The peaceful beauty of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel underlines the narrative of this short film by Errol Morris, now available on the New York Times website.

In The Umbrella Man, Morris talks to Josiah “Tink” Thompson, the author of the book “Six seconds in Dallas”, about the assassination of John F. Kennedy 48 years ago today.

Who was the Umbrella Man?

Update 24.11.11: To play the video, you need to click on the image above, then click on the almost invisible 'Play' button in the bottom left of the image on the New York Times website, and then once again once the video has loaded ...

Luciano Berio’s Stage Works:
Opera and La Vera Storia

The Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine in Paris is hosting a two-day symposium on Luciano Berio and his stage works.

Read more on the Cdmc website.

Visit also the Centro Studi Luciano Berio.

This week, Oliver Knussen conducts Luke Bedford’s Outblaze The Sky with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (17 and 19 Nov).

In an interview for the Seattle Times, Knussen says:

“[Bedford] writes music that is at the same time highly abstract in structure and very poetic in sound and resonance. ‘Outblaze the Sky’ is a short piece which is, in effect, a single big crescendo. He writes beautifully for orchestra, and the harmonic world is beautiful and distinctive. And it’s practical and relatively easy to put together!”

Read the full interview at the Seattle Times.

More on Outblaze The Sky, including an audio excerpt.

David Fennessy is on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune programme this afternoon talking about Pass the Spoon, his “sort-of opera about cookery” created with visual artist David Shrigley.

Listen live online at around 6pm London time today (Monday 14th).

Pass the Spoon opens at the Tramway in Glasgow on Thursday 17th November.

As the website says:

What can we say about Pass the Spoon?

Well …

It’s a show with actors, music and food.
It’s a bit like an opera, but with vegetables and fruit.
It’s about cooking.

It’s possibly the only show you’ll see this year featuring a dung beetle.

Oh and someone gets eaten. Did we mention that?

There’s also coverage in the Guardian, the Observer and Scotland on Sunday.

The most recent volume in the Kurt Weill Edition, Music with Solo Violin, has received two 2011 Paul Revere Awards from the Music Publishers Association of America.

The Critical Report won First Prize for Book Design in Educational Folios and the score won Second Prize for Full Score Music Notesetting.

Read more about the new edition on the Kurt Weill Foundation website and follow them on Facebook.

While the Wien Modern festival is raging here in Vienna, here’s a quick look at some other performances around the world this week.

Cornelius Cardew: Autumn 60 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester

Luciano Berio: Linea for 2 pianos, vibraphone and marimba, performed by musikFabrik in Cologne.

Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel at the esplanade in Singapore

Alexander Zemlinsky: Der Zwerg continues at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, together with Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (see videos)

Julian Yu: Philopentatonia at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo

You can see a full list of all forthcoming performances in our calendar.

The RSO Vienna performs under Johannes Kalitzke tonight at the Wien Modern festival.

The first half of the concert consists of orchestral miniatures, including excerpts of Francis Burt’s Morgana, Johannes Maria Staud’s ‘Eck’ from his work Polygon and Friedrich Cerha’s Momente.

After the interval, Harrison Birtwistle’s 30-minute The Triumph of Time will be performed.

The concert is broadcast on ORF Radio 1 on Friday 4 November at 19:30 Vienna time.