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Features

These in-depth articles help you find the insights and information you're seeking, on a wide range of learning-related topics.


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March 9, 2010

Restless adolescents and concerned parents alike, all around the Bay Area, have discovered that a symphony orchestra can be a great place for kids to hang out.

More "Symphonic Youth" »
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November 24, 2009

New York, New York, a hell of a town: arts capital of the world and epicenter of American postclassical music since at least the days of George Gershwin. Think of the composers who lived and worked there from the 1940s on — Cage, Cowell, Thomson, Copland, Bernstein, Rorem, all the way down to younger generations like Bang on a Can, Nico Muhly, and the New Amsterdam composers. It’s almost easier to compile a list of major composers who aren’t from the Big Apple.

More "West to East: The Migration of American New Music" »
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October 6, 2009

All kinds of instrumental combinations occur in classical music, though chamber music is by far the most diverse, in terms of instrumentation and variety. If you’ve shunned this area, you’re missing out on much of the world’s greatest music, since many composers have poured their finest concepts into chamber music, especially the string quartet.

It’s the purity of chamber music that attracts composers. 

More "Music Close to the Heart: Why I Love Chamber Music" »
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April 28, 2009

Like a lot of us, monkeys generally prefer a Russian lullaby to German techno music. But given a choice between music and silence, the apes opt for quiet. It seems their brains simply aren’t wired to enjoy music or pay it much mind. “They don’t care about it,” said Vinod Menon, the noted Stanford neuroscientist who’s deeply engaged in research on music and the brain.

More "Deep Listening:
Music, Our Brains, Ourselves" »
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March 24, 2009

San Domenico School’s Virtuoso Program, which will travel from its San Anselmo home to San Francisco for a showcase program here on March 29, goes back to Venetian girls’ orphanages in the 17th century. That, at least, is what the program’s founder, Faith France, told me many years ago. She was teaching music at San Domenico, a small independent school in Marin (which originally opened in Monterey in 1850), when she had an epiphany while visiting Venice.

More "Raising Prodigies in Marin" »
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March 10, 2009

What do an archaeologist, a lawyer, and a black belt in jujitsu have in common? They may sound like the beginning of a bad joke, but in reality they're a sampling of the Bay Area's choristers.

More "Choral Singing: Chicken Soup for the Soul" »
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February 3, 2009

Of all the underrated genius-level composers of the 19th century, none is more undeserving of his second-tier status than Felix Mendelssohn, whose bicentennial occurs this Tuesday, February 3. Few displayed a more natural or more all-encompassing talent than he, and from a remarkably early age, at that. In a way, he was the Mozart of the Romantic age.

More "Making Time for Mendelssohn" »
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December 16, 2008

What makes live music so moving? Audiences might have wondered last month, as three Bay Area organizations presented extraordinary performances within the space of little more than a week. First came Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, performed by the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall; also that weekend, the San Francisco Opera revived Puccini’s La Bohème.

More "Truth and Daring: The Lure of Live Performance" »
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October 21, 2008

St. Martin de Porres is a small parochial school in North Oakland. It is named for a 17th-century Dominican brother from Peru who was famous for establishing orphanages and children’s hospitals. He was canonized in 1962.

St. Martin’s has some 200 “students of color,” fully 90 percent of them on financial assistance, and as many qualifying for a free or reduced-cost lunch. But the school had no music program whatsoever.

More "Cloning El Sistema in Oakland" »
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August 12, 2008

On the day my lifelong infatuation with classical radio died, I hardly realized it would be revived by the Internet just a year later and become better than ever — so exciting that my CDs are quickly becoming superfluous, forgotten on their dusty shelves. Studio recordings simply can't compare to the magnetism of the great live performances on Internet radio. (See a list of recommended stations, below.) When I go to a recordings store these days I find myself going through the motions.

More "My Love Affair With Internet Radio" »