Front Page
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Reba McEntire at Tanglewood
Packed Shed Ends 2019 Season
By: - Sep 02nd, 2019From 4:20 PM to an exit at 5:45 PM country music star Reba McEntire laid down a vapor trail of a jet charged fifteen tunes. It was the final performance of a record setting 2019 Tanglewood season.
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Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Live from Lincoln Center Presents first International Broadcast
By: - Sep 04th, 2019The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center is upward bound, on an odyssey filmed by Live From Lincoln Center as they journeyed through Greece. We visit the remote hills of Pelion and churches in Volos and Milies. Unusual and exotic locations are the setting of performances: from a Bach violin solo performed movingly by Aaron Boyd in a magnificent amphitheater to the wonderful Octet for strings that Mendelssohn composed at 16 years of age as he embarked on his classical career.
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Eclipse Mill Artists Annual Exhibition
North Adams Events in September and October
By: - Sep 06th, 2019The Eclipse Mill Artists Annual Exhibition will be held September 6 to September 29 at 243 Union Street in North Adams, Mass. 01247. This serves as a preview for Open Studios on Saturday and Sunday, October 19 and 20. The complex, which houses forty live/ work lofts, is the epicenter of an ever growing community of artists in Northern Berkshire County.
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Connecticut Theatre
Highliighting the Fall Season
By: - Sep 08th, 2019Karen Isaacs previews what's on tap for fall theater in Connecticut.
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Murder for Two
Musical on Stage in Walnut Creek, California
By: - Sep 08th, 2019While this is a well-crafted production of a well-designed and recognized work, it is not for everyone. For theater goers seeking fast-paced, forget-your-troubles entertainment, it will probably fill the bill. For those looking for meaning, social commentary, complexity of character, and the like, it may not fill much of anything.
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Britten's Billy Budd Based on Melville
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Sep 09th, 2019Michael Grandage’s production has been revived several times since its inauguration almost a decade ago, and it’s easy to see why. The staging is sensational, dominated by the depiction of the innards of the man o’ war. Although Billy Budd underwent revisions after its debut in 1951, it is surprising that the American premiere didn’t occur until 1970.
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When She Had Wings
Family-Oriented Play In South Florida
By: - Sep 11th, 2019When She Had Wings brings history to life in a fun way. This play about a young girl who wishes to regain her ability to fly should appeal to all ages. Boca Raton-based Theatre Lab is mounting a charming, magical production.
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John Zorn World Premiere at Columbia University
Pianist Stephen Gosling Paints in Notes
By: - Sep 12th, 2019The first of a series of monthly pop up concerts at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University presented the world premiere of John Zorn’s 18 Studies from the Later Sketchbooks of JMW Turner. This expansive work embraces a variety of styles and forms, all inspired by the watercolors of 19th-century English painter Joseph Mallord William Turner. Pianist Stephen Gosling, a masterful interpreter of contemporary music and particularly Zorn's, performed.
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Reggae Band Steel Pulse
The Cabot Theater, Beverly, Mass.
By: - Sep 14th, 2019Performing at the Cabot Theater in Beverly, to a packed and “on your feet” audience, David Hinds (vocals, guitarist) and longtime bandmate Selwyn Brown (keyboardist) kept an edge to their message of social and political outrage. The evening featured the first release by Steel Pulse in over a decade "Mass Manipulation" (2019, Rootfire Cooperative / Wiseman Doctrine).
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Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater
Interviews by Mark Larson
By: - Sep 14th, 2019Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater is a book you can enjoy in two ways. You can read it from beginning to end, as you would any narrative of fiction or nonfiction. Or you can dip in and out and read Mark Larson’s marvelous interviews with Chicago theater people in any order—and to any stage of completion—that you like.
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Amadeus at North Coast Repertory Theatre
Sir Peter Schaffer’s Musical Still Rocks Mozart
By: - Sep 15th, 2019Director Baird’s bold vision required him to strip-down the script to 10 performing characters without sacrificing any of the drama and/or light comedy moments that run throughout Shaffer’s illuminating, potent, tragic story concerning the early death, at 35 years of age, of musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (an astonishing Rafael Goldstein).
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Boston Rocker Ric Ocasek at 75
With Ben Orr Founded The Cars
By: - Sep 16th, 2019The counterculture in Boston geared up in the summer of 1968. The music scene, WBCN, and alternative media were well established when The Cars emerged with a self titled album in 1978. They went on to record a string of hits breaking up a decade later. After kicking around with a variety of folk/ rock configurations Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr established a mega group that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. Orr died in 2000 and Ocasek died yesterday at 75. They were an integral part of a golden age of Boston rock.
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Time Stands Still By Donald Marguiles
Ends Season for Shakespeare & Company
By: - Sep 16th, 2019Instead of a brief essay from the director the Shakespeare & Company playbill uses that space to list journalists killed "on assignment in 2019." Ten years ago Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies earned two Tony nominations. Four fine performances, and superb direction, were squandered on a play that is not aging well. Taking on an important subject, the bravery and sacrifice of journalists covering war zones, the play is contrived and reaches for cheap tricks entailing reversal and deception.
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Romeo and Juliet by Charles Gounod
Produced by San Francisco Opera
By: - Sep 17th, 2019Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet faithfully follows Shakespeare’s dramatic narrative and adds a score of great beauty that has graced the repertory since its spectacular debut in 1867. San Francisco Opera’s faithful production possesses sterling artistry and striking staging that honor this compelling opera.
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Martin Moran's One Man Show, All the Rage
The Barrow Group Presents the Award-WInning Mono Drama
By: - Sep 18th, 2019Martin Moran performs his one-man show, All The Rage, at the Barrow Group through October 5. Thoroughly entertaining, it tackles one of the deepest of subjects: forgiveness for unforgivable offenses. Seth Barrish directed this award-winning show.
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Sea Wall/A Life at Broadway's Hudson Theatre
With Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge
By: - Sep 19th, 2019Sea Wall/A Life, two extraordinarily powerful one act plays, presented in monologue form, are holding court at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. Fueled by strong reviews, and the star power of film and stage actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Strurridge, it is one of the most deeply moving productions currently gracing the stage here in New York City.
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Skintight at LA's Geffen Playhouse
Broadway Star Idina Menzel
By: - Sep 20th, 2019The promise of high energy singer/actor Idina Menzel’s debut on the Geffen’s stage is sure to lure her fans. Playwright Joshua Harmon’s newest and talky comedy play “Skintight” is directed by Daniel Aukin. Geffen’s artistic director, Matt Shakman, may have missed the mark by selecting “Skintight” for the Geffen’s 2019/2020 season opener.
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Opera Philadelphia Presents Denis and Katya
Philip Venables and Ted Huffman Update Romeo and Juliet
By: - Sep 23rd, 2019Opera Philadelphia presents Denis and Katya, the world premiere of a new opera by Philip Venables and Ted Huffman. Keenia Ravvinia is credited both with creative contributions and translation of the events surrounding the dual death of two fifteen year old Russians. The teens had holed up in a cabin where weapons were stored and used them to attack the police. No one really knows what happened, but it was an event that was covered by the young couple in smart phone videos and periscope posts and widely picked up by the media.
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Opera Philadelphia's Love for Three Oranges
Prokovief's American Opera Mounted Like Lollipops
By: - Sep 24th, 2019Apparently the audience for the Sunday performance of Love for Three Oranges at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia was only the second best audience so far. The best, 1,300 school children who had earlier found this work irresistible. It is.
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Liszt Performed in the Catacombs
Jenny Lin and Adam Tendler, a Remaarkable Double Team
By: - Sep 27th, 2019Pianists Jenny Lin and Adam Tendler took on one of Franz Liszt’s early and most demanding compositions, alternating roles as performance artists and page turners. Yamaha had delivered a grand piano which just fit between the arched stone walls of the Catacombs at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The lid of the piano was completely removed, allowing a bright, distinctive tone to emerge, even when so many notes cascaded that it might have been difficult to distinguish one from another. Erotic and religious ecstasy erupted.
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Women You Should Know
Begging the Question at Gallery 51
By: - Sep 30th, 2019By any measure the current exhibition at Gallery 51 in North Adams is superb. There is a compelling synergy that threads through work by five artists all of whom live and work in the Berkshires
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New York Philharmonic Pairs Schoenberg and Bartok
From Sweden Come Rich New Takes
By: - Sep 29th, 2019The New York Philharmonic became an opera orchestra for Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Bela Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle. A Swedish cast, including the incomparable Nine Stemme and directed by Bengt Gomer, provided new twists to the tales, emphasizing the real or imagined murder of an errant lover and possible survival of an eighth wife of Bluebeard. His beard is not blue, and attractions go beyond a castle and riches.
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Oedipus an Opera by Elli Papapakonstantinou
Classic Myth Brought to Life at BAM
By: - Oct 01st, 2019Elli Papapakonstantinou has created a masterful and absorbing re-telling of the Oedipus story at the Fisher Theater, BAM. Elements of the story we know are central to the production. The sense Papapakonstantinou conveys is the randomness of life. The gruesome drama of the events we hear sung and see danced are horrific. Presented with strong videos, smoke and mirrors, with live video-ing of the principal characters, the piece is larger than life.
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Michael McGrath of North Adams in China
Daily Life at Five Immortals Temple
By: - Oct 03rd, 2019The days are long and arduous, the training, in rain or shine, warm or cold, difficult. The toilet is a trench. There are no bathtubs or showers - a face cloth bath with boiled water is as clean as you get. Everything comfortable and familiar in your life disappears, left below at the base of the mountain. Day, date and time dissolve in the mountain mists during the climb, and all you are left with is the moment, one after another.
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Laurie Anderson at the Kaplan Penthouse
The Sound of Music and the Music of Language Mix
By: - Oct 06th, 2019Laurie Anderson curated the New York Philharmonic NightCap at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse on October 5. This nightclub event followed a performance of Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique in David Geffen Hall. The host, Nadia Sirota, pointed out that connection between Berlioz’ and Anderson’s work. Both use narrative but that by Anderson and her friends tests the boundaries of sound.
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