Blogging ISCM WNMD Day 6, Part 1: Beauty, Contemporaneity, and Americanness

My hotel has been taken over by Croatian contestants for the Miss Universe Pageant and they have been constantly in front of the two computers at the hotel’s business center updating their Facebook pages. And then it has been nonstop meetings and concerts. It’s intermission at an orchestra program where I just heard Penderecki conduct a piece by Croatian President Ivo Josipović and I’m writing from my Blackberry. More details following my flight back to NYC late tomorrow night, but in the meanwhile some observations from composer Maria Panayotova, who is from Bulgaria and has since moved back there, but whose years in the USA have had a permanent impact on her. Food for thought.