Superconductor Preview: CXXV is the Magic Number

With numbers on the brain, Carnegie Hall unveils 2015-2016.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Now that's a super conductor: The enormous Sir Simon Rattle is one of three Perspectives artists at Carnegie Hall in 2015-2016.
Photo © 2014 EMI Classics/Berlin Philharmonic. Photo of Carnegie Hall from Wikemedia Commons.
Photoshop by the author.

In the psyche of 21st century Homo sapiens, the number 25 seems to be particularly important. Maybe it's because it's one fourth of 100, that magic and strangely satisfying number. Maybe because it's a square of 5 as in 5 x 5 = 25. This year, Carnegie Hall is celebrating the cube of 5, with the unveiling of its 125th anniversary season.

Concert Review: A Storm Cloud of Strings

Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet make Landfall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson (far right) play Landfall.
Photo by Mark Allan © 2014 Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet each occupy a unique place in modern music. A fearless performance artist, she destroyed barriers between pop and avant-garde with tracks like "O Superman" and albums like Big Science. Kronos, for their part is at the vanguard of modern music, playing their amplified strings in deep explorations of composers like George Crumb and Terry Riley.

Robbery, Shootout, Revelation

Turning up the Heat with Elliot Goldenthal's soundtrack.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Robert De Niro as robber Neil McCauley in a still the Michael Mann film Heat.
Image © 1995 Regency Entertainment-Warner Bros.

I don't write much about film music on this blog. Sure, movies and so-called classical or art music have been joined at the hip since the heady Hollywood days of Franz Waxman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. But in today's column I'd like to talk about composer Elliot Goldenthal, and the extraordinary soundtrack for Michael Mann's 1995 heist movie Heat.

Heat is more than just a cops-and-robbers story: it is an epic three-hour Los Angeles saga with an all-star cast (the leads are Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, along with a "laundry list" of skilled actors, many of them in tiny supporting parts) Shot entirely on location and taking place mostly at night (although De Niro's "crew" of robbers stages their two most spectacular thefts in daylight) it immerses you in the lives of both the crooks and the cops, exploring their characters with a depth that goes far beyond the usual formulas of the genre.

But what I really want to talk about is the music.

Concert Review: A Cellist's Last Song

The Kronos Quartet returns to New York.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Kronos Quartet: Hank Dutt, Jeffery Zeigler, David Harrington, John Sherba.

The Kronos Quartet returned to Carnegie Hall's downstairs Zankel Hall on Friday night. This concert marks cellist Jeffrey Zeigler's last New York appearance with the ensemble; he is scheduled to leave Kronos later this year. Future lineup changes aside, the program offered what New Yorkers have expected of Kronos in the ensemble's four-decade history: cutting-edge new music delivered with precision and style.