In Brief: Resurrexi Edition

Resurrexi, Gregorian introit for Easter Day, Giovanni Vianini, director of the
Schola Gregoriana Mediolanensis, Abbazia cistercense di Chiaravalle, Milan

A most blessed Easter Day to all our readers who celebrate it.

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

• Cartoonist and author Lynda Barry will present “Writing the Unthinkable,” a workshop on her creative method, at Johns Hopkins University (April 20, 5:30 pm) in the Arellano Theatre, Levering Hall, on the Homewood campus (3400 N. Charles St.) in Baltimore. A book signing will follow the talk. (from Mark Barry) [Homewood Art Workshops]


• Adrian Mann, a teenager in New Zealand with an eccentric and creative mind, has built the world's largest grand piano. [Fredösphere]


• It is so true that a bad page turner can ruin a concert, and I have seen it happen more than a few times. [Wall Street Journal]


• Tasso's Armida is a sorceress who enslaves men, turning them into animals when she tires of them. Bad boy opera director Calixto Bieto -- surprise, surprise! -- has just made the sexuality overt. The headline on Manuel Brug's review for Die Welt says it all: "16 nackte Männer in der Hölle." [Out West Arts]


• The program of the 2009 Proms has been announced. [Musical Criticism]


• Can't say we didn't see this coming. The area's newest orchestra, the D.C. Philharmonic, did not have enough money to pay musicians for its upcoming debut concerts at Strathmore. Some payment checks reportedly bounced, and now the concerts have been canceled. [Clef Notes]


• Michael Gordon, of Bang on a Can fame, is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. [Guggenheim Foundation]


• Oh, to make a trip to Brussels to see the production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre. George Loomis reports. [New York Times]