Olivier Messiaen

Recital scheduled for Wednesday Right in the middle of a speech in his freshman year at Wheaton College, Jacob Fuhrman decided he wanted to make organ-playing his career. It was in speech class on a Monday morning right after spring break. The...

International fame just doesn't happen to many classical composers. But when it does, it can strike like a runaway train. Consider Thomas Adès. Hailed in his 20s as the heir to Benjamin Britten and more recently by the New York Times as maybe "the most...

The pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet calls the week ahead “the perfect week.� But for less technically assured musicians, having to perform two notoriously difficult, contrasting masterpieces by Olivier Messiaen within a few days of each other would be a...

An 18-wheeler of a symphony on a joy ride, the “Turangalila� –- with French plates, Sanskrit graphics, the eerie whine of a UFO, horsepower and torque you wouldn’t believe, a voluptuous sleeper in the cabin for euphoric sex -- barreled......

Mark Swed reviews the first Los Angeles Philharmonic performances of Thomas Adès' "Polaris" and Olivier Messiaen’s “Éclairs sur l’Au-delà…”...

Beyond obvious goodwill, “Ascending Dragon,� the cultural exchange last spring between Southwest Chamber Music in Pasadena and the Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi, generated significant musical results. Works were commissioned from two...

Perhaps the most important new music event on the West Coast, if not the entire U.S., the Ojai Music Festival is a necessary pilgrimage for any fan of contemporary classical music -- and anyone with the slightest curiosity about the......

In the field where Chinese composers and performers and Western classical music converge, East has been successfully meeting West long enough that the concept is closer to a norm -- or at least accepted cultural fact -- than a novelty.......

Reporting from San Francisco George Benjamin -- who is the featured composer in the San Francisco Symphony’s "Project San Francisco" festival this month and who will be music director of the Ojai Music Festival in June -- is known as......

Hidden treasure: An ancient tomb discovered inside a pyramid in Chiapas in southern Mexico may be 2,700 years old, which would make it the oldest such burial site in Mesoamerica. (BBC) Hot property: Police in southern Greece have seized a......

Basking in the popularity of Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is using an online press conference Tuesday morning to announce that — unlike most recession-weary arts organizations — it will hold the course. The orchestra’s 2010-11...

Los Angeles Philharmonic fans of a certain age might remember Carlo Maria Giulini’s cool, young Korean-born assistant conductor Myung-Whun Chung learning his craft here some 30 years ago. Since then, we’ve had to follow Chung’s path from afar as he....