From Here on, Further

  The musician is the magus, the alchemist who transforms notes into sound, intervals into meaning, harmony and counterpoint into magical utterance. I had the good fortune to study with some of the pre-eminent modernists of the day, with the composers Ben Weber,...

John Cage’s Cactus: Chess and Chance

  I’m reading Pierre Cabane’s Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp—conversations with Duchamp in the last year of his life– and Give My Regards to Eighth Street, Morton Feldman’s collected writings, and it’s all mixing in my head–chess, chance, inspiration...

Grete Sultan’s Cactus

      I’m in my midtown apartment, sunlight streaming through the south-facing windows, and I’m watering Grete Sultan’s cactus, which I saved from being abandoned on a street corner in the West Village. A few days after her death, I went to Grete’s...

The Strange Life of Ben Weber

Note: This article was originally published on the ACA Website When ACA Director Gina Genova asked me to write an article about Ben Weber in honor of ACA’s upcoming 75th anniversary celebration, I spent a lot of time staring at my computer, wondering how to...

Roger Trefousse: Taking Opera Into The Millennium

Roger Trefousse: Taking Opera Into The Millennium Sheridan Sansegundo | February 25, 1999 The composer Roger Trefousse lives in one of those perfect little Sag Harbor houses with wide plank floors and intricate moldings that were built when the village was a booming...