Since winning the Olivier Messiaen Competition in 1973 and then becoming a founding member of the Ensemble Intercontemporain under Pierre Boulez, French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard has been a champion of contemporary music. As he showed yet again in a Monday evening recital at La Maison Française, it is not just that he plays contemporary music in all styles but also that he plays it so well, so musically, with such understanding. Aimard’s recording of the…

This DCist is always surprised to learn the strange stories behind how artists inspire one another. In 1957, Philip K. Dick published a novel called Eye in the Sky. Years later, composer Robert Dick, no relation to the author, wrote a hallucinogenic and extremely difficult piece for solo flute that takes its name and subject matter from that novel. As previewed in this week’s Classical Music Agenda, we heard the composer himself, who teaches at…

June is finally here, and that means that this DCist can direct you to a few more concerts this week for your classical listening enjoyment (see more at Ionarts), after the lull of late May. You can plan your concert schedule for the entire month of June with our Classical Month in Washington (June), or your summer opera listening with Opera in the Summer 2005, both at Ionarts. Our activities will taper off again in…