In advance of the Lincoln Center Festival's Varèse event (July 19 and 20), the International Contemporary Ensemble presents tonight a preview concert, including the New York premiere of the eight-hand piano version of Amériques. There will be a webcast on the increasingly invaluable Q2.... After forty-one years, Robert Christgau appears to have written his last Consumer Guide. Not many music critics can claimed to have changed the art; Christgau is certainly one of them.... A salute also to the fiercely perceptive Chris DeLaurenti, who has left The Stranger in order to take up creative projects.... Bob Shingleton has uncovered a YouTube recording of Hans Keller's notorious Piotr Zak hoax.... Browse the Proms archive.... Hannah Lash's Violations project is seeking funding through the end of July.... The Konzerthaus Orchestra has racked up well over half a million YouTube hits with its vuvuzela videos; now the august Berlin Philharmonic has gotten into the act.... The brilliant young American soprano Angela Meade talks to Zachary Woolfe about the role of Norma, which she will sing at Caramoor this Saturday and again on the following Friday. There will be a pre-opera lecture by the incomparable Andrew Porter.
