In Brief: Taxes!

Time for Praying, image by Cyanaga, adapted from Albrecht Dürer's Praying Hands (Worth1000.com, Counterfeit Art Photoshopping Contest)

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

• Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho has won the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. Few could be more deserving. [Monotonous Forest]


• Marc Geelhoed draws our attention to the nasty comment situation on an article about the lovely and talented violinist Rachel Barton Pine. [Deceptively Simple]


• Via The Rest Is Noise, another newspaper, the less than highly reputed LA Weekly, has canned its classical music critic, Alan Rich. Via On a Pacific Aisle, we had the dubious pleasure of experiencing a nasty side of Rich, in a 2006 article where he dressed down two junior critics at the Los Angeles Times. [LA Weekly]


• Did you know that Wednesday (April 16) is World Voice Day? It also happens to be the day on which I will be singing, with the National Shrine Choir, for Pope Benedict XVI, when he celebrates Solemn Vespers with the American bishops. [Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception]


• A. C. Douglas unravels some of the mystery that is A. C. Douglas: negligent back-chair violinist and would-be conductor. The story behind these confessions is great reading. [Sounds and Fury]