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Interview: Violinist Blake Pouliot Comes Home to Colburn
At age 32, Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot is on a roll - he just finished a tour that ended in a Carnegie Hall performance with the Prague Philharmonic, and he recently started playing a beautiful 1728 Stradivari violin.
I caught up with him for this interview at the Colburn School, please enjoy! He will give a chamber recital at 4 p.m. on Sunday of works by Franck (of the Piano Quintet!), Debussy, Mozart and Takemitsu.
In our conversation Blake spoke about his path from starting violin as a seven-year-old in Toronto to the international concert stage. We also talked about his love for his alma mater the Colburn School and how the lessons learned from Robert Lipsett still resonate. He also showed us the 1728 Stradivari violin that he has recently started playing and talked about how he has learned to trust his own creative instincts as a performing artist.
Click here for more information about his recital at 4 p.m. on Sunday at the Colburn School. Keep reading...
When the Newspaper Fires the Last Music Critic
The last week has brought tremendous loss for arts in America - the potential loss of a home for the performing arts, the loss of voices for the arts - and a terrible realization that these things can happen in an instant.
Last Sunday came the news that the Kennedy Center may be shut down for two years, displacing the National Symphony Orchestra and raising a great many concerns. Time will tell if the Kennedy Center and its resident orchestra will bounce back from the boycotts, the plummeting ticket sales and now the potential years-long shuttering and demolition of the facility. No tangible plans have been presented for its restoration; only for its imminent dismantling.
Then there is the matter of the collective voices dismissed, when the Washington Post cut a third of its entire workforce and laid off some 300 journalists on Wednesday. I have a feeling this is a true and significant death knell for the traditional newspaper.
But importantly for those of us in classical music: this is a significant stage in the erosion of coverage for arts and music.
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The Week in Reviews, Op. 535: Augustin Hadelich, Randall Goosby, María Dueñas
In an effort to promote the coverage of live violin performance, Violinist.com each week presents links to reviews of notable concerts and recitals around the world. Click on the highlighted links to read the entire reviews.
Augustin Hadelich and pianist Orion Weiss performed in recital at Boston Symphony Orchestra’s "E Pluribus Unum" Festival at MIT’s Thomas Tull Concert Hall.
- Boston Musical Intelligencer: "Having been together performing American music, which Hadelich lamentably reports is little known in Europe and elsewhere, the twinlike artists grandly represented the motto, 'out of one, many,' (sic) proposed by our founding fathers in 1776. Music and celebration have been twins since time immemorial, and encountering the very best of the best vividly brought home a sense of attachment to country, especially during these pronounced times of unrest."
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Could Closing the Kennedy Center Sink the National Symphony Orchestra?
On Sunday night U.S. President Donald Trump took to social media to announce a proposal to close the newly renamed Trump Kennedy Center for two years, starting on July 4, 2026 (Independence Day in the U.S.), to begin construction on a new entertainment complex in its place. The proposal is subject to board approval, according to the same post.
The two-year shuttering of the Kennedy Center would most certainly have implications for the National Symphony Orchestra, a Kennedy Center "artistic affiliate" which rehearses and performs at the venue for most of its year-round season, during which it gives about 180 concerts. The Kennedy Center also contributes some $10 million a year to the NSO’s $42 million budget, under its affiliate agreement that has been in place since 1986, according to the New York Times.
The Kennedy Center, which underwent a major expansion and renovation in 2019, has been embroiled in controversy since Trump took over as chairman of its board in February 2025, ousting Democratic board members, purging much of its professional staff and canceling certain already-scheduled events for political reasons. In December, Trump-appointed members of the board voted to rename the center the "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts," or the "Trump Kennedy Center." Keep reading...
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