My General Interests in Music

• Genre: My main passion in music is in classical music and opera. I also like jazz (mostly instrumental) and some musicals (older ones, such as "West Side Story" and "My Fair Lady", but not newer ones, such as "Evita" or "Les Miserable") to some degree. I've also tried pop/rock/folk/country/etc., but none of them can really grab and keep my attention.

• An Acquired Taste: I started getting seriously into "serious" (or classical) music during my years in college, when I attended some of the then popular "music appreciation" lectures in the early 1980's, then positively influenced by a couple of friends (I thank Ma/Kang/Yee from the bottom of my heart!), and later was fortunate to have easy access to great music and recordings in Harvard/Boston and onward, and I never turned back.

• General Preference: There are a lot of composers (instrumental, vocal, and operatic) that I like, including both mainstream/Germanic ones like Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, and Bruckner, and not-so-mainstream ones like Nielsen, Mussorgsky, and Dvorak, but I especially love Shostakovich's music.

• Favorite Period(s): I can't say for sure now. Among my favorite composer, Shostakovich lived his life exclusively in the 20th century, while Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Dvorak, Mussorgsky, and Nielsen all lived and worked just prior to this period. However, I always loved Beethoven, infatuated by many romantic composers during my beginning years, and, recently, enjoy increasingly more Bach, Handel, and Haydn. So, my line is getting a bit more blurry... The only thing I can say for sure is that I still haven't developed an appreciation for early music (medieval and renaissance music) yet.

• Geographical/Ethnic Preference: Although I enjoy the mainstream western/Germanic music and music from different countries/regions, I have a special passion for Russian and Slavic music. As for the 20th century music, (and living composers), almost all the composers I enjoyed are from that part of the world: Shostakovich, Gorecki, Ustvulskaya, Vainberg, Schnittke, Khachaturian, Tischenko...

• Musicians and Recordings: Although I attended some truly memorable live performances by my favorite musicians, most of my exposure to music (and opera too), similar to most music lovers today, is through recordings, and of course reading books and watching films/TV.