"There is a long and violent history of white women making themselves the metric by which womanhood is measured, while those whose experiences do not resonate with those of white women — specifics of employment or cuisine aside — are treated by those in power as less than fully women, less than fully human. Despite the numerous composers of color involved in this project, having Birrittella sing this poem re-enforces and perpetuates that history, and ends the work with an extraordinarily flimsy politics of similarity, one that has no room to imagine that some women may themselves be in positions of structural power over other women. (There is no consideration, for example, that the woman in the business meeting may be making bombs to drop on the woman herding goats.) People are too varied for a politics of similarity to ever succeed; we need a politics of solidarity instead."

I saw the entire PROTOTYPE contemporary #opera festival again this year and it was . . . not great. Read all about it in #TheLogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2020/01/21/in-review-prototype-festival-2020/

#MusicJournalism #MusicCriticism #MyArticles

Come for the captivatingly physical bass playing, stay for the nonchalantly virtuosic drum solo — my latest in #TheLogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/12/19/in-review-brandon-lopez/

#MusicCriticism #MusicJournalism #MyArticles

"I was particularly delighted by a passage where Wooley took off his mouthpiece and stuck a microphone up the bell to capture a volley of gurgles and pops that evoked a robot undergoing a gastrointestinal meltdown"

Read all about #AnneaLockwood's composer portrait — the good, the bad, the gleefully disgusting — in my latest for the #SanFranciscoClassicalVoice: https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/mill-valley-chamber-music-society/composer-annea-lockwoods-vocabularies-of-sound

#NewMusic #ContemporaryClassical #MyArticles #MusicJournalism #MusicCriticism

ICYMI: I saw violin superstar #Midori at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Monday and wrote all about it — from Azerbaijani fiddle dances to sonic miscalculations — for #TheLogJournal :

https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/11/05/in-review-midori/

#reviews #MusicCriticism #MusicJournalism #MyArticles

On Site Opera produced my favorite opera of all time in a perfect setting with a solid cast and an utterly incoherent phalanx of Directorial Concepts. Read all about the resulting train wreck in #TheLogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/10/29/in-review-the-turn-of-the-screw/

#TurnOfTheScrew #TheTurnOfTheScrew #Britten #BenjaminBritten #Piper #MyfanwyPiper #OnSiteOpera #MyArticles

I'm not saying the best part of this past weekend's #GeorgeLewis #concert at #NYU was a startled violinist, but there was a startled violinist and it was Quality Entertainment — read all about it in my latest for #TheLogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/10/22/in-review-george-lewiss-soundlines/

#ClassicalMusic #ContemporaryClassical #MyArticles

"We invite you to join us in this collective endeavor, in imagining this world into existence. Unlearn the lazy shortcuts that use binary genders to bypass genuine characterization. Write *characters* in your shows, rounded and messy and deeply human. Make room for the unruly wild array that genders and bodies come in, without forcing this exquisite natural chaos into artificial, sterile boxes. Cast trans people in everything, and don’t remark on it, because it shouldn’t be remarkable. It’s that simple. It’s that hard."

The conclusion to my series on #trans representation in singing theatre is, i think, hands down the most important thing I've ever had a hand in writing, and it's now live over at #NewMusicBox: https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/towards-a-framework-for-responsible-trans-casting-part-4-the-framework/

#MyArticles

"This article has been heavy on trauma. I’m deeply ambivalent about this, because it does feel, in some ways, like trotting out suffering to prove our humanity—no one should ever have to do that. But at the same time, it feels dishonest to skirt this pain, to pretend it isn’t there. These are the stakes you carry if you write about us."

Part 3 of my #trans representation series is now live up at #NewMusicBox!

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/towards-a-framework-for-responsible-trans-casting-part-3-the-writers/

#MyArticles

and here's Part 2! head on over to #NewMusicBox
for an extended look at #trans performers in the world of singing theatre. come for the discussion of Sondheim's female baritones, stay for the analysis of structural issues in opera funding:

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/towards-a-framework-for-responsible-trans-casting-part-2-the-performers/

#MyArticles

ok ok ok here we go! thruout this month, i'm doing a deep dive into issues of #trans representation in #opera and #MusicTheatre over at #NewMusicBox. Part 1 is now live, laying out some trans vocab and gender theory and then turning to the complexities of trans history. click on over and give it a read!

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/towards-a-framework-for-responsible-trans-casting-part-1-words-words-words/

#MyArticles

"Entering to sing Puccini’s “Nessun dorma” (None shall sleep) in a massive plumed helmet and a stone butch leather-dyke biker jacket, Oratonio managed to channel both male operatic superstars and various queer elders whose wings I’ve sheltered under. It was a brash set full of wonderfully bizarre turns — a pseudo-Classical arrangement of “Jessie’s Girl” followed quickly by a hard-rock take on “Send in the Clowns” mashed up with “Vesti la giubba” (Put on the costume) — and it was deeply surreal to watch in front of a well-heeled audience who gasped in shock that a drag king could sound like a lyric tenor, and who sat politely through the sloshed-out key changes instead of drunkenly whooping and trying to shove dollar bills into any crevice of Oratonio’s clothing that would hold them."

Read my latest in the San Francisco Classical Voice!

https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/roulette/resonant-bodies-festival-2019-flouts-expectations

#MusicJournalism #MyArticles #MusicCriticism #ResonantBodiesFestival