Osvaldo Golijov

Osvaldo Golijov is one of the most in-demand composers working today, with commissions from major orchestras around the world. But the past few years have been difficult for the Argentine composer: He has missed deadlines for new pieces and was accused earlier this year of plagiarism. On Thursday, Golijov whiffed again with the announcement that his new violin concerto -- already delayed -- will not be ready for its scheduled performances in January. The piece had been scheduled to be performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, with violinist Leonidas Kavakos, in concerts in Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall.

Eleven minutes and 22 seconds of what was once expected to be a major half-hour string quartet is not, quite yet, a comeback. But a little more than 11 minutes of very good music by a wonderful composer, loved by audiences and performers alike and simply one of the great musical forces of our time, is a start. What's to be done about Osvaldo Golijov other than wait? Probably nothing. His "Qohelet," which the St. Lawrence String Quartet played at Irvine Barclay Theatre on Sunday afternoon, had its first performance at Stanford University in 2011.

Porsches are made here, on the edge of the Black Forest. The Stuttgart Opera, under the leadership of Pamela Rosenberg (who takes over the San Francisco Opera next season), is one of Europe's most imaginative companies. The local state-run radio station sponsors exceptional festivals of new music.

A valuable Scarampella violin is at the center a brewing legal dispute involving a musician with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  Filip Fenrych, a Polish-born violinist with the orchestra, claims that he doesn't owe $43,000 to a woman who authenticated a Scarampella violin after she sold it to him, without authentication, for a reduced price. The case was reported by Courthouse News. Fenrych is arguing that Tara Moore of Mesquite, Texas, asked for $90,000 for the violin that bore a Scarampella label, but wasn't authenticated.

When clarinetist David Krakauer first heard Osvaldo Golijov's "Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind," for clarinet and string quartet, he was amazed by the young composer's epic distillation of Jewish musical culture, from his own specialty, klezmer, to sacred Hebrew chant. The reaction from cellist Paul Katz, who premiered the piece with the now-disbanded Cleveland Quartet, was a world apart.

"Ainadamar" is Arabic for "Fountain of Tears." This is what medieval Spanish Arabs called the source of a canal carrying water into the city of Granada. And it was at this grimly fitting site that fascists executed the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca early on the morning of Aug. 18 or 19, 1936, along with other victims of the Spanish Civil War, throwing the bodies into a mass grave.

The talk about him and Mozart began innocently enough, as a midsummer joke. Osvaldo Golijov was at the annual music festival on Cape Cod for a performance of his "The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind." When the players finished it, they beckoned him onto the stage of the Brewster Baptist Church to share the audience's standing ovation, a form of ego stroking the 41-year-old composer has had to get used to of late.

Eleven minutes and 22 seconds of what was once expected to be a major half-hour string quartet is not, quite yet, a comeback. But a little more than 11 minutes of very good music by a wonderful composer, loved by audiences and performers alike and simply one of the great musical forces of our time, is a start. What's to be done about Osvaldo Golijov other than wait? Probably nothing. His "Qohelet," which the St. Lawrence String Quartet played at Irvine Barclay Theatre on Sunday afternoon, had its first performance at Stanford University in 2011.

New York's Metropolitan Opera and the English National Opera will co-produce stagings of John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" and a new work by Osvaldo Golijov. "Doctor Atomic," which had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera in October 2005, will open at the Met on Oct. 13, 2008, and at the ENO in February 2009, the companies announced Wednesday.

A valuable Scarampella violin is at the center a brewing legal dispute involving a musician with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  Filip Fenrych, a Polish-born violinist with the orchestra, claims that he doesn't owe $43,000 to a woman who authenticated a Scarampella violin after she sold it to him, without authentication, for a reduced price. The case was reported by Courthouse News. Fenrych is arguing that Tara Moore of Mesquite, Texas, asked for $90,000 for the violin that bore a Scarampella label, but wasn't authenticated.

Osvaldo Golijov is one of the most in-demand composers working today, with commissions from major orchestras around the world. But the past few years have been difficult for the Argentine composer: He has missed deadlines for new pieces and was accused earlier this year of plagiarism. On Thursday, Golijov whiffed again with the announcement that his new violin concerto -- already delayed -- will not be ready for its scheduled performances in January. The piece had been scheduled to be performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, with violinist Leonidas Kavakos, in concerts in Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall.

Long Beach Opera's new production of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar" comes at an important time. The opera is a meditation on the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's murder by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War, which is ever relevant, especially in the way the work echoes the current situation in the Middle East. But there is another reason why this opera matters right now, despite LBO's somewhat slapdash production at Terrace Theater Sunday night. Golijov has been going through a bad patch, and we need to be reminded why the music world would be unwise to lose faith in him. He has missed deadlines, including for a violin concerto that was to have been premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic a year ago. He has also come under attack for plagiarism by "gotcha" critics who miss the larger context of his work and what makes it so culturally rich and pertinent.

New York's Metropolitan Opera and the English National Opera will co-produce stagings of John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" and a new work by Osvaldo Golijov. "Doctor Atomic," which had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera in October 2005, will open at the Met on Oct. 13, 2008, and at the ENO in February 2009, the companies announced Wednesday.

When the unofficial patron saint of this charmed valley, Jiddu Krishnamurti, gave outdoor public talks at his foundation here in the 1970s and '80s, birds sang and the mountains in the background seemed especially radiant. But the stern spiritual leader would put up with no New Age mellowness, insisting that his laid-back listeners get serious for an hour. What he had to say about human nature, he would repeat again and again, was not entertainment.

Death, like all those tourists packing every corner of Santa Fe in its high season, happily takes a holiday under the blazing sun of this glorious desert. Death has pervaded the stage of Santa Fe Opera, where Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar," a sad opera about the fascist murder of the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War, has just gotten sadder. And more violent. And more rhapsodic. And more relevant. In it, death is now encapsulated.

"Ainadamar" is Arabic for "Fountain of Tears." This is what medieval Spanish Arabs called the source of a canal carrying water into the city of Granada. And it was at this grimly fitting site that fascists executed the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca early on the morning of Aug. 18 or 19, 1936, along with other victims of the Spanish Civil War, throwing the bodies into a mass grave.

"The way to write American music is simple," said critic and composer Virgil Thomson. "All you have to do is to be an American and then write any kind of music you wish." Which means that American music could be European music. Or African music, or Caribbean or Indonesian. Anything. Paradox and perplexity, it seems, is the price of freedom. "Music of and About the Americas" is the theme of the Ojai Music Festival this year, running Wednesday through next Sunday.

In April, the Skirball Cultural Center gave Los Angeles a new multipurpose hall, one purpose being for chamber music. And on Monday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Chamber Music Society moved in. Not a traditional chamber but an amphitheater, on the scale of an operating theater or the Roman senate, the Ahmanson Hall, designed by Moshe Safdie, celebrates openness and flow into the lobby and beyond. The rake of the seats is steep.

Composer Osvaldo Golijov has this to say about 23-year-old mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor: "Maybe she's too young to be scared." Indeed, O'Connor -- a recent USC voice graduate and a master's candidate at UCLA -- seems far more excited than apprehensive as she prepares to sing the role of Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca in the Los Angeles premiere of "Ainadamar," Golijov's first opera, at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday.

Occasionally, over the last 50 years, a piece of music has come along that both defined its time and paved the way for the future. Such a list might acknowledge how John Cage's silent piece "4'33" " inspired conceptual art, Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" elevated the Broadway musical, Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia" stimulated musical postmodernism and the Philip Glass-Robert Wilson "Einstein on the Beach" redefined opera.