In Brief: Adios, Santa Fe

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond. There is not much activity out there, it being summer and all, but a few people are still posting.

• Veteran orchestral musicians, who define the expression "set in their ways," generally hate everything about historically informed performance practice. Younger musicians, many of whom have grown up playing in both HIP and traditional ensembles, tend simply to incorporate its edicts into their bag of tricks. One senior violinist spouts off about the most hated HIP practice, the sparing use of vibrato. Say what you will about Roger Norrington, but he is making people think again about how they think music should sound, even Elgar's. [Jessica Duchen]


• Heh. With hat tip to Gert, a very funny new blog. ["Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks]


• Tyler Green's dreams for an exhibit on Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park Series come true. [Modern Art Notes]


• If you read the reviews of the Elliott Carter-a-Pooza at Tanglewood, you will want to watch the video, pointed out to us by Bruce Hodges. [Monotonous Forest]


• Should have mentioned this in a previous In Brief, but in case you missed it, our own Jens Laurson has some thoughts on recordings of Beethoven's 9th symphony. [WETA Blog]


• With hat tip to ArtsJournal, Pope Benedict XVI is quietly cleaning up the Catholic Church's (dilapidated, lapsed) musical house, beginning with his own papal choir. Before you think this is only about saving the heritage of historical Catholic music (which it certainly is), the new choir master, Fr. Pierre Paul, is also bucking Vatican tradition by introducing women to the Sistine Choir. [The Globe and Mail]