Capital New York

Marilyn Horne, who ruled American opera in the 1970s, trains a new generation for a very different art

She worries about the emphasis on singers’ appearance in the era of HD broadcasts. One summer Horne herself lost 50 pounds—the right way, with good eating and exercise—and she is convinced her middle register promptly went flat and her voice got a size smaller.

But she recognizes that singers now have to be thin, or at least thinnish, to be hired; and that not all singers who are overweight can slim down and keep their voices beautiful. She is preparing singers for careers, and she is a realist.

“We do take people who are overweight,” she said of the academy. “But I have to warn them, and ask them, ‘How badly do you really want this?’" More

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By Zachary Woolfe

A Capital anticipation list: Treemonisha, David Peach, David Comes to Life, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Freddy's falafel

Each week, Capital's editors and writers will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

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By Gillian Reagan, Zachary Woolfe, Sheila O'Malley and Josh Benson

A Capital anticipation list: PEN World Voices, affordable art, lots of bands and new-old glasses

Each week, Capital's editors will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

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By Gillian Reagan, Tom McGeveran and Zachary Woolfe

Model citizen: Composer Eric Whitacre, dashing star of high-school choruses worldwide, makes the big bucks

His hair—shoulder-length, dyed blond, and carefully styled, giving the effect of a buttoned-up former surfer dude—takes up its own substantial part of his thoughts.

“My hair has become this thing we joke about sometimes, that it has a career of its own," he said. "Some days I’m just sick of it. I just want to cut it short, and now I actually have to have meetings about this shit with my manager and publisher and the modeling people about, like, should I cut my hair?”

You have very possibly never seen Whitacre’s flowing locks, nor heard his music, but he is famous. His “profile among choral enthusiasts amounts to a rock star’s adulation,” wrote Steve Smith in the Times last year. “To call Mr. Whitacre a phenomenon is to sell his rapid ascent short.” His lush and emotional music pushes the envelope of harmony and rhythm just enough to stand out in the insular world of high-school and college choirs and concert bands, where Whitacre’s work is simply inescapable. More

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By Zachary Woolfe

At the Armory, a massive display of quilts puts a multiplier on discomfort

The disorientation is as effective as Emerson’s at the beginning of “Experience”: “Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.” Except instead of stairs, there are quilts. More

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By Zachary Woolfe

A Capital anticipation list: Auto-remakes, The Strokes, Central Park, Agalloch, a safe return

Each week, Capital's editors will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

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By Gillian Reagan, Zachary Woolfe, Josh Benson and Tom McGeveran

A Capital anticipation list: Helen Frankenthaler, tea-flavored ice cream, '80s underground nostalgia and the 'Jane Eyre Trend'

Each week, Capital's editors will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

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By Gillian Reagan and Zachary Woolfe

Daniel Harding, international star conductor, struggles with the American adjustment

What the celebrated 35-year-old British conductor who made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in two performances on Thursday and Saturday night, has found are extremely efficient orchestras, with very impersonal relationships with their conductors. It takes an American orchestra a while to figure out they're allowed to laugh at his jokes. More

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By Zachary Woolfe

Zubin Mehta takes the Israel Philharmonic to town

"We have never felt comfortable," Mehta said. "The recession hasn't touched us because even before the recession we had no money. The government gives us about eight percent of our budget and doesn't give any tax deductibility to individual donors, so we rely on box office and the rest we go around the world begging for." More

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By Zachary Woolfe

A Capital anticipation list: Dr Lakra, Kings of Pastry, a '90s dance party and Astoria dining

 Each week, Capital's editors will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations.

  More

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By Gillian Reagan, Zachary Woolfe, Tom McGeveran and Josh Benson