Uspenski Cathedral, Helsinki.
Happily, the mystic modernism of Jonathan Harvey has of late been more in evidence in these parts. The composer was featured at Mostly Mozart over the summer; tonight, Signal plays an all-Harvey program at Miller Theatre, and the New York New Music Ensemble will make a similar gesture later in the month.... I couldn't make it out to Montclair to see David T. Little's Dog Days, but I heard nothing but good things. See rave reviews by Steve Smith and Heidi Waleson. I've been following Little since 2004, when I encountered him on the student-composer beat.... The Britten 100 website has been officially launched.... In the wake of an acclaimed recording of Winter Words, tenor Nicholas Phan has made a second all-Britten album, featuring the cycle The Heart of the Matter (with narration by Alan Cumming). There's a celebratory concert at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Oct. 15.... Doyle Armbrust, new-music activist in Chicago, has started an Unfamiliar Music Series at the Empty Bottle. The adventurous wind quintet City of Tomorrow will play there on Oct 24.... On Oct. 16, the brilliant Mann and Wagner scholar Hans Rudolf Vaget, currently in residence at the American Academy in Berlin, will lecture in Stuttgart on the until now overlooked link between Mann and Roger Sessions.... I'm happy to see that the Ellen Willis collection Out of the Vinyl Deeps has won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Much other fine work is being honored.
