On October 23rd, Jacaranda, the ever-adventurous SoCal series, opens its season with music of Charles Ives (a "portfolio" of short piano, vocal, and ensemble pieces), Samuel Barber (his Knoxville: Summer of 1915), Krenek (his George Washington Variations), and the great Ben Johnston (the world premiere of his Revised Standards).... Will Robin reports on a wild night of avant-garde music theater at the Staatsoper in Berlin.... Alexandra Gardner muses on "tired ears".... There's one more performance tonight in NYC of Jonathan Dawe's Cracked Orlando, a "fractal" reworking of Italian Baroque opera.... Jon Wiener has posted John Cage's 1972 letter in support of Yoko Ono, from the period when she and John Lennon were threatened with deportation.... James Pritchett blogs about the process of preparing and performing Cage's "number pieces".... Is Marc-André Dalbavie's Gesualdo the Gesualdo opera we've all been waiting for? Shirley Apthorp says yes.