Greetings from sunny Phoenix! This is my second time in the city. It’s also my first time ever posting anything with a pre-scheduling function. So, actually, if you’re reading this, I wrote this post about 48 hours ago. How very Back to the Future. (Still waiting on my Mr. Fusion home energy reactor...)

Even as we approach the 21st century’s fourth decade, the belief that high culture only happens on the East Coast, mostly New York City, is persistent. Ask your average out-of-towner from east of the Rockies what they think about culture in Los Angeles and you’re likely to be met with a contemptuous sneer. There’s all kinds of classical music history under our feet in Southern California; some notable sites are only a short distance away from my home.

Phoenix, a much younger city, would be easy to similarly dismiss. When my wife and I were here last year, we spent a long while driving around, especially in the Mesa and Tempe areas, taking in a dynamic topography where outcroppings of the 20th century press against the burgeoning 21st, punctuated at intervals by dramatic rock formations and the edges of a Sonoran Desert that refuses to submit to concrete and steel.

On our first night during that trip last year, we had dinner at Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, a local favorite insulated from the passing of time. To the right of the entrance, there was a dining hall booming with music. As we entered, we saw a large stage. Suddenly, an organist playing away at a console emerged from a trap door below. Accompanied by pizza and appetizers that were pleasantly nostalgic, we listened to a wide ranging program that covered everything from Grieg and Mendelssohn to John Williams to Tico-Tico to Kondō Kōji to contemporary Top 40 — further enhanced by occasional dance numbers from animatronic cat puppets.

Organ Stop Pizza bills itself as being the home of the world’s largest Wurlitzer organ, a copy of the “Fox Special”. My first thought was that Virgil Fox was somehow involved, but the instrument’s name originates from having been specially designed for 20th Century Fox’s sound stage. Just looking at this mighty instrument is an experience; to hear this complex, two-story tall mechanism come to life with music is beyond impressive.

Phoenix has other musical experiences as well. The city and its environs have, according to my count, at least three symphony orchestras with regular seasons. Arizona State University, which was the site of the second-ever American performance of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Quartet (erroneously credited as the US premiere), has an active schedule of orchestral, chamber, and solo instrumental concerts. Other organizations, like the Phoenix Chamber Music Society and Yavapai Symphony Association lend further support, promoting Arizonan musicians, as well as bringing in luminaries from farther out such as the Takács Quartet and the Miró Quartet.

Last time I was here, I didn’t have too much time to explore the record store scene. Truth be told, I couldn’t manage it. Phoenix was blistering through a heat wave that averaged around 110°F every day — not the sort of weather that encourages exploration by foot or even in a vehicle. Zia Records is a regional institution. I visited a couple of locations and, while their shelves weren’t stocked with rarities, they did have a good number of Telarc CDs I’d been hunting for. Better luck was had at the Deseret Thrift in Glendale, where there awaited a cache of BIS and Hyperion CDs, mostly of music by James MacMillan and Kalevi Aho, each priced $1.

Part of me wants to go to the ASU Symphony Orchestra concert occurring on the afternoon we arrive, if only to hear Carlos Simon’s Amen!, which opens the program. I just might after all, in spite of possibly running on fumes from my early morning flight into Arizona.

Whatever the case, I hope to have more musical experiences to relate when I get back to manning my website Tuesday night. Phoenix is a beautiful city.

Last year was one that could be said to be about many things for me, but perhaps most of all 2025 was my “Year of Britten”. I’m fudging things a bit here: my drastic reevaluation of the English composer’s music actually started in late 2024, after I pulled down a recording of his Lachrymae to listen on a whim. It was in 2025, however, where the essence of his music, the breadth of his genius were fully revealed to me.

Way back in 2010, when internet hook-ups and romance were still a breeze, I was on OKCupid and on my profile noted the music of Britten among the things I disliked most. This caught the attention of another user — not a young woman as I had hoped, but instead a gentleman oboist who lived in Long Beach. We had a friendly exchange of opinions. “Whaddaya mean you don’t like Britten?”, was the general thrust of his argument, followed by his personal evaluation of the composer’s mastery. I recognized those qualities, I told him, yet they somehow didn’t add up to a satisfying whole for me. Basically, his music to me seemed more about expression than actually being expressive.

Now that another third of my life has passed, imprinted with many formative experiences along the way, Britten’s music makes sense to me. And one of its salient qualities that is most appealing to my forty-something self is how adult it is. Which isn’t to diminish other composers who may be more immediately impactful on a youthful listener. After all, nobody would ever claim Beethoven or Chopin are less great because of how captivating their music often is to the young. But there is an essential remoteness to Britten that may be difficult for someone younger to attune themselves to. It certainly was for me to do so back in my teens and twenties.

It’s interesting to observe how, in a way, Britten’s music stands apart from his time. Yes, I know that his music, particularly in the early years, was marked by developments in 20th-century music. But rather than hitch himself to one stylistic trend or other, Britten remained sui generis; he belonged to no movement and although he continues to inspire subsequent generations of composers, he never became the progenitor of a “Britten school”.

I thought about that while listening to the Four Black American Dances by Carlos Simon last month at Disney Hall. In some future post I’ll write at greater length about my feelings for this superb American composer, but what struck me on this first listening of his music was how Brittenesque it is. Not that it is imitative of Britten. Simon is very much his own artist, his music shaped by influences that the Englishman could never have known (or cared) about. What they do have in common is an intrinsic earnestness of expression. Grotesquerie and irony inform much of their music, true. Both composers, nevertheless, are upfront with their listeners that there is no time to trifle about. Simon’s music is also distinctive in its responsiveness to the times, albeit in a topical manner that recalls composers like Theodorakis or Rzewski rather than Britten. Stylistically, however, Simon’s music, like Britten’s, heeds no school or ideology.

In an issue of the old Tower Records Pulse magazine (some resourceful person ought to scan these and make them available online), there was an interesting interview with Rautavaara. I no longer recall verbatim what he said, but towards the close of the interview he said that being a composer in the late 1990s was like being a boy who could play with anything in his toy chest. As frivolous as that simile may be in reference to the music of Britten and Simon, it succinctly illustrates the cornerstone of their art: a sense of eclecticism that drives the Mahlerian urge to embrace the world.