opened their first restaurant in Flamingo Heights. After the break, a live in-studio performance by violinist Nadia Sirota. “A one-woman contemporary-classical commissioning machine” (Pitchfork), violist Nadia Sirota is best known for her singular sound and expressive execution, coaxing works and collaborations from the likes of Nico Muhly, Daníel Bjarnason, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Judd Greenstein, Marcos Balter, and Missy Mazzoli. Her debut album First Things First (New Amsterdam Records) was named a record of the year by The New York Times, and her follow-up Baroque (Bedroom Community and New Amsterdam) has been called “beautiful music of a higher order than anything else you will hear this year” by SPINMedia website PopMatters. Nadia also hosts the Meet the Composer podcast on Q2 Music, exploring the work of living composers through her interviews and musical selections.

Phil Kline is a composer who makes music in many genres and contexts, from experimental electronics and sound installations to songs, choral, theater, chamber and orchestral music. He also hosts a two-hour show weekdays at 11am – with repeat presentations at 7 pm – on Q2 Music. Seth and Phil passionately discuss music that's hot off the presses in this new series ‘Soundward.' Hosted by Seth Boustead and Phil Kline Produced by Sarah Zwinklis and Hannis Brown George Hurd, Carla Kihlstedt Navigation Without Numbers [EXCERPT] George Hurd: Navigation Without Numbers Nathan Davis Ghostlight [EXCERPT] On the Nature of Thingness Nathan Davis On the Nature of Thingness – An Outside with the Inside in it On the Nature of Thingness George Hurd, Carla Kihlstedt Navigation Without Numbers George Hurd: Navigation Without Numbers Knut Müller Gnomon Stravinsky Les Noces – Scene 4: The Wedding Feast Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto; Stravinsky: Les Noces Zachary Wadsworth A Symphony of Glances – A Symphony of Glances: II. Down the long desolate streets Augenblick Danny Clay, Mabel Kwan Build 1 Inventions Danny Clay, Mabel Kwan Build 5 Inventions

  Nadia Sirota is a busy lady. She’s a violist and recording artist, she’s a member of yMusic, Alarm Will Sound, and ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), she commissions work from new composers, she collaborates with classical and rock music makers (Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Jónsi, and Arcade Fire to name a few) and she’s the host and co-producer of Q2 Music’s contemporary classical music podcast, Meet the Composer. In this episode of Classical Classroom, Sirota talks about new classical music, from what to call it (Alt classical? Concert music? Music?) to the people who are making innovative work right now. Hear music so fresh it will make your clothes smell good.    Music in this episode: Clip from Meet the Composer, episode 10 Andrew Norman “Music in Circles” Caroline Shaw “Partita for 8 Voices” Donnacha Dennehy “Gra Agus Bas” Nico Muhly “Drones and piano” Audio production by Todd “Touché” Hulslander with whale song by Dacia Clay and editing by Mark DiClaudio. To learn more, check out Nadia Sirota’s website. 

This week’s Meet the Composer Bonus Track is a world premiere recording of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s piano work Scape. Scape, like many of Anna’s works, uses extended techniques to create unique, otherworldly textures. For this piece, Anna demands quite a bit of playing INSIDE the instrument, as well as a few somewhat unconventional preparations to the instrument itself. Prepared piano basically means a piano with stuff in it, screws, thimbles, tin foil, pieces of paper, the type of thing that’ll make a piano technician start to sweat. The first couple people to do this type of thing were crazy Americans, Henry Cowell and John Cage. Definitely take a moment to check those guys out, if you have a sec. Anna, very much in keeping with her timbral language, uses these techniques to carve out massive swaths of sonic texture, creating a huge universe in a relatively limited time frame. A couple weeks ago, Cory Smythe, pianist for the International Contemporary Ensemble, stopped by the Q2 Music studios to create the beautiful world premiere recording. –Nadia Sirota

I’m thrilled this week to give you a sneak peek of a new Q2 Music podcast called LPR Live coming out this Fall. It’s hosted by Conor Hanick, a longtime friend and radio colleague, a brilliant pianist and all-around sensitive and insightful advocate for new music. The performances will come from Greenwich Village's Le Poisson Rouge, a stalwart showcase for new music in New York City and a trendsetting venue that's been “serving art and alcohol since 2009.” Here’s a quote from Conor about the show: This is not your typical pre-concert hosting, and the content is not your typical pre-concert banter. Each episode of LPR Live will weave together a variety of voices that bring you into the heart of the beast of this dynamic downtown, underground performance space and into the personal aspects of the music’s creation and presentation. This is a podcast that will let this exciting new music take its first (digital) breath. Production will create a sonic space where each strand is able to “converse” with its surroundings, and the richness and multi-dimensionality of the voices themselves will create the form, almost like eavesdropping on a conversation in the performer’s greenroom. Join me in welcoming LPR Live into the podcasting family, and stay tuned for more Meet the Composer goodies in the weeks to come.  -Nadia Sirota

I am absolutely THRILLED to present this week’s bonus track, an exclusive in-studio performance of Meredith Monk’s transcendent string quartet Stringsongs. Stringsongs is Meredith’s first string quartet. Written in 2005, the piece was premiered by the Kronos Quartet. I am extremely proud to share this piece now, in a performance by the inimitable ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) in the Q2 Music studios. In the Meet The Composer: Meredith Monk episode, we spent a considerable amount of time focusing on the fascinating processes Meredith has employed constructing some of her vocal music — namely, her using her vocal ensemble to workshop ideas in the air. Stringsongs is an example of a completely different working style; these days, Meredith has been writing more and more scored, instrumental music, and Stringsongs was developed very much that way. The piece is in four movements: "Cliff Light," "Tendrils," "Obsidian Chorale," and "Phantom Strings." This work is a gorgeous example of Meredith lending her gilded aesthetic to a very Classical format. The composer’s program note is below: In Stringsongs, my first piece for string quartet, I explored using instruments to create unexpected textures and sounds in much the same way that I have worked with the voice over many years.  I was inspired by the profound musicianship and passionate commitment of the Kronos Quartet. During the rehearsal period, as I got to know the players, the music came to life in surprising ways, colored by the distinctive "voice" of each musician.   Stringsongs is published by Boosey & Hawkes. This recording session was engineered by Irene Trudel.

Hi, I'm Nadia Sirota, host of Q2 Music's Meet the Composer (MTC). We set out to create something really different with MTC – a look into the minds and creative processes of composers making some of the most innovative, strange and breathtakingly beautiful music today. And we wanted to make these audio portraits feel like a musical experience. Because you supported our Season One Kickstarter, we were able to bring to life our first five hour-long, fully sound-designed episodes. We couldn't have done it without your help. We're so proud of how Season One turned out and so thrilled that MTC spoke to you.  You listened to Meet the Composer over 200,000 times from over 70 countries, via iTunes, wqxr.org and wnyc.org. Tens of thousands heard MTC on terrestrial radio in New York (WNYC), but also in Los Angeles and soon Chicago. We got some great coverage for Season One, including from Radiolab, the BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Vogue plus a wealth of comments and social media posts you can check out here. Here's what Jad Abumrad of WNYC's Radiolab had to say: "Compelling and beautifully produced. One of the best things I've heard in a long time... Talking about music in a way that's compelling can be hard. And so when people do it well, I just feel like you gotta give them props." Help us make Season Two a reality. Learn about our five featured Season Two composers and support Meet the Composer today on Kickstarter. 

The four members of the Dublin Guitar Quartet do not specialize in bouncy jigs and reels. Nor do they play in Guinness-soaked pubs. But while the ensemble is certainly connected to its Irish heritage, its repertoire goes further afield, to minimalist and post-minimalist composers including Philip Glass, Arvo Part and Michael Nyman, as well as modern masters like Igor Stravinsky and György Ligeti. Quartet member Brian Bulger says that the group chose to focus on modern repertoire – frequently in arrangements – as a way to distinguish itself and emphasize its unanimity of sound. "Guitar quartets traditionally tend to be a collection of soloists," he said. "They sit in a straight line and there would be a lot of virtuosity. We thought it would be a great idea to create a quartet that was the equivalent of a string quartet, sitting in a semi-circle and concentrating on string quartet repertoire and choir repertoire as opposed to the standard repertoire." The ensemble's Café Concert highlighted this in two pieces by Glass, starting with an arrangement of his String Quartet No. 2, subtitled "Company."   Earlier this year, the Dublin Guitar Quartet released its latest album, a collection of Glass arrangements, which Q2 Music named an Album of the Week. In his review, Daniel Stephen Johnson praised for its "flawless rhythmic unison and tonal blend makes the four instruments sound like one." Of course, arranging piano or string quartets for guitar can be a logistical stretch: there are questions of how to adjust to the guitar's range and articulations. The Dubliners perform with three six-string instruments along with an eight-string guitar with an extra high string and an extra low string, all designed by Bert Kwakkle, a Dutch guitar maker. When it comes to capturing the intricate rhythmic churn of Glass's scores, the guitarists say it simply comes with time and hard work. The group was formed in 2001 at the Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama, and in recent years, they have toured frequently in North America, Europe and South America. Composers are also writing new works for the ensemble. The guitarists say their next frontier lies in electric guitar quartet repertoire, both through existing pieces like those of the composer Steve Reich, and in a commissioned work by the New York composer Michael Gordon, due to premiere in March 2015. Watch the quartet's performance of Glass's Quartet No. 3, "Mishima," below. Video: Amy Pearl/Kim Nowacki; Audio: George Wellington; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon; Text/Production: Brian Wise

Q2 Music celebrated the launch of its inaugural podcast, Meet the Composer, on Tuesday, June 24 at 7 pm with a music party and live video webcast in The Greene Space at WQXR.  Hosted by Nadia Sirota, the evening included interviews with all five members of Season One of Meet the Composer, including the two most recent Pulitzer Prize winners, John Luther Adams (2014) and Caroline Shaw (2013), as well as fellow innovators Andrew Norman, Marcos Balter, and Donnacha Dennehy. The concert featured a star-studded array of dynamic, award-winning performers: flutist and International Contemporary Ensemble artistic director Claire Chase performs Balter's Pessoa; Hotel Elefant performs Adams's Red Arc/Blue Veil; Attacca String Quartet performs excerpts from Norman's Peculiar Strokes; Cellist Hannah Collins performs Shaw's in manus tuas; and Bang on a Can All-Star pianist Vicky Chow, cellist Ashley Bathgate and violinist Todd Reynolds perform Dennehy's Bulb. Watch video of the entire show: Q2 Music’s Meet the Composer pays homage to the landmark show of the same name hosted by Tim Page for WNYC in the mid to late '80s. Thanks to New Music USA for their flexibility with the use of the “Meet The Composer” name, which became famous though their legacy organization founded by composer John Duffy.

The year 2013 saw plenty of headline-making moments in classical music. Protesters came to the opening night of the Met, while a stagehands strike cancelled the opening night at Carnegie Hall. There were heated debates over women conductors and some complicated celebrations for Richard Wagner. It was another tough year for some orchestras but a good one for Benjamin Britten fans. In this edition of Conducting Business, three experts talk about the past year: Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post; Justin Davidson, classical music and architecture critic for New York magazine; and Heidi Waleson, a classical music critic for the Wall Street Journal. High Points: Anne: In the year that Van Cliburn died, Anne was particularly excited to hear the 22-year-old Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov: “Trifonov is a pianist whom I find totally exciting. I hear a lot of great concerts in the course of a year but I find that Trifonov has something really special and is a really interesting artist and somebody I look forward to hearing again and again.” Justin on Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra's staging of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at the Mostly Mozart Festival: “One of things I really liked about it was it was one of these really portable productions. It was done in a concert hall with the orchestra on stage, no sets, minimal props, costumes that were taken off a clothes rack that was sitting on the stage…With minimal resources they produced one of the most effervescent and inventive productions I’ve seen of that opera. What it said to me is how much you can do with how little.” [Read more of Justin's picks at NYMag.com] Heidi: George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, given its U.S. premiere at Tanglewood in August: “So often you see these new operas and you think, ‘Why did they bother? Why did you turn this movie or this book into an opera?' This was a completely new piece of writing and it had a tension to it from beginning to end. It has a fantastically colorful and intricate orchestration, which includes a solo moment for the viola da gamba." Listen to Written on Skin on Q2 Music   Low Point: The closing of New York City Opera in October after a last-ditch campaign to raise funds for its 2014 season fell through. Anne: “It is not a sign that New York can’t support two opera companies. It is a sign that, due to poor decisions on behalf of the board and a whole sequence of events, this particular thing happened that really didn’t need to happen.” Justin: "One thing that you can take away from that is it is really the product of a classical music and operatic infrastructure that, over the years, got overextended. While we have learned how to expand, trying to do planned shrinkage and figure out how to contract” is tougher for the classical music business. "If you have union contracts and have a season that establishes a kind of baseline, it’s very, very difficult to say ‘we need this to be smaller.’” Heidi: “It was unable to come up with a convincing audience strategy, opera house strategy or even artistic strategy. They did try a few things that I thought were quite interesting – doing for example A Quiet Place, a Leonard Bernstein opera that had never been done in New York… They were in fact trying to reestablish themselves as something that was alternative to the Met, that was a little more forward-looking, and I think it’s really a shame that they couldn’t.” Trends: Anne: The spotlight in 2013 turned to women – women conductors, women composers. “Classical music has proven to have a particularly thick glass ceiling. People are looking at the situation and saying, ‘It’s been years people, why do we still not have very many female conductors on the podium? And when we do, why is it such a big deal?’ There’s still that funny ambivalence about how far we should look at this as a phenomenon and how far we should pretend we’ve all been equal all along.” Justin: The lack of women on major podiums is “a sign of the difficulty that the whole establishment has in adapting at all. What happens is these institutions are very rigid and brittle and when they come up against an obstacle they know that they’re going to splinter and so they avoid the obstacles. It’s a very inflexible set of relationships… Heidi: “The New York Philharmonic seems to be about 50 percent women these days – so why not on the podium?” Justin on the arrival of alternative opera and non-traditional performance venues, as seen in events like the Prototype Festival: “With the cost of real estate in New York, companies are finding cheaper venues and the technology has matured enough so all that you really need is a pretty small room and a fairly minimal investment in machinery to be able to put on a pretty sophisticated multimedia event." Heidi: “There are other organizations doing similar kinds of things: The Gotham Chamber Opera put on a Cavalli opera [Eliogabalo] in a burlesque club... It attracts a different kind of audience. You can break through some of the formality of going to the opera house and sitting in the velvet seat and watching the gold curtain go up."   Surprises: Justin: Caroline Shaw, a 30-year-old New York composer, violinist and singer (right), became the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music for her Partita for 8 Voices (heard at the start of this segment). “It has a quality that almost no contemporary music has, which is joy. It’s something that we’ve forgotten is part of the classical music tradition and an important one.”  Anne: “It’s interesting in that [Shaw] doesn’t even self-identify as a composer but as a violinist. The Pulitzer has been very eager to expand its reach and get outside of the norm of what had been deemed Pulitzer-worthy over the years and I think this is a sign that this is happening.” Heidi on Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s musical of “Fun Home” at the Public Theater: "I see a lot of new operas, and so many of them are overblown, trying so hard that they feel stillborn. 'Fun Home,' based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, tells the story of a critical juncture in Alison’s life: she came out as a lesbian in college, and several months later, her father, whom she had just found out was a closeted gay man, killed himself by walking in front of a truck. The piece uses music in the way that you wish these new operas would – to deeply explore feelings in a raw, immediate way." (Note: this "bonus pick" did not make it into the podcast.)   Listen to the full discussion above and tell us: what were your high and low points in classical music in 2013? Photo credits: Shutterstock; Caroline Shaw by Piotr Redliński, 2013

The year 2012 supplied plenty of headline-making moments in classical music. There was the infamous marimba ring tone at the New York Philharmonic, the opera singer with the controversial tattoos, the composer accused of plagiarism, and cellos booted off airplanes. It was a tough year for American orchestras and a good year for entrepreneurship. In this podcast, three highly opinionated critics give us their reviews of 2012: Anne Midgette, classical music critic of the Washington Post; Steve Smith, a classical music critic for the New York Times and music editor at Time Out New York; and Heidi Waleson, a classical music critic for the Wall Street Journal. Below are excerpts of some of their comments. Surprises Heidi: David Lang's love fail, written for the female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 (right). “It was a beautifully haunting, Medieval-Modern, strange modern take on the Tristan Und Isolde story, which was semi-staged at BAM. It was actually a stunningly beautiful piece.” Anne: “One of my favorite moments was a very local moment...The University of Maryland [orchestra] came out dressed in street clothes with their instruments and began moving around the stage as they played Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun. It was a wonderful example of what could be done with orchestras if they think a little outside the box.” Steve: “The reason I categorized David T. Little’s opera Dog Days as a big surprise is frankly I didn’t know that he had this in him...He was out at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances series with a full evening-length opera based on an apocalyptic story by Judy Budnitz…There were terrifying things about it and absolutely joyous things about it but in the end I thought, here’s a team that has actually moved opera forward.” Listen to the opera on Q2 Music. Trends Heidi: On interesting new operas showing up outside of major producing companies: “I thought, maybe if people from the regular producing opera companies actually see [Dog Days], maybe somebody will get an idea that this is actually the sort of thing that can happen in the opera house.” Anne: “There’s no question that some of the most exciting stuff in opera is going on in smaller spaces – and some of the most innovative thinking." Steve: On entrepreneurship in classical music: “People confronted with a certain stodginess or intractability in major companies are just putting on the shows themselves, or doing the kind of programming they feel ought to exist. I’m thinking about ICE, the International Contemporary Ensemble, whose founder Claire Chase won a MacArthur this year, which was richly deserved.” Disappointments & Low Points Heidi: “It was the Metropolitan Opera Ring – and I’m sure I’ll have a lot of company in that one. It took a lot of hits and for good reason. It was just a very big elaborate backdrop of a set for a not very stimulating concept.” [Right: A scene from Die Walküre (Photo: Ken Howard)] Anne: “The problem with some of the concepts that are applied to operas – and I’m a great defender of innovation in opera direction – but a lot of times you think up this great idea and a lot of times the opera isn’t actually about that there’s only so far you can go with the idea.” Steve: "What perturbed me is you basically still have to go out of town, even if it’s just crossing the river to New Jersey, to hear what’s really happening and what’s really interesting in the operatic sphere period." Anne: On American Orchestras: “While it’s both tragic and deplorable that there have been so many lockouts, strikes, seasons disrupted – the Minnesota Orchestra, really one of the exciting orchestras in the country is still not playing – all of this was foreseeable. The managements seem to be acting as if ‘oh my goodness, all of the sudden we’re having these financial crises.’ All of those difficult moments have come home to roost.” High Points Steve: What many of the year's most exciting productions this year had in common was the producer Beth Morrison, "who is enabling a lot of really exciting work that’s going on right now. Beth Morrison Productions is involved in a lot of these things – in staged concerts, in grassroots opera. She has been a real bolt of vitality and innovation that has been much needed and is having a great impact.” Anne: On the John Cage Centennial: “I’m not a big fan of artist centennials. In classical music they’re rammed down our throats, these anniversaries. But with all of the festivals and activities and concerts, it really allowed a new perspective on Cage...It was a centennial and an anniversary that for me really made a big difference.” Heidi: The Juilliard Historical Performance Program under its new director Robert Mealy (above): "You just don't get a big orchestra of American players playing who can play this in this really stylistically correct and distinct way" (after hearing a concert of excerpts from two Rameau ballets). BONUS TRACK: Predictions for 2013: Weigh in: Give us your reviews of the best and worst of 2012 below.