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More Fresh Grass Bluegrass Festival
Rhiannon Giddens Steals The Show
By: - Sep 16th, 2018Today is Sunday and the last day of the Fresh Grass Festival. With four stages, wonderful cuisine and an enthusiastic young crowd, why not drive to North Adams, Massachusetts and enjoy the nation's best museum themed bluegrass festival. Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder headline today at 5:50pm.
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Splendor In The Fresh Grass
Awards Day
By: - Sep 17th, 2018(At press time, I didn't have a list of winners that were announced at the Fresh Grass Festival's banjo and band awards) Nonetheless, the Fresh Grass Festival 2018 vesion has come to an end.
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Space Odyssey 2001 at NY Philharmonic
Reprise of Classic
By: - Sep 18th, 2018Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1968 classic is now 50 years old, and remains as puzzling as ever. On Friday night, as part of this year's The Art of the Score festival, the New York Philharmonic performed the complete orchestral and choral music of 2001 as accompaniment to a large scale screening of the film at Lincoln Center.
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The Abduction from the Seraglio
Opera San Jose
By: - Sep 19th, 2018On opera’s dramatic measuring rod, any production of Abduction would fall on the comedic rather than the tragic end, but Opera San José pushes the comic meter to the point that opera detractors might even appreciate it as a stage comedy with music.
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The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona
World Premiere at Geffen Playhouse
By: - Sep 19th, 2018Under the aegis of new artistic director Matt Shakman, The Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, premieres playwright Jose Rivera’s mystical new work “The Untranslatable Secrets of Nikki Corona,” directed by acclaimed, award-winning director Jo Bonney,
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Jaap van Zweden at the New York Philharmonic
A New Era Begins
By: - Sep 21st, 2018Opening night at the New York Philharmonic is a yearly tradition an occasion for fat cat donors to dine on the Promenade of Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall, and for ordinary critics (like your humble scribe) to put on suits and hobnob with each other before the performance. This year's ceremonies, held Thursday night, were also notable as it marked the long-awaited official debut of Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra's new music director.
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Sky on Swings at Opera Philadelphia
World Premier of Lembit Beecher's opera
By: - Sep 24th, 2018Sky on Swings is a collaborative opera. The three principal artists, Lembit Beecher, Hannah Moscovitch and Joanna Settle have worked together for more than a year to bring a musical portrait of death-by-Alzheimer’s to the stage.
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Komische Oper, Berlin, Germany
Opening of the Season 2018/19
By: - Sep 25th, 2018Berlin's Komische Oper (Comic Opera) opened its 2018/19 season with some of the most successful productions of the previous season. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'Zauberflöte' (Magic Flute) and Jerry Bock's 'Anatevka' which is better known as Fiddler On The Roof.
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Debra Jo Rupp Romps in The Cake
Geffen Playhouse Bakes Hilarous Comedy
By: - Sep 25th, 2018The Barrington Stage Company production of The Cake has gone West young man to LA's Geffen Playhouse. Now another coast shares the delicious comedy of Debra Jo Rupp. This is a run don't walk production.
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Bess Wohl’s Make Believe
World Premiere at Hartford Stage
By: - Sep 25th, 2018Make Believe has potential but it isn’t ready for prime time. When people start taking peeks at their watches during a 90 minute play, it’s a clear sign that something isn’t working.
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Shaw's Arms and the Man
Chicago's City Lit Theater
By: - Sep 26th, 2018City Lit Theater’s new production of George Bernard Shaw’s 1894 play, Arms and the Man, takes full advantage of its broad humor. Perhaps Shaw’s most frothy script, director Brian Pastor directs it with panache, although he sometimes lets his cast drift into silliness.
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The Agitators at Gloucester Stage
Remarkable Friends Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony
By: - Sep 26th, 2018Beyond their names most folks don't know much about abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, and women's suffrage leader, Susan B. Anthony. The remarkable play, The Agitators, by Mat Smart, offers more than a history lesson at Gloucester Stage. It has been given a compact and powerful production sharply directed by Jacqui Parker.
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A Classic Play by Ntozake Shange
African-American Shakespeare Company
By: - Sep 27th, 2018Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf is a work of great moment that gave black women a platform, in some ways a pedestal, from which to denounce their double indignity of racial and gender discrimination and announce their worth and beauty.
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Miller Theater Premiers Missy Mazzoli
Proving Up Arrives in New York
By: - Sep 27th, 2018Aware that all art forms now compete with Netflix, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek seek out stories for their musical theater that will attract audiences. Mazzoli, a masterful young composer, can go very dark in tales because her music, in its blocks of beauty no matter what the subject, is compelling and evocative.
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Paula Vogel’s compelling Indecent,
At Victory Gardens Theater.
By: - Oct 01st, 2018Indecent blends time-jumping scenes with an occasional dance routine and klezmer-flavored music. It’s a fine example of a dramatic play with music. The story and its characters are paramount and the music provides a lyrical underpinning. It’s an epic story told on a very personal level.
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Conrad Tao and Bruckner at NY Philharmonic
Shock and Awe Under Jaap Van Zweden
By: - Sep 30th, 2018Conrad Tao’s world premier composition Everything Must Go was performed by the New York Philharmonic and followed without a breath by Anton Bruckner’s powerful Eighth Symphony.
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The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson
At Town Hall Theatre Company
By: - Oct 03rd, 2018For the greater part, history has been made by and written by men. Like Olympe, Lauren Gunderson hopes to rectify gender imbalances in some small measure by sharing the stories of four women who impacted and were victims of the French Revolution
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Linda Leslie Brown's Plastiglormate
At Boston's Kingston Gallery
By: - Oct 03rd, 2018Just when you think you have a handle on the work of Linda Leslie Brown she does something different. As always there is a fresh sense of adventure to Plastiglomorate an exhibition of sculpture at Boston's Kingston Gallery.
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Mendoza at Goodman Theatre
Macbeth by Los Colochos Teatro of Mexico City
By: - Oct 05th, 2018Mendoza, a thrillingly raw and earthy adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is being presented this week at Goodman Theatre in collaboration with the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance.
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Downstate at Steppenwolf Theatre.
Bruce Norris’ Uproarious, Heartbreaking, World Premiere
By: - Oct 05th, 2018This is a group of detestable, rotten apples, but each of these men is also, in his own way, disarming and hilarious, with quirks and charms that make us forget why they are in this make-shift homestead wearing ankle bracelets; until we’re reminded, and once again infuriated by the hypocrisy. This is a world premiere by Bruce Norris.
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Pat Metheny at Beverly’s Cabot Theatre
Touring with a New Group of Emerging Musicians
By: - Oct 06th, 2018Now at mid career, with 20 Grammy Awards, Pat Metheny launched a tour at the Cabot Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts. While performing material from those now classic albums he did so with emerging musicians. He derived fresh energy and inspiration from Gwilym Simcock on piano/keyboards, Linda Oh on bass, and Antonio Sanchez on drums. Yet again his guitar virtuosity sparked a phenomenal performance.
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Oslo by J.T. Rogers
produced by Marin Theatre Company
By: - Oct 06th, 2018One complaint about Oslo that may be heard is that we already know its outcome. Twenty-five years beyond, notable progress has been made, but the condition between Israelis and Palestinians remains sad and unresolved.
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Zürich by Amelia Roper
At Chicago's Steep Theatre
By: - Oct 07th, 2018Zürich is played by 10 actors—two each in five scenes—set in a luxury hotel room or rooms in that Swiss banking city. The play begins in a seemingly lighthearted way, with a man and a woman who have spent the night together in a room on the 40th floor of a Zürich hotel.
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Glass Menagerie at Barrington Stage Company
Dehorning the Unicorn
By: - Oct 08th, 2018The final fall production of Barrington Stage Company for a number of years had been coordinated with the reginal school curriculum. It has been the norm to explore an agenda with social justice theatre. This time, however, Barrington has opted to focus on ars gratia artis. Teachers as their lesson plan will discuss a harrowing masterpiece of American theatre, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
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Hancock Shaker Village Newest Shaker, Paul Muldoon
The Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Wrote And Performed A Shaker Poem
By: - Oct 08th, 2018Paul Muldoon, a 67 year old New Yorker, originally from Northern Ireland, recited his poetry while the band, Rogue Olifant, played accompanying music. The evening at Hancock Shaker Village emulated a 1960s scene from my past.
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