Nadia Sirota appears in the following:
Summer, Repeating
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Space Between
Monday, August 15, 2011
“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” Can you guess which composer spoke these words? Don’t worry, I’ll wait!
Much Ado about Igor
Monday, August 08, 2011
Look & Listen Festival 2011: Opening Night
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Roma, Roma Ma
Monday, August 01, 2011
Too Raucous for Radio?
Monday, July 25, 2011
If You Can't Stand the Heat
Monday, July 18, 2011
Meredith Monk: On the Up and Up
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Friends in High Places
Monday, July 11, 2011
My friends, it’s been so long! I’ve missed you all! I’ve been mostly in London and Reykjavik since we last talked, the former city to see Nico Muhly’s opera Two Boys (so good) and the latter to record viola things and schvitz. Along the way I played some great little shows, and one of the highlights of my trip was a recital with organist Jamie McVinnie and Nico Muhly at Westminster Abbey.
Postcards to the Internauts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Backstage with Two Boys
Monday, June 06, 2011
I have always relished the feeling of being “backstage.” There’s a crazy lovely thing that happens when you get to feel a sort of ownership for a huge historical building or site, be it a concert hall, a cathedral or a museum. When I was a little kid, I spent the summers at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, where my parents taught. This was a Tanglewood more or less unchanged from the days of Koussevitzky, where Bernstein and Copland were to be found eating in the cafeteria, and where Seiji Ozawa could be found zooming around in his sports car.
As Much Awesome As Possible
Monday, May 30, 2011
After a truly fabulous end-of-the-season run (our first pledge drive! MATA and VOX and Wordless, oh my!), I am taking a little June hiatus to go concertize and record around Europe. Rest assured, I'll be reporting back with exclusive videos and anecdotes from various projects, (cough, Nico Muhly's first opera, cough), so I won't be divorced from planet Q2, but I figured I'd take this week to play some of my favorite things (in Oprah's absence). One of these, apparently, is absurd overuse of parenthetical phrases in writing (I could switch to footnotes? Something something David Foster Wallace).
First Ever Pledge Drive
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Powerful vs. Powerless
Monday, May 16, 2011
New York is still bustling with festivals, festivals, festivals! This week in particular, there's some impressive programming courtesy of one of our favorite chamber ensembles, eighth blackbird. The versatile sextet has set up a short festival, called Tune-In beginning this Wednesday at the Park Ave Armory, based on Stravinsky's famous quote: "Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all.”
Spring Fever: Symphonic Metamorphosis
Saturday, May 14, 2011
The symphony has undergone such transformation since it first emerged as a conventional form hundreds of years ago. Concluding Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music festival, Kent Nagano and the Montréal Symphony Orchestra explore the evolution of the symphony beginning with Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae Symphoniae for Brass and finishing with Anton Webern's Symphony, Op. 21. This evening, May 14 from 5 to 8pm, Q2 responds with our own take on this large-scale form as it has transformed into the twenty-first century.
Spring Fever: Dawn Upshaw, Soprano and Muse
Friday, May 13, 2011
This evening, Friday May 13 from 5 to 8 pm, Q2 continues work in tandem with WQXR's Spring for Music broadcast of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra's performance with soprano, Dawn Upshaw. In addition to her role as a pedagogue and her career longevity as a singer, we draw inspiration from Upshaw's reputation for forging longstanding relationships with composers who have used her unique voice as their muse.
Spring Fever: Music in Time of War
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Artists have often used their art as a means of making sense of the horrors of war and taking a political stance: from Salvador Dalí's painting Face of War to Kryzstof Penderecki's string orchestra work Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. On May 12 as part of Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music Festival, the Oregon Symphony takes the stage and presents a program titled Music for a Time of War featuring cornerstone works by John Adams, Charles Ives, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughn Williams.
Spring Fever: Pulitzer Prize Winners
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music festival is designed to allow orchestras to flex their creative programming muscles and provide an outlet to think outside of the overture-concerto-symphony box. On May 11, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra performs Steven Stucky's August, 1964 in their Carnegie Hall debut.
Spring Fever: Bard College
Monday, May 09, 2011
Q2 continues to celebrate Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music Festival with this May 10 program from 5 to 8pm featuring the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory. Though New York City is home to some of the most prestigious American music schools, one should never overlook the fact that a mere one-hundred miles north, in tranquil Annandale-on-Hudson, is a school whose star-studded faculty list includes the likes of Dawn Upshaw, So Percussion, George Tsontakis, Jeremy Denk, David Krakauer, Joan Tower and members of the Guarneri Quartet.
Fer Mata
Monday, May 09, 2011
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I don't envy composers. In addition to working long hours in relative isolation, the life of a young composer can sometimes seem pretty demoralizing; like actors, composers are constantly applying for various positions and experiencing rejection. Grants, festivals, teaching positions, awards, all of these plaudits are achieved via an application process that can feel extremely elusive.