70-80% of the hops in the US are produced here in Yakima, and it's 2nd only to Germany in hops production. I got to try some of the wine from the surrounding area. Haven't tried the hops yet!
Read MoreI can say in all honesty that I am thoroughly convinced that we will see some major concert artists (in everything from jazz to pop to classical) coming out of Texas over the next few years.
Read MoreThe first truly exciting thing is that the Houston Press honored Opera Vista with their 2010 MasterMind award for our artistic creativity and innovation in adding to the Houston cultural landscape. I don’t know whether I can tell you how honored we were to receive this award.
Read MoreAll of this has led me to going back through great American music – and we have some truly great American music.
Read MoreI went to my first opera and was thoroughly unimpressed, and this was at the Vienna State Opera and a production of Madame Butterfly!
Read MoreI can’t name the number of times that I’ve been told that the problem with opera is “that it is too long! Nobody has an attention span that can sit there for three hours anymore! We’re a video game, iphone society. Nobody can sit still for three hours!”
Read MoreSo, the whole thing starts with the artistic direction, and as an artistic director and conductor, of course I think that’s the way it should be. The side of me that did an MBA snickers at that last statement since he knows that without the amazing work of the executive director, all that work on developing great art is pretty useless – it takes money to make great art.
Read MoreHe always starts with his fundamental mantra for arts management – “great art, marketed well.” I remember the first time I heard it, I thought he was over simplifying the situation.
Read MoreIt takes the same number of people to perform opera and orchestral pieces as it did in the 1800s – there is no way around that if we are to maintain the experience.
Read MoreAs Bill Curry said in his speech – in 1988, he checked with the Library of Congress about a statement that he had heard on TV, and they verified it: The most written about person in human history was Jesus. The second was…..Wagner. Where does this fascination come from? For composers, he was one of the most innovative musicians ever, so that explains why music historians study him and his music, but to be the second more written about person in history after Jesus?
Read MoreI think the audience deserves composers and artists who try to make each performance life changing, so I think we must swing for the fences.
Read MoreI think many people think of opera as a rarified “upper crust” art form, but when you hear the composers talking about their work, the opera fanatics realize that there is a great deal of craft that goes into creating great opera, and the neophytes realize that they understand more about opera than they give themselves credit for.
Read MoreIn our example of the baby momma bit from Opera 101, the aria was the portion where the woman sings about being traumatized that her baby daddy found out that she had slept with his brother.
Read MoreI’m fascinated by the fact that Beethoven uses rhythm to create that tension in the first movement.
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