Reeling in the New Year

Who was to know six months ago that Y2K would turn out to be "Much Ado About Nothing"? Last summer, I asked Paul Turok to write us a program opener for the millennial event or at least for our first concert in the present millennium. The result is the very American "reel" that begins this concert. At the outset of the twenty-first century, we are probably more inclined to think of reels as associated with motion pictures or fishing rods than we are as the sort of high-energy fiddling folk dance of American times gone by. Paul Turok is something of a treasure: a man of intelligence and wit and of thoroughly digested musical culture. (He publishes what I believe to be the best and most trenchant review of recorded music available in America today, Turok's Choice). His fund of musical knowledge-even wisdom-has not inclined him to stylistic correctness. He simply composes as a man whose profession it is to give musical expression into the world. A relief and a pleasure!