News & Views

PHILADELPHIA, PA — The Musical Fund Society will celebrate its 200th bicentennial anniversary in 2020 by doing what it does best: supporting the creation and dissemination of important music by eminent artists.  The Society is commissioning four new works by significant American composers and presenting their world premieres with leading Philadelphia ensembles. The Society’s Edwin G. McCollin […]

As you drive along the Schuykill Expressway or 95, have you seen the billboards inviting those who survive their commute to attend an upcoming Philadelphia Orchestra, PCMS, or Opera Philadelphia performance? It’s good to see this kind of aggressive marketing to potential new concertgoers. But have you noticed that the signs tend to advertise a […]

Even if Science Fiction isn’t a movie genre that usually appeals to you, Ex machina is a film currently showing at the Ritz East in Old City and elsewhere that deserves your strongest consideration. Its subject is artificial intelligence: I think I’m not giving too much away to explain that Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a young […]

  What could be more challenging for a composer than getting a commission for a new work, and having it premiered by top-level musicians? The answer: getting a second performance. And a third, and a fourth, and so on. What does it take for a new work to enter the standard repertoire? It is an essential […]

Composer Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, an oratorio for chorus and sextet commissioned by Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, has been awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Mendelssohn Club premiered the work on April 26, 2014 at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral along with the Bang on a Can All-Stars musical ensemble, which is based in New […]

On a stunningly beautiful Friday morning in mid-May, I joined three other MFS board members of greater standing than me—president Peter Burwasser, vice-president Janelle McCoy, and secretary Melinda Whiting—for a field trip to the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library. “We’ll meet at the […]