"Hahn-Bin, a 22-year-old protégé of the eminent violinist Itzhak Perlman ... holds Mozart and Warhol in equal esteem ... [he's] a rare bridge between Carnegie Hall, where he [made] his mainstage debut on March 13, and the Boom Boom Room [at The Standard Hotel], where he performed at a party hosted by V Magazine during New York Fashion Week."* [more inside]
posted by ericb on Apr 22, 2011 - 14 comments

Photographer Bill Cunningham has moved out of his a rent controlled apartment right above Carnegie Hall after living there for 60 years. He offers some pictures and memories of his time there. Andrew Carnegie intended the space above the hall to be occupied by artists and since 1896 the list of occupants has included Isadora Duncan, Marlon Brando and Leonard Bernstein. The last 5 residents (more details about them here) are being cleared out to make way for a music school. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo on Sep 6, 2010 - 45 comments

April 26, 1979, Andy Kaufman performed for a sold-out crowd in Carnegie Hall, who were welcomed to their seat by a "press kit" containing a bag of jelly beans, a program and flier for the show, and other copied material, supposedly put together by Andy's mother. The show starting off with an impersonation of Tony Clifton and ending by taking the audience of 2,800 out for milk and cookies. About 10 months later on February 20, 1981, Kaufman hosted an episode of Fridays, ABC's attempt to duplicate the success of NBC's Saturday Night Live. Instead of performing the show as rehearsed, he took the entire cast and crew, the studio audience and a nation of television viewers hostage. Video links and more details inside. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Jul 1, 2010 - 30 comments

Thousands of people who play setar in Iran are against me,” he said. “They say why add two more strings to the instrument? But I don’t get upset with them.

Hafez Nazeri, son of renown Persian singer Shahram Nazeri, is an Iranian setar player and composer. Tomorrow night, he will be the first Iranian composer to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert will feature a new instrument invented by Nazeri: the Hafez. [more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski on Nov 13, 2009 - 5 comments

The six string quartets of Béla Bartók: A guide for performers and listeners, by the Emerson Quartet...
posted by Wolfdog on Mar 6, 2007 - 19 comments

Miracle on 57th Street.
Thomas Wolfe said that America is not only the place where miracles happen, but where they happen all the time. This is the story of a miracle, a true-life fairy tale, and appropriately enough it begins with the intervention of the Almighty.
Artur Rodzinski, music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1947, was an eccentric, a health nut who drank only milk from goats he raised himself and who kept a loaded revolver in his back pocket whenever he conducted. Rodzinski said that God told him to hire 24 year old Leonard Bernstein, to be his assistant conductor. In the fall of 1943 Rodzinski decided to take a vacation, spend a little time with his goats, and called in Bruno Walter to conduct seven concerts in ten days. Only hours before one of those concerts (in the program, works by Schumann, Rosza, Strauss and Wagner) Walter fell ill. Rodzinski was only four hours away, in his farm. But he declined to come back to Carnegie Hall: "Call Bernstein. That's why we hired him." The concert was broadcast over radio and a review appeared on page 1 of The New York Times the next day: "Young Aide Leads Philharmonic; Steps in When Bruno Walter is Ill". In the same size type as another that read, "Japanese Plane Transport Sunk." More inside.
posted by matteo on Dec 28, 2005 - 48 comments