The other week a friend came over and we were catching up on the things we were up to, so I told him that I’m writing a chapter for an upcoming book.
“Oh cool!” he said, “What’s the book about?”
“Well it debunks myths in classical music—” I said.
He clapped his hands in delight. “They called the right person,” he crowed. “You’re like the Adam Savage of classical music.”
The Adam Savage of classical music. Brb I’m going to get that printed on business cards.
So yes, hello everyone, let me quickly update you on what I’ve been up to and some things coming up!
Next spring I will be premiering a “new” piano concerto by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel! Composer Patricia Wallinga is orchestrating Hensel’s Piano Sonata in G Minor—which is basically “what if a concerto, but for solo piano because it’s the 1840s and bourgeois women are not supposed to be writing and performing piano concertos”—as a concerto, and right now the premiere is slated for March in Boston. This is a really cool project that I’m enormously psyched for, especially since it was put on hold when the pandemic hit. The leads on this project are still looking for co-commissioners to do regional premieres, btw!
I’m currently writing a chapter for an upcoming book on classical music myths. This one is a bittersweet honor—it’s the book that the brilliant Dr. Linda Shaver-Gleason was working on before she was assassinated by cancer.
Timeline TBD, because the concerto and the book chapter currently take precedence: I’m planning on recording the original Piano Sonata in G Minor by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and Maria Szymanowska’s Nocturne in Bb, both of which are pieces I performed this past season. (Btw all my studio recordings are funded by subscribers formerly on Patreon and now here, in case you were wondering what the paid subscriptions were for!)
I’m also currently working on learning new music for next year’s performances, and hopefully recordings. Because I know some of you are Florence Price fans, one of the pieces I’m learning is her Fantasie Nègre No. 2! It’s a gorgeous piece, and I was fully inspired by Dr. Samantha Ege’s interpretation (and general scholarly + advocacy work).
Because it’s been a while and I know some of you don’t follow me on other platforms: at the end of last year I started writing for VAN Magazine. My first piece was a satire of what every profile of a young classical artist sounds like (despite publishing in the last 2 weeks of the year, this ended up being VAN’s most-read article of the year, largely thanks to a lot of people not being able to clock it as satire) and my second piece was an analysis of why all classical profiles are so blandly similar.
Speaking of VAN, prior to being a published writer (!) I was interviewed by Sarah Fritz on my work studying and performing Clara Schumann’s music. If you haven’t gotten any updates on me for the past several years—and that’s my bad, because I haven’t been great about putting out regular updates—you can catch up on other articles and interviews I’ve been featured in on the press page of my website.
In personal news, I got married! After nearly three years of being affianced (we proposed to each other in 2019, the wedding’s first date was in 2020, and the second in 2021, yes we had to send multiple save-the-dates) the wedding finally happened and it was honestly better than I could ever have imagined, especially considering that I am really not a “whoo, weddings!” person. This is not the platform for wedding stuff, so for photos you can pop over to my Instagram. (Yes, my dress was red.)
I think that’s it for updates—it’s been enough of A Year that I can never keep track of everything I’ve been doing.
Articles I Enjoyed
As a result of rediscoveries and shifting approaches to programming, works by Schumann and Price have migrated to classical music’s mainstream in recent years, with attention from major orchestras, especially Philadelphia, and recordings on prestige labels like Deutsche Grammophon. But they were never truly forgotten, as their histories show.
It is WILD that Clara Schumann and Florence Price works are getting first-time outings at Carnegie Hall. ABOUT TIME. The article is also really good at explaining what makes these specific works (Schumann’s piano concerto and Price’s Third Symphony) so significant and what influences they had on other pieces; we desperately need education like this as part of the marketing for this type of programming, because so many lazy thinkers assume otherwise that these pieces are only getting programmed for “identity politics” (ick).
Indeed, the sound of symphony orchestras appears to be growing more diverse across the country — even at the top organizations who were programming entire seasons without women just a few years ago. The latest Orchestra Repertoire Report, a statistical overview published by advocacy group the Institute for Composer Diversity, shows a 638% increase in music by women at our symphony halls in the past six years. The numbers for women composers of color — which started at next to nothing — is up a whopping 1425%.
What! Have! I! Been! Saying! This entire article was massively validating for me, because it confirms a lot of things I have been noticing and calling for. (This includes my “tart” heads up to classical orgs that the pandemic lockdowns signaled an opportunity for more diverse programming, which Joshua Kosman wrote about in 2021.)
Sarah Gruen and Chandler Dean: If I Emailed My Parents Like Democrats Email Me (McSweeney’s)
Mom, we don’t have a moment to spare. I’m asking—no, BEGGING—for you to chip in ASAP. If every parent reading this email contributes just $197.50 by midnight, we can defend the shirt I just bought from being returned this November.
This is literally the funniest thing I’ve read all week. They absolutely nailed the tone of those unhinged political fundraising emails. (People who live in not-America, do you get emails like this, or is your political system slightly more sane?)
What I’m Listening To
Links here click through to Apple Music, which I much prefer, but Substack currently only supports embeds for Spotify, so the clickable in-lines are Spotify embeds.
I’ve been spending some time with Megan Thee Stallion’s new album, Traumazine, and by far my favorite track is “Her.” It 1) is a total banger and 2) is guaranteed to raise my confidence level a couple of notches every time. (Other favorite tracks: “Not Nice” and “Flip Flop”—the lyric “Flip-flop, lonely at the top / Everybody wasn’t meant to get off at your stop” feels oddly resonant.)
In other news, last Friday one of our generation’s great pop icons released the new album we all needed. I am talking, of course, about Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest release, The Loneliest Time.
The album overall is on the mellower side—more Dedicated than E•MO•TION. On the first couple of listens I thought the album shook out pretty clearly into “bops” and “vibes” (I usually prefer the former) but a couple rounds later I found myself gravitating towards the “vibes” group and finding that they had their own sneaky catchiness. CRJ, you’ve done it again.
“Beach House” and “Talking To Yourself” are excellent, excellent bops, but as of this writing my personal favorite is “Joshua Tree.” It does not appear to be anyone else’s favorite, but I like what I like, dammit.
Also, am I totally off in thinking that “Shooting Star” has very similar vibes as Kylie Minogue’s “Wow”?
Also, I really love the eponymous track, “The Loneliest Time” (which renders heartbreak as something tender, full of yearning sweetness) but the lyric “I've had more of those bad dreams / You were ten feet in front of me” just makes me think every time of Hadestown.
Miscellany
I usually don’t talk about products in these posts, but occasionally something low-key changes my life enough that I just have to talk about it.
Am I the only person who only just learned about cheese powder? Like, is this a thing that everyone was clued into except for me?
The King Arthur Baking page optimistically and aspirationally says that you can use this in breadmaking and on potatoes or whatever, but to me there is only One True Use Case for cheese powder, and that is for mac ‘n’ cheese. Boxed mac ‘n’ cheese has been an easy guilty staple for me since college; I don’t touch the bright orange Kraft stuff, but I’ve been very loyal to Trader Joe’s Organic Shells and White Cheddar, which I strongly suspect is just rebranded Annie’s Organic Shells and White Cheddar. (When my music history advisor in college hosted a potluck at the end of a course on Beethoven, I brought mac ‘n’ cheese, Beethoven’s favorite food, by which I mean I came over with three boxes of the TJs stuff.)
My problem with both the TJ’s and Annie’s products is that the amount of pasta you get is never what you need; generally I’ve found that one box isn’t enough for two adults, but too much for one person. The other week I found myself wondering if there was a way to get just the powdered cheese packet that comes in the box—because the macaroni is just regular dry pasta—and a quick Google search alerted me to the existence of cheese powder, which is just dehydrated salted cheddar, aka the exact same stuff that you dump out of the packet.
This tub of cheese powder has changed everything. It showed me that boxed mac ‘n’ cheese is a RACKET. It has allowed me to make mac ‘n’ cheese out of any kind of pasta. (I have since further optimized by getting pasta that has an even shorter cooking time than the stuff from the box.) And it has, more importantly, allowed me to make mac ‘n’ cheese in any amount that I want at a time. I have made huge portions for a quick two-people lunch. I have made tiny bowls for a snack. There are no rules anymore. I am, at long last, finally unstoppable. 🧀