In Brief: Hosanna Filio David Edition

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

• Your moderator was this close to making the trip back to Motown to watch the Final Four in person and support the basketball team of my undergraduate Alma Mater, Michigan State University. Singing commitments and assignments for the Post made it impossible, but no one is happier about the success the Spartans had last night. Except perhaps for the Great State of Michigan, which needs something to cheer about right now. [Washington Post]


• Newspapers should learn the lesson and stop hiring Alan Rich to write about classical music. The latest publication to pick up Rich, Los Angeles City Beat, has ALSO shut down. Who reports it? A blog. Run by a newspaper that could close at any time. [Culture Monster]


• If you have ever received a rejection letter, this will cheer you up: the letter that T. S. Eliot wrote to George Orwell when Faber and Faber rejected the manuscript of Animal Farm, saying that he was not convinced that “this is the thing that needs saying at the moment.” [Laila Lalami]


• Check out this nice interview/profile on David Zinman by Renaud Machart, published when the American conductor, now at the podium of the Zurich Tonhalle, was doing a guest appearance with the Orchestre de Paris and Hélène Grimaud last month. Included are Zinman's recollections of great conductors who advised him. Pierre Monteux told him that he always thought of pork chops when he conducted La mer, but only because the doublebass section had been grilling them during the first rehearsals of the piece he led. Erich Leinsdorf, in response to a question about what a young conductor just getting started should do, responded without batting an eye, "Don't buy anything. Rent." Zinman, who is reportedly brimming with such anecdotes, is working on a book, a sort of memoir, to be published posthumously. After some pressing, Zinman would admit to not liking the music of only two composers: Pfitzner and Reger. [Le Monde]


• Congratulations to Tim Page, former music critic of the Washington Post, whose new memoir about growing up with Asperger's Syndrome, Parallel Play, will be published in September. [Opera Chic]