Arts & Culture

Over the years of listening to the San Antonio International Piano Competition, I've noticed that nerves play an important part. Just enough, and a performance can be charged with excitement, too much, and disaster awaits.

With the competitors narrowed from 11 to eight, the stakes are higher, and that could help the judges separate the best as the competition continues.

Got an idea for a classical cartoon or a reaction to this one? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and performance. His new book is Helguera's Artunes. You can see more of his work at Artworld Salon and on his own site.

Each week on World Music (Saturday nights from 8-10 on KSTX 89.1 FM), I take a look at celebrations happening around the world. This week, a 'lovely' contest off the coast of Ireland.

TED FEST

Lasting works that are so much a part of our lives and the general culture have often had the most improbable origins; it is one of music's greatest ironies.

The arduous birth of Wagner’s "The Ring" is the stuff of legends, and decades of work, sacrifice and immense debt. Berlioz' "Les Troyens" was a desperate, singular throw of the dice urged on by his correspondence with Liszt's mistress and his lifelong love of Virgil. But what about Verdi’s overwhelmingly popular "Rigoletto"? What happened there?

Ever evolving...

Visitors to the Alamo were greeted by some mid-day busking (street performing) yesterday morning.  Dotan Negrin has been hauling his upright piano all across the country for more than two years, performing on streets from New York to here in San Antonio.

Parked illegally next to the Alamo, Negrin unloaded his Baldwin piano from a fire-engine red van.

The compact upright piano has a laminated map velcroed to one side showing all the places Negrin has gone on his travels.