Messiaen

Music critic Greg Sandow just made a post on his blog about hearing Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time at a club, Le Poisson Rouge, in NYC.  He writes about his experience of hearing Messiaen's piece programmed between two sections of ambient music with electronics, and saw that it received a very enthusiastic response from the crowd.  He describes the reason for the effectiveness of the program is that the music surrounding the Messiaen piece puts the audience in a similar mood to the center of the program, so that the Messieaen "gets put in a space where they're read to hear him".  My favorite line of this entry is thus:  

"there's something really wonderful about playing classic pieces for people whose silence and applause are completely spontaneous."

So I encourage you to check out this entry.  Most importantly, make sure to read the comments at the bottom, because they go so well with many ideas about what and how to talk about classical music which we have been sharing in class this whole semester.

I definitely recommend checking out the link to the venue, which is dedicated to "offering the highest quality eclectic programming" to which they invite people to "bring open mind and drinking shoes"-- certainly makes me want to make sure to check out when I get the time to visit the city!