By TIMOTHY MANGAN The stories behind the stories: I won’t assert that they are more interesting than the stories themselves, but they’re not without interest. I’ve learned a lot about classical musicians, both individually and as a group, interviewing them
Interview: Meredith Crawford, principal viola
By ERICA SHARP Meredith Crawford, principal viola of Pacific Symphony, cheerfully picked up the phone to talk to an interviewer at the appointed time. She said she had just come back from a walk on the beach. She currently resides
Interview: John Williams
(Here’s an interview with composer John Williams that I wrote for England’s Gramophone magazine back in 2005. Richard Kaufman conducts Pacific Symphony in Williams’s Oscar-winning score to “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” for a screening of the film Saturday night. Tickets here.) By
Meet Michael Clive, Pacific Symphony’s program annotator
By Erica Sharp “Sometimes as a joke I refer to myself as ‘your intrepid annotator,’” said Michael Clive, longtime program note writer for Pacific Symphony, in an interview last week. He had just arrived back at his Connecticut home and
Jeanne Skrocki: A violinist flying high
By ERICA SHARP Jeanne Skrocki remembers a time when she had given up the violin and might not ever play again. Twenty-five years later, she is the now assistant concertmaster of Pacific Symphony, a spot that seems like it was
Interview: Carl St.Clair remembers Leonard Bernstein (Part 2)
While Bernstein invariably called St.Clair “Cowboy,” St.Clair called Bernstein “Mr. B.” This was St.Clair’s own coinage (taken up by others) and a response to Bernstein’s mock protest one day, his hands around St.Clair’s neck and exclaiming, “Stop calling me Mr.
Interview: Carl St.Clair remembers Leonard Bernstein (Part 1)
By TIMOTHY MANGAN Carl St.Clair was sitting at a table outside a popular cafe in downtown Laguna Beach when we met with him the other day. He had musical scores spread out on the table in front of him, and
Interview: Pianist Alexander Romanovsky to make Pacific Symphony debut with Prokofiev’s Second Concerto
By TIMOTHY MANGAN Alexander Romanovsky is a Ukrainian pianist who lives in southern Switzerland, near Lugano, about 400 meters from the Italian border. When he goes jogging in the morning he likes to venture into the neighboring country, the border
Pacific Overtures, November
Here’s the November issue of our monthly newsletter, Pacific Overtures, written and curated by yours truly. Click on the link below. Pacific Overtures. November, 2017.
Interview: Carl St.Clair takes on Bruckner 8
By TIMOTHY MANGAN Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 — massive, glowering, spiritual — is on the schedule this month for the first time in the history of Pacific Symphony. The performances, on Nov. 9-11, will also be the first anywhere