“It could be that you’ll discover something by someone who isn’t a young composer but whose work you didn’t know,” John Harbison, the director of the Festival of Contemporary Music, said, and he was right.

London Theater Journal: Kelly Osborne is headed to the London stage, where Rhea Perlman already resides

The Italian director whose chilly depictions of alienation were cornerstones of international filmmaking in the 1960s has died.
Share your thoughts on his life and work. Which of his films is your favorite?
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On Monday, the Contemporary Music Festival presented its first “Film Night”: an evening of film excerpts, with a focus on their scores, and the composers on hand to say what they were after.

John Harbison explains his rationale for celebrating the “Generation of ‘38″ in this year’s festival: “more and more of the 1938 composers said they would be available, and it was an opportunity I wanted to take.”

Although Elliott Carter, 99, is absent from this year’s Festival of Contemporary Music programs, a new work is to be performed next year, and in the meantime, his opera, “What Next?,” recorded here last year, may be released on video.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. One of the hits of last summer’s festival was a production of Mr. Carter’s extraordinary opera, “What Next?,” conducted by James Levine, who is as ardent a fan as Mr. Carter has among major league conductors. This year Mr. Levine isn’t taking part in the festival; his contribution to the students at the Tanglewood Music Center was a performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” on Saturday night. But the good news is that “What Next?” was videotaped, and apparently the results are good enough to consider for public release.

The contemporary festival’s scholar in residence, Judith Tick, drew animated audience discussion with a surprising statistic to the effect that some 70 percent of contemporary vocal music is written for the female voice.

The Swedish filmmaker, considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, has died.
Share your thoughts on his life and work. Which of his films is your favorite?
Related Article

London Theater Journal: Promiscuous standing-ovations (for anything and everything) move from Broadway to the West End, at least when music is involved.

Political comment is shaping up as an undercurrent in this year’s contemporary festival at Tanglewood.

Jason Eckardt’s “Aperture,” on the opening program, is one of only two works in the festival by composers too young to join AARP, and even it could pass as a score by one of his elders.

At this year’s installment of the annual Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, directed by John Harbison, the notion that the new-music world is the province of young firebrands is being stood on its head.

The sighing noise that seemed to pervade the tiny theater of the Menier Chocolate Factory on Wednesday night was a sound to take the heart out of a travel-weary critic, that of great expectations deflating.

Watching the National Theater’s rousing revival of Shaw’s “Saint Joan” — a perfect, if surprising, substitute for the espressos I had to forgo yesterday in deference to my ailing stomach — I started to think about the phenomenon of the one-woman play. I’m referring to the dramatic tradition of placing one woman among an army, or even a small battalion, of men and waiting for sparks, sexual and symbolic.

Now it’s 27 plays in 21 days. I came down with food poisoning yesterday afternoon. I’ll spare you the cause and consequences. Suffice it to say that I did not make it to last night’s performance of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat,” the family hit of the moment. But I’m determined to see it because, for better or worse, it has generated more news here than any show this season,