Email Author Gavin Borchert

2012 Stories by Gavin Borchert

• Uncaged

  published May 23, 2012

  John Cage's 1992 score for FOUR6 asks each player to choose 12 separate sounds, and then simply lists a series of... More >>

• Dance and Desire

  published May 16, 2012

  If I didn't know "Down the Street" was by Eric Banks and had to guess the composer, I might say it sounds something like a... More >>

• Stage: Madama Butterfly

  published May 9, 2012

  Jumping on the opera-in-movie-theaters bandwagon, Seattle Opera decided charity begins at home, live-streaming Saturday's... More >>

• Ear Supply: I Will Survive

  published May 9, 2012

  Composer David Diamond (1915–2005) was always an outspoken advocate of traditional musical ideals—expression,... More >>

• Opening Nights: Damn Yankees

  published May 2, 2012

  Beethoven had Wellington's Victory, the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, and the 5th Avenue Theatre, in February, an... More >>

• Ear Supply: Heart-Shaped Bach

  published May 2, 2012

  It's the mood more than the music of the Seattle sound that's evoked by Texas composer Scott McAllister's 1996 Concerto X for clarinet... More >>

• Go East, Young Man

  published April 18, 2012

  Lou Harrison died in 2003 at a Denny's in Lafayette, Indiana—a mundane end for a composer who unprecedentedly opened... More >>

• A Night to Remember

  published April 11, 2012

  As one Titanic survivor recalled, "The way the band kept playing was a noble thing . . . the last I saw of [it],... More >>

• Ear Supply: Taken to Extremes

  published April 4, 2012

  Intending to make his first year with the Seattle Symphony as fresh a start as possible, music director Ludovic Morlot avoided programming any... More >>

• Split Personality

  published March 28, 2012

  Plenty of operatic soprano roles provide opportunities for scenery-chewing mood swings, but none go quite so Three Faces of Eve as... More >>

• Just Before the Battle, Mother

  published March 14, 2012

  John Muehleisen braids two strands in his new oratorio Pietà, to be premiered Wednesday by... More >>

• Opening Nights: Orphee et Eurydice

  published February 29, 2012

  The only real dramaturgical flaw in Gluck's otherwise thoughtfully plotted Orphée et Eurydice is the same one that mars any... More >>

• Ear Supply: The Jeweler

  published February 22, 2012

  For composer Luciano Berio (1925–2003), the music of the past was not anything either to be emulated or dismissed.... More >>

• Opening Nights: Oklahoma!

  published February 15, 2012

  Three major flaws in the 5th's otherwise vigorous production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic: 1) Many cast members do a terrible... More >>

• Spring Arts: Opera, Bar by Bar

  published February 15, 2012

  "I hope everyone's having a double tonight," emcee Ksenia Popova says to the 50 or so people loosely packed into the U... More >>

• Opening Nights: Smokestack Arias

  published February 8, 2012

  Seattle composer Wayne Horvitz's latest musical tribute to America's labor movement is much more intimate than his 2004 Joe Hill,... More >>

• Four by Four

  published February 1, 2012

  Bartok's String Quartet no. 4—with its antagonistic opening, bad-dreamish slow movement, and aggressive fury—is... More >>

• Ear Supply: Obsessive and Ecstatic

  published January 25, 2012

  It's emblematic of Seattle Symphony conductor Ludovic Morlot's devotion to new music that the first commission of his tenure (co-sponsored with... More >>

• Night and Day

  published January 25, 2012

  If in his first concerts with the Seattle Symphony last fall, music director Ludovic Morlot staked his claim with unconventional programming... More >>

• Opening Nights: Attila

  published January 18, 2012

  Seattle Opera's production of Verdi's Attila is like an Italian opera reimagined by Spike TV. The martial score's... More >>

• Ear Supply: The Borrowers

  published January 18, 2012

  For centuries, composers in the Western tradition based music on other people's music without thinking anything of it—all the way back to... More >>

• Opening Nights: Spring Awakening

  published January 11, 2012

  In the eagerly awaited Seattle premiere of this 2006 musical, directed by Eric Ankrim, Balagan Theatre's actors throw themselves with admirable... More >>

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  Opening Nights: West Side Story

  published January 11, 2012

  "They're all killers . . . I wanted to do a much tougher West Side Story," said book writer Arthur Laurents of the 2009 Broadway... More >>

• John Adams' Big Bang

  published January 4, 2012

  It would have been a fool's errand, composer John Adams knew, to try to represent orchestrally the sound of an atomic... More >>