Juliana Madrone

Musicologist | Professor | Cellist | Writer

Category: Classical Music

Identity: Porous Borders

  The crowd-funding campaign for a new church in Berlin has just begun. After an international architecture competition, Wilfried Kuehn’s design was selected – one that incorporates space for a church, a mosque, and a synagogue under one roof, along with a fourth space for secular use and dialogue. Called the House of One, it […]

Sexing Up Classical Music

I somewhat apprehensively watched Amazon’s test pilot Mozart in the Jungle. How would such a mainstream venue treat the world of classical music, a world that has its own complicated image problems? This glimpse behind the curtain is a decidedly younger and sexier view, full of talented and eagerly competitive artist types. The trope of […]

Hearing Ravel

In a rather desperate attempt to find some music to play with my violinist friend that is actually written for our instruments, rather than arranged, I happened upon the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello. The CD booklet for my recording calls the sonata “prickly,” and the piece is certainly a side of Ravel we […]

Get ’em while they’re young!

  People have been foretelling the death of classical music for decades now. Actually, this naysayer trend is more like several hundred years old, almost as old as the roots of what we consider classical music. But the only art that dies is the one that becomes divorced from creativity, from inspiration, from life. I […]