Music
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Utah Symphony Celebrates at Carnegie Hall
Thierry Fischer Conducted 75th Anniversary Performance
By: - May 02nd, 2016The Utah Symphony under Thierry Fischer gave an exciting and moving evening of music in celebration of their 75th anniversary. The Utah Symphony Orchestra was built by promoting 20th century American and European music. This priority was established by Maurice Abravael, the conductor who led the orchestra for 30 years. He retired to work at Tanglewood for another 10 years.
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Mocktoberfest Features the Polka Brothers
Annual Fundraiser Berkshire Country Day School on May 7th
By: - May 03rd, 2016If you missed Octoberfest, you will have a second chance this Saturday, May 7th. Berkshire Country Day School will hold its annual Mocktoberfest fundraiser at 6:45pm. Auction items include photographer, Gregory Crewdson's artist proof and a trip to attend Octoberfest in Munich.
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Eve Queler Reprises Classic Parisina
Angela Meade Thrills in Donizetti
By: - May 05th, 2016Donizetti wrote this opera on an unusually tight schedule. Whether its differences from his other work are deliberate or accidental we will never know. The catchy arias we associate with the composer are missing, but the music is still delightful. Eve Queler introduced the opera in 1974 and reprised it at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater. A remarkable evening.
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Mannes Produces Adamo's Little Women
Joseph Colaneri Conducts
By: - May 07th, 2016Little Women is Mark Adamo's first opera, and its spirited presentation of the Marsh family of Concord captures perfectly the struggle of a young woman to move from the warmth and support of her family home into the world of a woman. Simone de Beauvoir loved this book, as has the feminist community. Little Women seemed a perfect choice for Mannes, and composer Adamo, taking bows and hugging the cast, seemed to agree.
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Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Road Company at Florida's Broward Center for the Performing Arts
By: - May 12th, 2016If the audience at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Au-Rene Theater was any indication, people pull for King not just because of her music. They want to see her succeed in this bio-musical. She comes across as an ambitious, yet humble, talented, yet insecure underdog.
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NY Philharmonic Performs Chaplin's City Lights
Classic Movie with Superb Score
By: - May 19th, 2016Alan Gilbert, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic has an uncanny knack for programming. Extending the ideas of where music does and does not belong in the classic/classical repertoire and how it should be produced. He has brought us semi-staged operas, adventuresome new music and live performance of film scores that were written to be heard live while the film is screened. City Lights, quintessential Chaplin, was accompanied by Chaplin's own score, played by the Philharmonic. The score had been restored and reconstructed by the conductor, Timothy Brock.
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World Premiere Noir Musical Thriller Hollywood
By Tony Winners Joe Di Pietro and Christopher Ashley at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - May 23rd, 2016La Jolla Playhouse has the best track record of any West Coast theatre when it comes to sending their original theatrical productions to Broadway (over 30 of them to date). Their 2008 musical production “Memphis”, written by Joe Di Pietro and directed by Christopher Ashley went on to Broadway winning a 2010 Tony Award for Best Musical. “Hollywood”, again written by Di Pietro, and helmed by Ashley, is looking to pull off a Tony Award-winning ‘Daily Double’ coup.
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Sondheim on Sondheim as Putting It Together
Stage Door Theatre in South Florida
By: - May 24th, 2016Unlike in another Sondheim revue, “Side by Side by Sondheim,” has no narrator to link the songs. Rather, a dramatic framework exists in which two couples are attending a cocktail party at an upscale residence. This allows the characters to sing nearly 30 Sondheim songs outside the context for which he composed/or wrote the lyrics.
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The Met Orchestra at Carnegie
Christine Goerke Is the Go-To Soprano
By: - May 26th, 2016James Levine is gloriously winding down his tenure as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera. The man who brought us the full Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera may have aged, but he is blossoming still and the stage of Carnegie Hall is the perfect venue to display his monumental talents.
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Robertson Leads Majestic NYPHil
Alan Baer, Tuba, Superb in John Wiliams
By: - May 29th, 2016Music of all genres and spirits is overflowing the halls of David Geffen Hall and embracing the citizens of New York. Gustav Holst's The Planets brought amateur astronomers to Lincoln Center's Plaza for a viewing of Jupiter and its moons after we had heard the composer's interpretation. Wow!
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Marsalis Marches and Gilbert Honors with Brahms
A Dirge for Kurt Mazur
By: - May 31st, 2016The annual New York Philharmonic concert at St. John the Divine in New York was started a quarter century ago just as Kurt Mazur took the helm of the orchestra. The conductor was honored today in a wonderful New Orleans Funeral March led down the long aisle of the Cathedral by Wynton Marsalis and also a performance of Brahms' Second Symphony led by Alan Gilbert.
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Yannick Nézet-Séguin Appointed by Met Opera
Questions Remain about Gelb's Control
By: - Jun 02nd, 2016Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra where he will continue, assumes the role at the Met Opera in the 2020-21 season. He is a wonderful conductor of opera. What remains to be seen is Peter Gelb's role as "artistic director" of the opera company. Many first-rate conductors have not accepted the role because Gelb has insisted on control. The Board may not allow Gelb to continue to assert himself in artistic matters.
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Annual Piccolo Spoleto Festival
Fever Was Red Hot in Charleston
By: - Jun 03rd, 2016Piccolo Spoleto Festival is officially the outreach arm of Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Spoleto Festival USA, and thirty-eighth year of Piccolo Spoleto.
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Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest
Opera at Lincoln Center's Great Performers
By: - Jun 04th, 2016It's observed that great operas are often based on weak plays. Not so the new opera by Gerald Barry. While Barry cut about two-thirds of Oscar Wilde's perfect play, the spirit remains. The result is more like composers taking up Beaumarchais than Johm Luther Long..
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Alan Gilbert Untempered at the Met Museum
Pekka Kuusisto and Alan Gilbert Groove on Ligeti
By: - Jun 05th, 2016Pekka Kuusisto took on the challenging Ligeti violin concerto with gusto, humor, and a quiet modesty. This was an unusual, and unusually effective combination of qualities, especially in view of the pick he took to the violin to make it into a guitar, and his beautiful whistling. David Fulmer conducted like a poet of music. John Zorn in the audience appreciated the performance of his work by the Mivos Quartet. It was another brilliant program put on by Alan Gilbert, who credits cellist Jay Chambers with suggesting Ligeti and his influence.
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Helmut Lachenmann's The Little Match Girl
Cutting Edge Opera at Spoleto Festival in Charleston
By: - Jun 07th, 2016Cramped into nose bleed seats it was excruciating to endure the experimental opera The Little Match Girl by Helmut Lachenmann. It was a presentation of the prestigious annual Spoleto Festival USA which is currently enjoying its 40th season in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Hershey Felder Gives Us Irving Berlin
Felder a Masterful Man for All Seasons
By: - Jun 08th, 2016Hershey Felder has made a career of creating the great musicians of the past three centuries. His Irving Berlin is touching, witty and very American.
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Former WBCN DJ Mark Parenteau at 66
Last Years Marred by Scandal and Illness
By: - Jun 09th, 2016During a golden age when WBCN was the Rock of Boston Mark Perenteau was a larger than life presence. A mega watt presence was the catalyst for both fame and fortune as well as scandal and demise. He died from complications following surgery at 66.
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Tanglewood Opens With Dolly Parton
Jolene in the Berkshires on June 17
By: - Jun 11th, 2016Legendary country star, Dolly Parton, makes her Tanglewood debut on June 17th at 7pm in the Koussevitzky Music Shed.
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What's Next for Hamilton Winners
From Broadway Sensation to Years on the Road
By: - Jun 14th, 2016At about $150 each my pal and BFA contributor, Jack Lyons, managed to get a few "cheap seats" for the Broadway smash Hamilton. We even got to go back stage and chat with now Tony winner Leslie Odom, Jr. Back in November I asked him "what's next." It was a bit premature but all of the original contracts expire this summer. Its creator and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, has already announced plans to leave. The show will continue indefinitly on Broadway while several touring companies are launched.
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Brian Wilson plays Pet Sounds at Tanglewood on Sunday, June 19th
The 50th Anniversary
By: - Jun 15th, 2016Brian Wilson will perform for the first time at Koussevitzky Hall on the grounds of Tanglewood on Sunday, June 19th at 2:30pm
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Dollywood Comes to Tanglewood
Dolly Parton Debuts at Tanglewood
By: - Jun 19th, 2016Dolly Parton brought her act to Koussevitzky Hall on June 17th. And what an act it was.
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Brian Wilson Plays 'Pet Sounds'
50 Years After Its Release
By: - Jun 20th, 2016Fifty years after the release of 'Pet Sounds', Brian Wilson and his band played the album in its entirety. The music sizzled during a scorching afternoon at Tanglewood.
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Chris Botti at Tanglewood
Three Ring Circus
By: - Jun 25th, 2016When he plays it straight Chris Botti is among the elite trumpet players of his generation. There is no question of his musicianship. But at times his performance at Tanglewood was way to Vegas. It seemed more Wayne Newton than Miles Davis. This jarred with hearing a superb rhythm section which was cut loose only occasionally.
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Bounce, the Basketball Opera
Live Basketball, Live Singers, Infectious Drama
By: - Jun 26th, 2016Artists committed to the continuing attraction of opera as a form that draws an audience are experimenting. A workshop of Bounce, an opera conceived by Grete Holby and her Ardea Arts in conjunction with the University of Kentucky, is performed in a park in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. With dribbles as drumming and heros like Flight and Future, the future of opera itself is secured.
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