John was born an identical twin in Springfield, MA on September 17, 1942, the older of the two boys by five minutes. He was the son of John Keehlin Anthony, Jr. and Lucille Muse Anthony. The family was originally from Arkansas, but it was wartime and their father, who worked for the FBI, had been given an undercover assignment of guarding the Springfield Armory. Once the war was over, the family returned to Arkansas and John grew up in Fort Smith near the Oklahoma border. After graduating from Fort Smith High School in 1960, he attended the University of Arkansas, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in ..read more

On Saturday June 10th, Seven Times Salt will perform at La Grua Center in Stonington. Included on their program, Easy As Lying: The Music of Shakespeare’s Globe, are some songs from Shakespeare’s immensely popular comedy Twelfth Night., including two whose lyrics were tapped for titles of 20th century works. O Mistress Mine, by Thomas Morley, is sung by the clown Feste in Act II. O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear! Your truelove’s coming, That can sing both high and low. Trip no further, pretty sweeting. Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know. … Wh ..read more

“The head, these hair’s have grac’d lies low; But what it wrought — will ever grow.” From May 7, 1827: the lock of hair from which key portions of Beethoven’s genome was sequenced. Above it is a poem by Johann Andreas Stumpff: “The head, these hair’s have grac’d lies low; But what it wrought — will ever grow.” In March, an international group of researchers published an article, in the scientific journal Current Biology, in which they reported on DNA analyses of Beethoven’s hair. The paragraph below includes some information from a summary of their findings: Health problems significantly impa ..read more

Schubert at the Piano II (1899), oil on canvas The painting above represents a convergence of two Viennese artists: Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) and Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918). While their lives didn’t overlap, Schubert’s music was beloved in Vienna during Klimt’s career and he himself was a fan. In 1898, Klimt was commissioned to create two paintings for the music room in the Vienna home of a wealthy industrialist, Nikolaus Dumba. Schubert At The Piano is one of the two paintings. Klimt has presented the women in dresses contemporary to his own time, not Schubert’s. It’s believed that the yo ..read more

William Davenant presented his Restoration era adaptation of Macbeth roughly sixty years after Shakespeare’s version was first performed. With their relatable, oh so human themes of ambition, love, greed, desire, jealousy, lust for power, and revenge, Shakespeare’s plays have been ripe for interpretation for centuries now, and Macbeth is no exception. Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, is just the latest addition to the catalog of film versions, which also includes efforts by Orson Welles and Roman Polanski. Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film, Throne ..read more

The actual title of the work popularly known as the Goldberg Variations is Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations, for the Harpsichord with 2 Manuals. Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits. So who was Goldberg? Count Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court in Dresden, was a passionate fan of music who entertained some of the best instrumentalists of the day at his home. Among them was a young harpsichord prodigy named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. Goldberg studied both with Bach’ s eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann and, in the early 1740s, with Ba ..read more

In March of this year, just before widespread pandemic lockdowns began, the Connecticut Early Music Society lost a longstanding supporter and Trustee, George Jagger. George’s was a long and rich American life. This remembrance was written by Robert P. Anderson, Jr. George J. Jagger was born on June 19, 1923 and grew up in Methuen, Massachusetts.  After graduating from Edward F. Searles High School in 1941, he hoped to hear from either Harvard or Yale, and set off on an auspicious college career. He had graduated as salutatorian of his class with the then-traditional preparation of langu ..read more

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we contacted those on our e-mail list and asked them what music they were enjoying. Perhaps not surprisingly, Bach was the composer most frequently mentioned. Here’s what we learned: Keyboard works mentioned included this performance of François Couperin’s Les Ombres Errantes (The Wandering Shadows) by Israeli pianist Iddo Bar-Shaï, available on YouTube.  One writer is enjoying Bach’s French and English Suites and The Goldberg Variations was cited twice, with Simone Dinnerstein specifically mentioned. Bach’s choral music made the list as well, sp ..read more

We first used Andy Warhol’s homage to Beethoven on our website back in 2018. We liked it so much we’ve chosen the most vibrantly colorful of his four screenprints to be the ‘face’ of our 2020 Festival, at which we honor Beethoven’s birth in Bonn, Germany 250 years ago. Pittsburgh native Warhol (b. 1928) created his 40 x 40 inch Beethoven images in 1987, the year he died. Passages from piano sonata No. 14 ("Moonlight") are superimposed on all four. Warhol's inspiration was what is likely the best known image of Beethoven, an 1820 oil portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler ..read more

Felix Mendelssohn’s travels in Italy, in 1830-31, were an inspiration for his fourth symphony, the performance of which will conclude our Festival this coming Sunday. Mendelssohn expressed his delight in Italy in painterly fashion as well, with evocative watercolors of Lake Como, the Amalfi Coast, and Florence ..read more