Clarinet

Two of New England Conservatory's superstar faculty soloists teamed up Tuesday night for a joint recital: guitarist Eliot Fisk and clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. Jordan Hall was a sauna, but the large, young audience listened with attention and responded with whoops, whistles, and cheers of enthusiasm. Each played a major 20th-century solo work written for him. Fisk chose Luciano Berio's "Sequenza" for guitar (1988), the eleventh in the composer's magisterial series of works for solo instruments.

WASHINGTON - Joe Muranyi, who was bandleader Louis Armstrong's last clarinetist and became a leading ambassador in the effort to preserve the traditional jazz sound on records and in concert, died April 20 at a hospital in New York. He was 84. He had congestive heart failure and bladder cancer, said his wife, Jorun Hansen. Mr. Muranyi, a vivacious player and raconteur, spent more than five decades as a fixture in New York's Dixieland and vintage-swing scene. He liked to recount that Armstrong, upon meeting him in 1967, could not pronounce his Hungarian surname.

CAMBRIDGE - Longy School of Music was the scene of an impressive gathering of artistic luminaries on Sunday. Shakespeare, Goethe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, Constantin Brancusi, e.e. cummings, Jean Tinguely, and Jasper Johns were among those present in spirit in "Then & Now," a trio of contemporary works presented by Collage New Music under its director, David Hoose. Though at times these visitors were obliterated by the music, it was a thought-provoking evening all the same.

CAMBRIDGE - Longy School of Music was the scene of an impressive gathering of artistic luminaries on Sunday. Shakespeare, Goethe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Emily Dickinson, Constantin Brancusi, e.e. cummings, Jean Tinguely, and Jasper Johns were among those present in spirit in "Then & Now," a trio of contemporary works presented by Collage New Music under its director, David Hoose. Though at times these visitors were obliterated by the music, it was a thought-provoking evening all the same.

NEW YORK - Alfred J. Gallodoro, a jazz musician who performed on the saxophone, clarinet, and bass clarinet, has died. He was 95. Mr. Gallodoro died Saturday at his home in Oneonta in upstate New York, said his grandson Kevin Wood. Mr. Gallodoro worked with some of the world's greatest conductors, including Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, and Leonard Bernstein, according to his website. The Chicago native began his career at age 13 at a vaudeville house in New Orleans.

Back from summer hiatus, Boston Musica Viva opened its 39th season of new music on Friday in fine, incisive form, under the familiar direction of Richard Pittman. The program highlighted recent and venerable German imports with one welcome domestic interloper. Detlev Glanert has emerged as one of Germany's leading opera composers; "Geheimer Raum" ("Secret Room"), a 2002 octet, combines his dramatic sense with a lucid ear and an expressionist sensibility. Within "walls" of increasingly claustrophobic, obsessive motives, Glanert's oft-harsh harmonies expand on atonality - a...

Experimental Moodswing Orchestra Moodswing Orchestra El Destructo ESSENTIAL “Sweet Adelaide’’ Moodswing Orchestra (with an altered lineup) plays at the Lizard Lounge on Thursday. Sounds arrive in this order, layering on top of one another: the gentle tinkling of piano keys. Radio static. Bowed strings. A slow, insistent drum beat. A whispered chant. A lovely female voice enters - it belongs to Joan Wasser - and weaves around the rhythm.

THE MUSIC OF EVAN ZIPORYN Friends from Bang on a Can Rockport Chamber Music Festival At: Shalin Liu Performance Center, Thursday night Reprinted from late editions of yesterday’s Globe ROCKPORT - Cambridge-based composer Evan Ziporyn has always kept his ears open to popular and non-Western traditions. You might describe his music as living in some imagined juncture between uptown, downtown, and way out of town. Concertgoers outside the city’s new music scene have not had many opportunities to get to know it. It’s in that spirit that an all-Ziporyn program...

CONCORD - The Concord Chamber Music Society got itself a birthday present to open its 10th season: a new trio for violin, clarinet, and piano from composer Michael Gandolfi, commissioned with funds from the Harvard Musical Association. “Line Drawings’’ was inspired by the improvisational fluidity of Picasso, but the resulting emphasis on melodic counterpoint also made for music in the spirit of Bach. The five movements are all rounds and mirrors, echoes, and games. An energetic “Canon, Cut and Paste’’ is followed by “A Farewell...

On his acclaimed 2004 recording "Ivey-Divey," eclectic clarinetist Don Byron and his Ivey-Divey Trio paid tribute to a famous 1945 session by the great tenor saxophonist Lester Young, with pianist Nat Cole and drummer Buddy Rich. Byron's disc introduced the trio but also detoured into his own beguiling compositions as well as into two Miles Davis classics. The trio drew from all of these at Scullers Tuesday, with founding member Jason Moran on piano and veteran Billy Hart ably filling Jack DeJohnette's drum chair.

PICK OF THE DAY A friendly disagreement Maybe you would never point to modern masterpieces in the museum and say, "They call that art?" But would your friends? In "Art," the bonds between three old pals are tested when one of them purchases a very large, very expensive, very white painting. New Repertory Theatre presents Christopher Hampton's translation of Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning comedy. Jan. 15, 2 p.m. Through Feb. 5. $28-$58. Arsenal Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown.

THE MUSIC OF EVAN ZIPORYN Friends from Bang on a Can Rockport Chamber Music Festival At: Shalin Liu Performance Center, Thursday night Reprinted from late editions of yesterday’s Globe ROCKPORT - Cambridge-based composer Evan Ziporyn has always kept his ears open to popular and non-Western traditions. You might describe his music as living in some imagined juncture between uptown, downtown, and way out of town. Concertgoers outside the city’s new music scene have not had many opportunities to get to know it. It’s in that spirit that an all-Ziporyn...

Experimental Moodswing Orchestra Moodswing Orchestra El Destructo ESSENTIAL “Sweet Adelaide’’ Moodswing Orchestra (with an altered lineup) plays at the Lizard Lounge on Thursday. Sounds arrive in this order, layering on top of one another: the gentle tinkling of piano keys. Radio static. Bowed strings. A slow, insistent drum beat. A whispered chant. A lovely female voice enters - it belongs to Joan Wasser - and weaves around the rhythm.

CONCORD - The Concord Chamber Music Society got itself a birthday present to open its 10th season: a new trio for violin, clarinet, and piano from composer Michael Gandolfi, commissioned with funds from the Harvard Musical Association. “Line Drawings’’ was inspired by the improvisational fluidity of Picasso, but the resulting emphasis on melodic counterpoint also made for music in the spirit of Bach. The five movements are all rounds and mirrors, echoes, and games. An energetic “Canon, Cut and Paste’’ is followed by “A Farewell to Old Friends,’’ a looped...

Speak Low (Decca) ESSENTIAL "I Wish I Knew" American standards seem to have become a rest home for aging rockers, and while it might appear that Boz Scaggs has taken up residence - this is his second straight album in the form, following 2003's "But Beautiful" - the singer has suggested in recent interviews that his stay will not be permanent. While he's here, though, he seems to be making the most of it: "But Beautiful" topped the jazz charts, and with his new release he again proves himself an able and careful interpreter of this music while exhibiting a...

NEW YORK - Alfred J. Gallodoro, a jazz musician who performed on the saxophone, clarinet, and bass clarinet, has died. He was 95. Mr. Gallodoro died Saturday at his home in Oneonta in upstate New York, said his grandson Kevin Wood. Mr. Gallodoro worked with some of the world's greatest conductors, including Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, and Leonard Bernstein, according to his website. The Chicago native began his career at age 13 at a vaudeville house in New Orleans.

Speak Low (Decca) ESSENTIAL "I Wish I Knew" American standards seem to have become a rest home for aging rockers, and while it might appear that Boz Scaggs has taken up residence - this is his second straight album in the form, following 2003's "But Beautiful" - the singer has suggested in recent interviews that his stay will not be permanent. While he's here, though, he seems to be making the most of it: "But Beautiful" topped the jazz charts, and with his new release he again proves himself an able and careful interpreter of this music while exhibiting a voice that has retained its...

The Marlboro Festival was on to something when it championed the approach of mixing young musicians with seasoned veterans in a single ensemble, in theory wedding youthful vigor with the mellower virtues of experience. The most satisfying parts of Sunday's performance by early-career artists connected with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center were the works anchored by the well-traveled clarinetist David Shifrin: the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and Prokofiev's "Overture on Hebrew Themes.