John Schaefer

As Alex Ross points out in his recent article in the New Yorker, we’re being increasingly told that China is the future of classical music. The numbers are staggering – 30 million piano and/or violin students (conservatively – more enthusiastic numbers-crunchers say as many as 100 million); conservatories 10 ...

So I’m trying to figure out just what I think of live albums. My initial reaction is: not much. At least, not in rock music. If you like an artist or band enough to go see them live, odds are the recording of that very same event just won’t live ...

Today’s Smackdown is about Coldplay, but for me, you can’t talk about Coldplay without also talking about Radiohead. 40 years ago it was the Beatles or The Stones. Now it’s Coldplay or Radiohead – two British rock bands with big ambitions, grand ideas, and apparently unlimited time to muck around ...

What’s new? Well, a bunch of music venues are new – Drom, Le Poisson Rouge, the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, the High Line Ballroom. And there are new locations for some old ones – both Galapagos and the Issue Project Room are moving from their Brooklyn neighborhoods (Williamsburg and Gowanus, respectively) ...

Reading accounts of concerts in the days of Beethoven, it’s evident that what we now call Classical Music was in fact the arena rock of its time. Orchestras played almost free-form events, with movements of a symphony played again, immediately, if they went over well the first time, and solo ...

Is THAT music? It’s a question that has often been asked, usually in an incredulous tone, often by parents who greet their teenagers’ choice of music with a mix of confusion and revulsion. But it’s a question that critics asked ...

Music therapy sounds like such a great idea. And it actually seems plausible too – we’ve all noticed how a favorite song coming on the radio can be a real mood-lifter. So the idea of music having some kind of physical and/or psychological benefit seems quite rational. But it also ...

Dana Jennings’ story of how country music was so important to the lives of the people growing up poor in his New Hampshire hometown got me to thinking. Growing up in New York City, what did I know about country music? Very little, and that was the way I liked ...

The idea of hearing an Art Tatum performance live, half a century after Tatum himself died, is certainly intriguing. You listen to those recordings of his from the 40s, and it’s clear that he was one of the greatest virtuosos of the instrument this country has ever produced. But that’s ...

Pardon me while I date myself, but when I began making cassette mixtapes, in the 80s, I don’t think anyone was using the term “mixtape” yet. But I owned a cheap stereo with a cassette deck, was recently married, and incurable romantic that I ...

On the surface, classical music and hip-hop seem like the strangest of musical bedfellows. If you think about it, though, the best hip-hop producers are master orchestrators – but instead of using keeping Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Principles of Orchestration” handy they’ve got ProTools (the industry standard for digital audio programs) loaded on ...

Ah, the cell phone. What an amazing little gadget: it plays music videos, records brief movies, takes and shares photos, sends and receives instant messages, and I think you can talk into them too. Has any other device connected us so efficiently? Has any other device set concertgoers at each ...

Here's what bugs me about Broadway - well, aside from the ticket prices: you have a somewhat edgy, idiosyncratic musical like 'Passing Strange' (the brainchild of musician Stew, pictured) actually trying to do something different and getting a great amount of critical ...

Jim Farber’s column in the Daily News points out the success of a new generation of black rockers in bands like TV On The Radio and Gnarls Barkley. Stew, the singer/guitarist behind the smash rock musical ...

For an arts organization to survive today, it has to take risks. Gerard Mortier (pictured at right), who takes over the New York City Opera in 2009, knows about taking risks. And he knows that when you roll the dice, you ...

New York in the '70s was an amazing place to grow up, especially if you were into music. I was heavily into the punk scene, but because I rode the J train every day through Bushwick, East New York, and pre-hipster Williamsburg, I also heard the emerging sounds of rap. ...

It’s one thing for Lil Wayne to proclaim himself the world’s best rapper. That sort of bragging, whether serious or in jest, has long been a part of hip-hop. It’s quite another thing for anyone else to agree. I mean, hip-hop ...

It is possible in a world of blogs, MySpace pages, and instant music or video delivery to be wildly popular in a very small circle. You can have a ...

I’m more of a beer guy than a wine aficionado. I’m not so sure my feelings about an India Pale Ale will be altered by the music I’m hearing, but on the other hand, I can’t dismiss the idea either. Adrian North’s ...

What do you ask someone who’s so famous that he has his own Muppet? Placido Domingo is one of the greatest tenors of our time, and as a conductor and arts administrator he has been a tireless champion of the world of ...