“Trust the good things that happen”

UPDATE, October 3, 2026: Mr. Mueller has been so kind as to provide this link, at which you can purchase (if you’re in Europe) or may be able to purchase (if you’re anywhere else) the first number of The Nincompoopje. I’m afraid you’re on your own with the Dutch.

And one of those good things that happen on occasion is the arrival of a new issue of Mineshaft magazine from the fine folks in Durham, North Carolina. The striking wraparound image is the creation of Simone Baumann, a rising star of the comix scene, who is also represented in this issue by “Human Fly,” a ravishingly hallucinatory visit to the world of comix publishing. There are also contributions from the usual gang: a selection from Mary Fleener’s similarly hallucinatory “Happy Hour” (she also contributes an illustration of Poe’s “The Raven”); two fine paintings by Sophie Crumb; a terrific portfolio of work from Minnesota’s underground comix scene (a stunning painting by Nathalie Tierce here); Drew Friedman’s portrait of Chris Ware; Christoph Mueller’s latest metaphysical musings; and more. Sixty-eight pages of good things in this lovingly produced issue, with a rare four-color cover; you can order it, and subscribe to future issues, here.

A word to the wise, too: Ms. Baumann’s new self-published book Alice will soon be available for purchase here, and Mr. Mueller is hawking a new anthology of short stories called The Nincompoopje, 28 full-color pages “made by a human,” available from concertobooks.nl in Amsterdam. (Unfortunately I can’t locate a link to purchase, but I’ll add it here when I find one.) It’s never too soon to put together your Christmas list.

J. C. Bach, Mozart, Schubert

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, in rehearsal.

My dance card for September seems to be rapidly filling up. On September 25 and 26, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia opens its 2026-2027 season with Mozart 40, a triple bill of music spanning the half century or so between the late Baroque and middle Classical periods, a span quite appealing to my own musical affections. David Hayes will lead the orchestra in Mozart’s 1788 Symphony No. 40 in G minor, which Charles Rosen called “a work of passion, violence, and grief” in The Classical Style; Hayes will follow this with Johann Christian Bach’s 1760-or-so Symphony in G minor, Op. 6 No. 6, “arguably the darkest and most dramatic he composed,” said Tom Service in the Guardian in 2014; and the program will close with Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. 485 of 1816, a conscious tribute to Mozart. “O Mozart! Immortal Mozart! what countless impressions of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls!” went the slightly (though understandably) over-the-top appreciation Schubert wrote in his diary that year. Tickets are available now at this link.

The rest of the Chamber Orchestra’s season looks similarly enticing, with a holiday presentation of three Brandenburg Concertos and an all-Haydn evening of his early symphonies on the schedule. More about the season here. A series of intriguing discussions about Bach and Beethoven accompanies this year’s concerts.

Free Bach in Philadelphia

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

It looks like I got here just in time: Now in its second year, the Philadelphia Bach Collective is an ensemble offering free performances of Bach cantatas at the St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, and it’s just announced its 2026-2027 lineup. The first concert of the year, on Tuesday, September 22, at 1:00 pm, pairs Bach’s Jesu, der du meine Seele: BWV 78 with Telemann’s Concerto for flute and strings, TWV 51:G2. I’ll certainly be there, but I’ll especially be there in March, when the Collective joins with the New York vocal outfit TENET Vocal Artists for a rare Philadelphia performance of Bach’s St. John’s Passion. Spikier and darker than St. Matthew’s Passion, St. John’s Passion comes close to broody opera, and I suppose Bach has me there; I have fond memories of hearing it earlier this year in Vienna. I’ll very much look forward to revisiting this, one of the great masterpieces of the Baroque and, as such, one of the great masterpieces period.

The Philadelphia Bach Collective is the brainchild of co-artistic directors Steven Zohn, Heather Miller Lardin, and Rebecca Myers, who put together the organization to “[make] the music of Johann Sebastian Bach accessible and relevant for audiences across Philadelphia … [and] offer regular opportunities to hear Bach’s cantatas in an accessible, informal setting.” Free weekday concerts of Bach? Sounds suspiciously European to me. And not only to me; the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Peter Dobrin wrote last year that the Collective’s concerts are “the kind of thing that, had you experienced it in Paris or Berlin, would make you say you wished we had that back home.” WRTI’s Meg Bragle called it “a gathering of friends and an invitation to the community” in this profile of the group.

More information about the Philadelphia Bach Collective is here, and tickets are already available for the March St. John’s Passion. I won’t miss it.

Opernabend: Manon Lescaut

Jules Massenet and Daniel Auber had already written operas based on Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux, et de Manon Lescaut, a 1731 novel by Abbé Prévost, and when Puccini was reminded of this while composing his own opera in the early 1890s, he had a rejoinder ready: “Manon is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the hearts of the public,” he said. “Why shouldn’t there be two operas about Manon? A woman like Manon can have more than one lover.” Puccini appears to be unaware of the Auber opera. He went on to add, “Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with a desperate passion.”

The Italian Riccardo Muti brings the same desperate passion to his own 1998 recording of Manon Lescaut for Deutsche Grammophon, which you can hear on radio klassik Stephansdom’s Opernabend tomorrow, Saturday, August 22, at 2:00 pm Eastern time; Muti leads a La Scala production with Maria Guleghina in the title role, surely enough of a recommendation. “Muti conducts with great passion and much finely calculated rubato, but the recording is a touch coarse in tuttis; bringing the voices forward into a studio rather than a theatre perspective has brightened the chorus, who overwhelm the orchestra in the Act 3 roll-call,” writes Gramophone. You can stream it at the rkS web site here. (And stay tuned afterwards for music by Heinrich Schütz, Robert Schumann, and more.)

For a taste of Muti’s Manon, watch the below video of the conductor rehearsing the opera’s intermezzo with an unidentified orchestra on YouTube.

Regular programming to resume shortly

I’ve just about completed my move to Philadelphia and am gearing up to writing again here just after Labor Day.

My books and music are just about unpacked. With every move my library becomes smaller and smaller as a practical matter, but the process does tend to focus the attention on what I’ll be dragging with me into my retirement years. And it provides insight into what affinities and ideas have stayed with me all this time. There is, of course, Vienna:

Arthur Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner have earned a place of honor:

And apparently German and Austrian literature have been saved from the local used book store, along with a growing collection of language textbooks:

Finally I’m just about ready to spend my time on a writing project about Vienna. But before that, there’s one child to get to college, another to a new high school, and myself to a more orderly daily routine. I haven’t forgotten my friends, so you’ll hear more from me soon.