For more coverage of New Crowned Hope and other Viennese developments, read Mark Swed and Anne Midgette. Mark got to see the "live" version of Leif Inge's mesmerizing 9 Beet Stretch, which I mentioned last month.... Who killed classical music? Was it Ron Wilford? Milton Babbitt? The Three Tenors? Greg Sandow? Jeremy Denk makes an awful confession.... Marin Alsop: "Classical music is pretty hip right now — young people have much more eclectic taste." Whether that's true or not, it's nice to hear something other than the usual moaning.... Excellent Steve Reich interview at Pitchfork. See how elegantly he navigates the question of whether iPod atomization is a good or bad thing, with a little help from Chuck Berry. PBS's NewsHour also ran a Reich segment last Monday; read the transcript here. The show deserves highest praise for putting a great American composer on the air.... Norman Lebrecht, who recently attacked classical bloggers for purveying "unchecked trivia," recently wrote, "The average age in U.S. podia, Cleveland apart, is pushing 70." Henry Fogel has done the math and come up with an average age of 55.6. Perhaps Lebrecht was referring to the actual podia on which conductors stand...?
