Among various worthy people who won Grammys last night, I'd like to single out John McLaughlin Williams and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, who won for a recording (with pianist Angelin Chang) of Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques. The Cleveland group recently sprang back to life after having been declared dead, and Williams is a long-time advocate of unsung composers. In 2003, he led a performance in Cleveland of Ervín Schulhoff's jazz oratorio HMS Royal Oak — a delightfully quirky piece that deserves to be on recording.... I had no idea there were so many opera companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. I came across that listing after discovering that Contemporary Opera Marin (website out of service) performed HMS Royal Oak last summer.... Is Daniel Barenboim too sexy? (Blame Geelhoed.)
