Free Republic

“I know everything,” the composer Ned Rorem said on a recent afternoon, “but I remember nothing.” Mr. Rorem — elder statesman of American art song, prolific prose writer, pioneer of gay liberation — was exaggerating. Now 95 years old (as of Tuesday), he is more forgetful than he used to be. But he actually remembers quite a lot. Give him the right prompt, and he can dish at length on nearly every cultural luminary of the past century — he’s known almost all personally — and reminisce about Picasso’s Paris or the New York City of $25 rents. He’s a...

I first played under the baton of Pierre Boulez more than a quarter of a century ago, shortly after I joined the Chicago Symphony. I always admired him as a human being. He was kind, brilliant, generous, and by all accounts a great and loyal friend. On more than one occasion he rescued the Chicago Symphony on short notice after other conductors had to cancel on us. Indeed, he and Bernard Haitink stepped in to steer the orchestra’s artistic fortunes following Daniel Barenboim’s abrupt departure in 2006. All of us in the orchestra are very much in his debt. But...

Composer Ned Rorem has always seemed to exist in his own well-furnished sphere, writing music regardless of current fashion, saying exactly what he thinks (right as he's thinking it), and striking stances that are effortlessly provocative and contrary. He may even give you an argument about his 90th birthday Wednesday. "Other people turn 90," said the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rorem, who will be celebrated at a tribute concert Wednesday at the Curtis Institute, where he was on the faculty until recent years. Though he's not sure whether he'll attend, "I still think of myself as the youngest person at the party."