Music
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West Side Story at Tanglewood
Summer Long Bernstein Celebration
By: - Jul 29th, 2018With an up-to-date LED screen and a full house, 'West Side Story' , the movie version, was in synch with conductor David Newman and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. The score and movie hold their original lure with flawless tour de force.
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Legendary Boston Jazz Impresario Fred Taylor
At 89 Writing Memoir with Dick Vacca
By: - Jul 31st, 2018Now 89, legendary Boston jazz impresario , Fred Taylor, is busy booking one nighters for the Cabot Theatre in Beverly, Mass. Asked if it is time to retire he replied with the title of his memoir "What and Quit Show Biz." It's a work in progress with Dick Vacca. They hope to publish the book in spring, 2019. With typical wit and insight it recaps a career booking clubs like Jazz Workshop/ Paul's Mall, and Sculler's. He founded the Tanglewood Jazz Festival and produced concerts at Symphony Hall and other venues.
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The Demon at Bard's Summerscape
Anton Rubenstein Re-Introduced in America
By: - Jul 31st, 2018Leon Botstein is presenting Anton Rubenstein’s The Demon at Bard’s Summerscape. Annually, he offers meritorious works, long buried or ignored by opera companies. He makes the case now for Rubenstein.
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Joshua Bell And Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk
Popular Concert at Tanglewood
By: - Aug 06th, 2018A cool Joshua Bell entertained the large crowd at Tanglewood on a warm and sunny summer's day. Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk made his debut at Tanglewood with a forty-five minute Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, Opus 100. The first half of the show was all Joshua Bell, but, after intermission, Conductor Slobodeniouk took over.
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The Only Opera by Claude Debussy
At West Edge Opera
By: - Aug 07th, 2018Claude Debussy’s only opera, the tragic Pelléas & Mélisande, is considered one of the most important 20th century operas and a highlight of French music. West Edge Opera has produced an absorbing realization with strong performances and simple but striking visuals in its home for this season, the Craneway Pavillion in Richmond, California.
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Teatro Nuovo's Bel Canto at SUNY Purchase
Thunderbolts Out of the Blue
By: - Aug 07th, 2018Will Crutchfield’s Bel Canto operas were always a highlight of the Caramoor season. He has now moved to the Performing Arts Center at Purchase, which offers more space, closer to New York. His inaugural program unfolding over 10 days, offered a master class and smaller concerts interspersed with the semi-staged productions of three operas.
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Mata Hari at West Edge Opera
By Matt Marks and Paul Peers
By: - Aug 08th, 2018Opera permits some amount of spoken dialogue, often resulting in a reclassification of the piece, as opera buffa or operetta. Here, the title character, Mata Hari, is a spoken role. Unfortunately, supertitles are not provided for the spoken word, and many details of the story are unnecessarily lost to audience members who can’t hear all of the dialogue clearly.
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Bridget Kibbey at The Angel's Share
A Unison Green-Wood Concert in Brooklyn
By: - Aug 09th, 2018Andrew Ousley continues to present top musical talent in unusual but intriguing settings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. On a dark and stormy night, an audience of new music appreciators were captivated by the prospect of whiskey in a cemetery followed by a walk through beautiful grounds and an ineffably beautiful concert in the Catacombs of the land marked Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
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Intimate Musica Marin
A Conversation With Kahn and Furr
By: - Aug 11th, 2018Musica Marin, with four years of producing chamber music for audiences of 60-80 guests in residential settings makes a big leap. September 21-23, 2018, they present the inaugural Musica Marin Festival in beautiful Tiburon and Belvedere. We had a chance to talk with Founder and Artistic Director Ruth Ellen Kahn and Culinary Director Mark Furr about the exciting event.
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The Fabulous Lipitones in Pittsfield
By John Markus and Mark St. Germain
By: - Aug 11th, 2018Whitney Center for the Arts presents the Berkshire Premiere of The Fabulous Lipitones by John Markus and Mark St. Germain, a fully staged Musical, directed by Monica Bliss and Musical Director Jeff Hunt with Choreographer Ruslan Sprague, August 10-19th.
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Come To South Florida's Cabaret
Iconic Musical In Suburban Miami
By: - Aug 14th, 2018Area Stage Company's Cabaret reminds us of turmoil in today's world. Respected South Florida theater company scores a triumph with a vivacious mounting of Kander and Ebb's classic. ASC's interpretation of the 1998 Broadway revival runs through Aug. 26.
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West Side Story at Barrington Stage Company
Smash Hit Celebrates Bernstein's Centennial
By: - Aug 15th, 2018Barrington Stage Company produced West Wide Story eleven years ago and now celebrating the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein. In 2013 Barrington sents its production of Bernstein's On the Town to Broadway. With three productions in such a short span it's clear that artistic director, Julianne Boyd, views Bernstein as a bankable winner. Yet again, audiences agree with a sold out run in Pittsfield.
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Mark Morris at Mostly Mozart
Dancing Against the Current
By: - Aug 15th, 2018Mostly Mozart presents the Mark Morris Dance Group, accompanied by three excellent chamber and vocal music performances.
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The Fresh Grass 2018 Festival
Three Days Of Bluegrass Music
By: - Aug 17th, 2018MASS MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts, prepares for its annual bluegrass festival, Fresh Grass. This years, three day event takes place from the 14th to 16th of September, on the grounds where art, music, dance and film thrive. .
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Candide by Voltaire with Bernstein’s Music
Sante Fe Opera Celebrates Composer’s Centennial
By: - Aug 18th, 2018From its inauspicious Broadway debut in 1956, Candide has led a checkered existence with revisions continuing through 1988. But, despite whatever flaws, it possesses wonderful music, is highly literate and stingingly political. Its real narrative weakness is that there is too much of it. The theme gets driven home too many times with repetitious vignettes that add little. That said, Santa Fe Opera commemorates the Leonard Bernstein centennial with a superior and visually spectacular production of this important work.
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Leonard Bernstein’s Fancy Free
Boston Ballet and BSO Collaborate
By: - Aug 19th, 2018The summer long centenary celebration continued last night at Tanglewood with an All Bernstein Program conducted by Andris Nelsons. It featured Fancy Free a 1944 collaboration with choreographe Jerome Robbins for Fancy Free. That theme was expanded into their musical On the Town. The dance was performed in collaboration with Boston Ballet.
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Ariadne auf Naxos by Strauss
At Santa Fe Opera
By: - Aug 19th, 2018The opera is a play within a play. The “richest man in Vienna” has commissioned an evening’s spectacle at his manor for guests – a serious opera followed by a commedia dell’arte. It has been staged by Santa Fe Opera.
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Highwood's Ghost Haunts Leonard Bernstein
John Williams World Premiere Composition
By: - Aug 20th, 2018The packed audience at Tanglewood on a most beautiful day waited anxiously to hear the world premiere of a new composition from John Williams, in honor of Leonard Bernstein's ongoing 100th Year Celebration. The anticipated piece, 'Highwood's Ghost' featured Yo Yo Ma.
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Doctor Atomic by John Adams
Santa Fe Opera House
By: - Aug 20th, 2018The Santa Fe Opera House is the perfect venue to stage John Adams’s compelling contemporary opera Doctor Atomic, about the creation of the atomic bomb. With a riveting and intellectual, but sometimes obtuse, libretto by Peter Sellars that is largely taken from historic documents, a story whose outcome we know is still tense and absorbing
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The Tsar's Bride at Bard Summerscape
The Pleasures of Rimsky-Korsakov
By: - Aug 20th, 2018Bard Summerscape concluded its 2018 season with a production of The Tsar’s Bride by Rimsky Korsakov. Often performed in Europe, it is unfamiliar to most opera lovers in the United States, who received it with rapt admiration at the FIsher Center.
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Dell'Arte Opera's Vignettes from Vienna
Introducing Emerging Talent in Mozart and Salieri
By: - Aug 22nd, 2018Dell'Arte Opera presented Vignettes from Vienna, including Mozart and Verdi. The highlight of the evening, however, was not Mozart’s music as a stand alone. We were treated to a performance of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, into which the composer interwove Mozart’s music as part of the story.
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The Knights Perform Candide
Bernstein's Zany Comedic Operetta
By: - Aug 23rd, 2018Leonard Bernstein's 'Candide' came to light at Ozawa Hall. The packed house and crowded lawn were recipients of a night of comedic opera, performed by The Knights with special guests. Skits jammed in-between tenor and soprano leads. The mockery led the way to this dumbfounded comedy, which reminds one of the Marx Brothers.
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Tanglewood's Bernstein Centennial
All Star Tribute Hosted by Audra McDonald
By: - Aug 27th, 2018The summerlong Leonard Bernstein Centennial at Tanglewood ended with an all star celebration hosted by Audra McDonald. Five conductors and numerous guest artists presented a two hour program that featured his music as well as composers like Copland, a close friend, and Mahler, a kindred spirit. John Williams composed a special piece for the occasion. It was a night to remember as a chapter of Tanglewood's vivid history.
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Apprentice Scenes
A Feature of Santa Fe Opera
By: - Aug 28th, 2018Santa Fe Opera presents the always stirring and diverse Apprentice Scenes. The backstory to these entertainments is that the company has a stellar apprenticeship program each summer that extends beyond singers to include young set designers, costumers, lighters, and the whole array of behind-the-curtain magicians who enhance opera scores to make them lavish events. Of course, it is the singers who are most in evidence, and to call them apprentices is a bit of misnomer.
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Musica Marin Festival
Talking with Organizer Ruth Ellen Kahn
By: - Aug 30th, 2018Musica Marin Festival runs September 21-23, 2018. Main performing venues are St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, Old St. Hillary’s Church in Tiburon, and the exclusive private 9-acre estate in Tiburon.
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