Many of you may have noticed all the Poe festivities going on surrounding Edgar Allen Poe's 200th birthday year.  Baltimore, Philip Glass' birth city, is taking the lead though being from Boston, I proudly acknowledge it as the city of the writer's birth.

Philip Glass' opera "The Fall of the House of Usher," from one of Poe's most well known stories, is consequently being performed a lot this year.  The stars have aligned to have FIVE productions going on worldwide in November alone! including cities: Nashville, Potsdam, Helsinki, Warsaw, and Monchengladbach.  Even for Philip Glass, I cannot recall five different productions being performed in the same month.

It's curious that the three or four cities to which Poe has a connection didn't get into the act. What got me thinking about this was during my subway ride in from Brooklyn, I was reading the free newspaper and there was a story about this Poe year.  On the opposite page bottom was an advertisement for the Nov.9 performance in NYC by the Bruckner Orchester Linz playing the Glass Violin Concerto No.1