In Brief: Goodbye, 2007

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Marcus Plieninger has a pessimistic but on-the-money assessment of the New York Philharmonic's upcoming trip to North Korea, which may not be the feel-good story it is cracked up to be. [Armavirumque]


• Scott Spiegelberg has worked his Internet magic again this week and published his biannual ranking of the Top 50 Music Blogs this week. Ionarts is still up there in the mix, coming in at No. 7 in the rankings, under both formats. Thanks to everybody who reads and links to us! [Musical Perceptions]


• Ionarts is calling together the Washington Music League Welcome Wagon for the arrival of Greg Sandow and Anne Midgette to the area. Midgette will be taking up the position of Interim Classical Music Critic at the Washington Post in the New Year. We wish them a happy time down here! [Sandow]


• Heh. Few writers have critical venom as vitriolic as the Snarkmeister, Norman Lebrecht. Get a good Bah Humbug Christmas laugh as he dismantles bad holiday releases. [Slipped Disc]


• Sarah Noble has put together an operatic Advent calendar, with a different YouTube video for each day. [Prima la musica, poi le parole]


• A man calling himself OneManSho has put this video on YouTube. In it he sings a song, backwards, while doing various things at the same time. Then, the video plays backwards so that you can understand what song he is singing. [Via Boing Boing]
  
  


• As regular readers know, I am weary of Handel's Messiah, which in a running joke I usually call the M-Word in print. In an interview with Stephen Moss, conductor Harry Christophers reminds me of all the things there are to love about the work. [The Guardian]


• On his way out of town, Tim Page left his list of the year's top five area events in classical music. See how his notes compare with ours. We wish Page the best on his sabbatical in California and hope to read him in the paper again soon. [Washington Post]