"Stravinsky or Ska? You Call the Shots"

"Their goal is to create a gateway drug to classical music for casual and sporadic listeners like me who want something in between the tap water of department store Mozart and the heroin of a Bach “Brandenburg” Concerto marathon. The result is old music rebottled for new times: brief pieces in dizzying sequence for an age of narrow attention spans, and audience choice for a moment when it’s becoming a right to curate your cultural diet...I thought of my old Russian piano teacher, conservatory-trained and headmistress strict, who argued that merely listening to (let alone playing) bastardizations like jazz would sully my admittedly limited skills. Here was the rebuttal I wish I had then: musicians who knew their Mozart but could just as easily belt out the “Chicago” show tune “When You’re Good to Mama,” oozing sexuality into an event whose menu suggested nothing riskier than some late Lutoslawski."

 

Anand GiridharadasThe New York Times