This Is Your Brain on Music
The power of a playlist can affect productivity and happiness
By Aspen Matis
Columbia University psychiatry professor Galina Mindlin, MD, PhD, studies neuron connections and how such brain links can be strengthened by listening to the right music. Her new book, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life (co-authored by Joseph Cardillo and Don DuRousseau), distills her brain-training findings into playlists for the mood you want to be in. West Side Spirit spoke with Mindlin about music’s potential to alter mood, productivity and happiness, the existence of side-effect-free medicine and the North Pole’s hold on her mind. Read more
Serious or Just Playing Around?
Either way, guitar and piano are the most popular instruments to learn
“Why do people love music? That’s an age-old question,” said Richard Russell, the associate director of the Mannes College the New School for Music Extension Division. “It speaks to something in the soul. People have a calling for it.”
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New Sounds at Ecstatic Music Festival
It’s being billed as The Ecstatic Music Festival, but it might be more apt to call it a euphoric marathon. Running Jan. 16-March 28 at Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Center and featuring 150 composers, songwriters and performers working together, this celebration of the area between classical and popular music is nothing if not sprawling. Read more
A Home for Jazz Between the College Bars
Bebop adds a little ‘Paris on the corner of 110th’
For jazz enthusiasts and fine diners, Thursday nights at Bistro Ten 18 are a treat for the senses. Located near Columbia University at 1018 Amsterdam Ave., the French restaurant is surrounded by rowdy student hotspots, yet the atmosphere of the Bistro is low-key and elegant; not only with its sophisticated cuisine but also with its addition of weekly live music. Since September, guests have enjoyed the soothing tunes of the Morningside Jazz Collective every Thursday from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Read more
PARK AVE. BAROQUE HOLIDAY
The Park Avenue Chamber Symphony will perform a holiday concert Saturday, Dec. 11, and Sunday, Dec. 12, at All Saints Church, 230 E. 60th St. between Second and Third avenues.
The “Baroque Celebration” will feature soloist David Chan, concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and winner of the Tchaikovsky Internal Competition in Moscow. He will perform Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and then the Florilegium Chamber Choir and vocal soloists will join the orchestra for Vivaldi’s Gloria. The concert will culminate in a combined performance with the orchestra, choir and soloists, as they lead a sing-along of traditional holiday tunes. Hot cider and other seasonal refreshments will be served afterwards.
David Bernard, music director of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, has been with the group since its founding in 1999, and is proud of the Symphony’s many contributions to the city, which include outreach programs, community music classes and conservatory preparatory schools.
“It’s part serious concert with a world-class soloist, playing very well-known works: the Four Seasons of Vivaldi and Gloria. Vivaldi music is so festive, and anyone who comes to this concert will have a wonderful time—they’ll get great music by great artists, and then a sing-along,” Bernard said.
As a pianist and harpsichord/continuo player, Bernard will lead the Four Seasons from the keyboard.
The Symphony will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets cost $20 ($10 for students and seniors), and are available at the door or online through SmartTix. For more information, please call 212-868-4444, or visit www.chambersymphony.com.
Summer Guide 2010: Music
SummerStage
SummerStage turns 25 this year, and like any true twentysomething it’s going all out to celebrate, as the Central Park summer staple expands to all five boroughs. See free shows from The xx, St. Vincent, Public Enemy and Jay Electronica, while others from Pavement, The Flaming Lips and Hot Chips will cost you.
June 1 through Aug. 29, various locations, 212-360-2756; Free. Read more
No Wallflower: Symphony Space’s Laura Kaminsky
Symphony Space is known for presenting music marathons that are unforgettable for any culture vulture. May 15, the 12-hour “Wall to Wall Behind the Wall” will include world and U.S. premieres, along with rare works by world-renowned and emerging composers from the Soviet Union and Communist-era Eastern Europe. It’s the brainchild of Symphony Space’s associate artistic director Laura Kaminsky, who will become the institutions’ director July 1. We caught up with Kaminsky, who grew up on West 79th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, to find out why Russia, why now. Read more
Lofts Ain’t What They Used to Be
By Howard Mandel
Time was a Manhattan jazz loft, a downbeat, drafty, dingy, semi-dangerous place, was where you might hear anything, meet anyone and afterward end up anywhere. That’s why you dropped by. Today the Manhattan jazz loft is different: renovated, formalized, upscale.
But drift back to the Jazz Loft, a bohemian hangout in the flower district from the mid-1950s to the mid-’60s, where eccentric geniuses, slumming celebrities, the contentiously brilliant and attractive hangers-on rubbed shoulders, crossed genres and created sparks. Read more
A MetroStar Is Born
By Dustin Fitzharris
“I’m sweating my ass off,” Anne Steele murmurs in between slinging some cocktails on a tray. And you can’t blame her.
The animated and whimsical 36-year-old blond is dressed in paint-spotted jeans and a black, low-cut top as she takes drink orders. While running to the bar to pick them up, she smears on the lip-gloss she always keeps handy, checks her BlackBerry (protected in a hot pink case) and juggles a microphone so she can provide some harmony to the tunes being sung at the piano. Read more
Al Fresco Opera
By Kevin Filipski
As the summer festival closest to Manhattan—it’s 45 minutes by car (traffic willing), train or bus—Caramoor is the place to go to hear wonderful music in an idyllic outdoor setting of gorgeously landscaped gardens. For the past dozen years, musicologist turned conductor Will Crutchfield has been leading the acclaimed Bel Canto at Caramoor series there, presenting revivals of 19th-century Italian operas by Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini, all sung by artists at home in this repertoire. Read more
