"Je mourrais de plaisir..."

The lovely Suzanne Bona, host of Sunday Baroque — a weekly radio program that showcases music composed in the Baroque era (1600-1750) and the years leading up to it — featured my performance of Michel Lambert’s air de cour “Vos mespris chaque jour” from way back in 2013.

This air is one of the shimmering, intimate jewels of early French song repertoire; its depth, tenderness, and immediacy are hallmarks of Lambert’s song writing, and he was truly a master of the genre.

Follow the link in the first paragraph to go to the Sunday Baroque website and watch the performance!

Riccardo Muti Addresses the Audience at Symphony Center

The past 20 months have been almost unbearable for performing artists. Like his 2011 speech to the audience at Rome Opera’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco (At the Brink, Alex Ross, The New Yorker), Muti, in the video below, reflects on what art and culture mean to civilized society. The impossibly brief but quietly, incisively passionate remarks to the Chicago audience — who came to hear the Chicago Symphony for the first time in almost two years — cut to the quick.

"You are not here tonight because you didn't know how to spend your evening. You are here tonight because you need music."

Veramente, maestro,