Is this thing still on?
The year so far
At the end of the day, it’s a blessing to be busy. Because when this space goes silent, it means there’s been so, so much else to write about.
Chicago hosted International Jazz Day—a feel-good celebration that made jazz the focus of the city’s cultural calendar for several charmed days, not just one. (Review here; reporting here.) I’m pleased to see that visibility continue with Tangible Sound, a fantastic (and free) exhibition and performance series at the Chicago Cultural Center that was the cherry on top of a bustling summer. Ravinia opened its new Pavilion; a still-young summer opera company put on two quality staged productions. Several times now I’ve tried to walk into a show or club, only to find it close to capacity. Summertime Chicago feels even more alive than it did even in The Before Times, if more climatologically apocalyptic.
But amid the din, I’ve been musing in quieter moments about mentorship and chance encounters—topics that feel front of mind with the passing of Bill McGlaughlin, who joyously introduced thousands to classical music through his program Exploring Music. It is humbling to imagine what life would have looked like without my own kindly tour musical guides: Michael Tilson Thomas and Alex Ross.
Even naming these two in the same breath preempts a chuckle. As Ross stressed on this very platform, he is “not leaving The New Yorker, retiring, or dead.” Still, the news that he would step down from his post as classical music critic is a blow to the many who see him as a beacon in stormy vocational seas.
A personal note. Ross was the second person I ever wrote fan mail to, the summer before college. (The first was then-CSO oboist Eugene Izotov, now with the San Francisco Symphony.) There was, I admit, an ulterior motive. I was working on a writing project about Richard Strauss and the American GIs who arrived at his Garmisch-Partenkirchen estate after Germany’s surrender—a historical episode, by the way, that I would have known nothing about, were it not for his book The Rest Is Noise. I was itching to know if he had updates.
Not only did Ross obligingly reply to me just a day later, but he dove into his own rabbit hole in a piece for The New Yorker’s website—then cited me, by name, at the top of the article. As I would learn later, that’s just Alex: unfailingly generous, unfailingly collegial, and so curious that it fuels your own intellectual voracity.
To speak to his generosity still further: Ross is more responsible than anyone else for getting my foot in the door of the profession. Once I’d arrived at school in Chicago, he suggested I reach out to Andrew Patner, then the critic at the Sun-Times. Tragically, Andrew and I never met—he died suddenly in February 2015, a few months after I’d emailed him—but Planet Patner nonetheless whirled me into its orbit. That community still counts among my closest friends, and that summer I became the first Andrew Patner Fellow at WFMT, essentially kickstarting my music journalism career.
Later, in 2018, Alex workshopped my writing along with that of about a dozen other young critics as part of the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, yet another experience that made an outside impact on my life. After participating in the weeklong intensive, the Institute funded my work for the Chicago Tribune from 2021 to 2025, making it possible for me to freelance full-time.
Even now, Alex is quick with an encouraging word of advice or sourcing help whenever I reach out. I can’t think of anyone else in this industry so widely respected and adored—which is saying something, given that music critics inevitably ruffle not mere feathers but entire flocks over the course of their career. None of us can be an Alex Ross, but as long as I’m lucky enough to do this, I’ll pore over his blueprint like IKEA instructions: Study closely, engage deeply, and make your phrases sing as though you’re the one onstage.
Then, there’s MTT. And where to begin?
If Alex introduced me to music journalism, Thomas introduced me to classical music, period. His Keeping Score was still aired in reruns on PBS at the time I was in high school, but I mostly binged it online. Through MTT, I learned the stories behind the symphonies I was muddling through in youth orchestra. I also received a round diet in American and contemporary music, to the point that those programming planks never registered as bizarre. (If anything, the more conservative Chicago Symphony, my new hometown orchestra, seemed like the odd duck when I moved here for college in the mid-2010s.)
MTT’s career and my own just barely missed one another—I wasn’t regularly writing for the Tribune until he was already ill—but I tried to bottle up some of the magic he sparked in the Bay Area, especially among young people, in an article for the New York Times. I’m grateful to Joshua Barone for accepting the pitch on short notice, which helped me process his incalculable loss, as well as that of his husband Joshua Robison, who predeceased him in the fall.
At his last CSO appearance in 2023, Thomas was enervated, yet—in gesture and spirit—the same MTT I knew and loved. He broke concert convention by making little quips to the orchestra between movements. One of them I heard, clear as day, from my seat in the lower balcony.
“Enjoy,” he told the low strings. “Take it easy.”
Adventures in transcription
After resisting it for many years, I started using an auto-transcription agent when I began writing full time in 2021. I haven’t looked back—but proofreading is everything.
Footnotes on the footnotes
My last post, eons ago, discussed the Price/Vienna controversy. To briefly recap: The Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed an arrangement of Florence Price’s “Rainbow Waltz” at the orchestra’s New Year’s Concert, only for whistleblowers to flag that it didn’t resemble the original piano miniature almost at all.
Since then, my WBEZ article on the subject has been augmented by a radio story. That caught the revelation that, according to Nézet-Séguin, he’d originally approached composer Valerie Coleman to arrange the waltz, but the Vienna Philharmonic rejected her version.
Neither Coleman nor the Philharmonic corroborated Nézet-Séguin’s claim, despite repeated requests for comment. By the same token, neither denied it, and the revelation squared with what had made its way to me second- or thirdhand, albeit off the record, while reporting my original story. It’s another exhausting footnote in an exhausting story—though I am jealous of Philly audiences who will be able to hear Coleman’s version with the Philadelphia Orchestra in June.
Meanwhile, Michael Clark—a Baylor University piano professor whose recording of “Rainbow Waltz” I used in the radio story, with permission from the label—has edited a new Peters collection of 28 piano pieces by Price, which includes “Rainbow Waltz.”
(Non)-recent bylines
A selection of work from the year so far:
In a beyond-distressing turn, the Chicago Sinfonietta—the adventurous, diverse orchestra that seemed to be enjoyed a post-COVID renaissance—will go dark during the 2026/27 season in hopes of balancing its budget. (Chicago Tribune)
At the center of the Venn diagram of “favorite stories” and “wildest stories”: How the Chicago Symphony joined the team behind a mixed-reality video game exclusively for blood donors. Does this mean I’ve officially shed sweat, blood and tears on the job?! (New York Times)
I made my Financial Times debut with a guide to Chicago jazz, published in time for the summer tourist season.
CSO music director designate Klaus Mäkelä is an art buff. He showed me his favorites in the Art Institute collection. (WBEZ)
Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will be closing out the Grant Park Music Festival season over the next couple weeks. But in February, he shocked us all with a surprise appearance alongside Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. (Chicago Tribune)
Marin Alsop departs Ravinia after this summer. But with a new Fidelio, a Philadelphia Orchestra tour, and Mahler and Shostakovich cycles ahead, she’s only picking up steam. (Chicago Tribune)
Earlier this month, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus joined the steadily growing list of pop musicians making symphonic debuts. (WBEZ)
Last week, WBEZ arts reporter Courtney Kueppers offered a lot more great context in a story pegged to St. Vincent’s (killer btw) appearance with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia.
Is the CSO the world’s busiest orchestra? Unpacking a popular annual ranking. (Chicago Tribune)
What might Nicolás Maduro’s ouster—and the spike in tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela—mean for the many El Sistema musicians who come to the U.S. to work and study? (WBEZ)
Much of my May was spent road-tripping for The New York Times, including to report this piece on Detroit Opera’s production of Apartment House 1776 at Cranbrook.
Last month, Gabriela Lena Frank’s Conquest Requiem—by my estimation, one of the great American choral-orchestral works of the century so far—made its regional debut at the Grant Park Music Festival. (Chicago Tribune)
The Chicago Symphony’s semiquincentennial celebrations felt a lot like the country right now: poignant at street view, often misguided from the top. (Two reviews here and here for the Chicago Tribune)
Meanwhile, what is usually a breezy Independence Day Salute at the Grant Park Music Festival turned existential. (Chicago Tribune)
But while we’re talking America250: What did the U.S. actually sound like in 1776? Period specialists Newberry Consort fished up an answer. (WBEZ)
A Muti meltdown at the CSO. (Chicago Tribune)
On Matthew Ozawa’s provocative Madame Butterfly at Lyric—and the 30 seconds of stage action that turned around the entire evening. (Musical America)
Teen violinist Himari made her Tanglewood debut this past week. Personally, I found her CSO debut in February more unsettling than inspiring. (Chicago Tribune)
Memory lane
One of the highlights of my year so far was returning to my alma mater, the University of Chicago, to recognize conductor Barbara Schubert’s 50-year tenure (!!!) with the campus orchestra. Fittingly, we played Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture.
Barbara was a very important person to me in college. I admired her ambitious programming, high expectations, and uncompromising dedication to quality, despite dealing with a seriously overcommitted crop of non-music-major players. I’ve always been drawn to mentors who hold their students to high standards—and I think she figured out just as quickly as I that I’d conned my way to an assistant principal seat. (I’d happened to drill the Enigma Variations’ tricky “H.D.S-P.” toccata-fugue after picking it at random from my excerpt book the night before the audition. I was shocked when it appeared on the sight-reading stand the next day; it was freshly under my fingers, but it wouldn’t have been 24 hours earlier.)
I was a passionate musician then, too, but also an anxious wreck. It was fulfilling to play with Barbara again and recognize that I was more centered, emotionally aligned, and, I think, a more musical player. I wonder how many others felt the same way, since I must say, we sounded good for the alumni of a non-conservatory orchestra. (I think Barbara was impressed, too.) I left with more friends than I’d had going into the weekend.
As for Barbara, she hasn’t changed a lick. She went on to conduct Mahler 2 with the current University Symphony, impressively turning around to conduct the choir in the balcony and the orchestra behind her at the same time during the last movement (they couldn’t fit together onstage).
Whatever musical paths I’ve ended up on over the years, I’m very thankful they led to U of C, and to Barbara.
Up close and personal
We continue to have a blast hosting Pink Parlor, our chamber series. Somehow, we have a nearly-booked fall of everything from a father-son jazz set to a lute recital, with additional dates on the books through 2029.
The series has most utility for artists who want to explore a recital format or test-run a program, piece, or idea before bringing it to a larger audience. We’ve also hosted artists swinging through town who want to add extra/encore dates to their Chicago stay.
If that sounds like you, or you want to get on the invite list as a guest, don’t hesitate to email me.
And speaking of Chicago musicians
A shameless plug for my community ensemble, Lakeview Orchestra: We have vacancies in our violin and cello sections, and sub vacancies in our viola section. Among the seats we’re auditioning is associate concertmaster.
The vast majority of the orchestra are nonprofessional amateur musicians, but we have a few professionals who play with us in order to regularly graze the symphonic literature. The group has improved in leaps and bounds since I joined in 2018, but it’s always been ambitious: I think we’ve done three Nielsen symphonies now, many of the major Shostakoviches, Mahler 1, The Rite of Spring, Petrushka…
We also just announced that Michael Lewanski—who leads Chicago’s premier contemporary music group, Ensemble Dal Niente, as well as ensembles at DePaul University’s School of Music—will succeed our founding music director in the fall. It’s a huge honor that someone whose work I’ve long admired wants to lead our orchestra, and, I hope, speaks to the musical sustenance it can provide. Nearly every adult friend I’ve met post-college I’ve met via Lakeview (or, in some cases, we were friends already, but I bullied them to join).
If that tickles your fancy, audition info here. The audition window is set for the evening of August 18.
Songs with jewels
When I do get around to updating this space, I tend to end with an artwork or artist that, until recently, was new to me. This time, it’s soprano and painter Semiha Berksoy (1911–2004).
In 1939, Berksoy became the first Turkish singer to perform in Western Europe when she was cast in the title role of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in Berlin. (Quite a time to go to Berlin.) She mostly built her career in her native Turkey, returning home to establish the country’s first opera house in Ankara.
Decades later, the director Robert Wilson sought her out, memorably, to perform the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde for his opera The Days Before at Lincoln Center. She was, at the time, 89 years old.
When I travel, I have an enduring and delusional belief that I will end up in the right place at the right time, even sans itinerary. Visiting my college roommate in Istanbul in the spring, I stupidly saved some of the city’s major attractions for the day before Eid al-Adha, right as they either closed or were swarmed with tourists. Instead, I made my way to the far calmer Istanbul Modern—very much not on my friend’s shortlist of things to do, but close to her flat.
It turns out the museum was hosting Aria of All Colors, a retrospective of Berksoy’s daring and idiosyncratic visual art. Besides her many expressive portraits, she created massive tapestries inspired by some of her signature roles.
Sadly, I had a hard time finding recordings of Berksoy in her prime. Clearly, the museum faced no such hurdles, since it piped excerpts from her Tosca and Fidelio on loop in part of the exhibition.
I didn’t capture any of those, and have had no luck hunting them down. Instead, all I have to offer here is a sliver of Berksoy’s Liebestod at Lincoln Center—her farewell to the stage, and to life.
Brilliant piece, Hannah. It was such a pleasure playing in the orchestra with you in May for the Barbara Schubert/University of Chicago event. I feel about her as you do.