Music
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Talking to Jay and the Americans
Founding Member Sandy Yaguda
By: - Sep 06th, 2018Despite occasional lineup changes, the band has always had a “Jay.” Even so, the original name that was bestowed upon them by the legendary songwriting and producing team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller did not use any of the bandmembers’ names. What's in a name? The vintage band is on tour this fall.
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Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci
A Twofer at San Francisco Opera
By: - Sep 10th, 2018In an unusual alteration, perhaps opera’s most famous closing line, “La commedia è finita” which is written for Canio, is spoken by Mamma Lucia, who is a character from Cavalleria. This change is the most explicit link between the two operas, and it also suggests that the speaker represents humanity, demanding an end to the destructive chaos of primitive morality evidenced in both pieces.
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Roberto Devereux by Gaetano Donizetti
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Sep 10th, 2018Gaetano Donizetti is recognized as a master of bel canto, with its vocal ornamentation, agility, vibrato, glissando, and precise demands on breath and register control. Although not designed as companions, he wrote operas of three queens in that style, now known as the Tudor Trilogy – Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux.
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Pretty Woman the Movie as Musical
Hooker as Hoofer with a Heart of Gold
By: - Sep 13th, 2018The producers of Pretty Woman probably thought they had a sure fire hit. After all, the 1990 movie made Julia Roberts a major star and Richard Gere more of a star. It combines familiar elements: the hooker with a heart of gold, a Cinderella story, and the redemption of a man consumed by greed (think Scrooge).
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Schoenberg in Hollywood at Boston Lyric Opera
Tod Machover World Premiere
By: - Sep 14th, 2018From November 14-18, Boston Lyric Opera will bring Arnold Schoenberg back east with the world-premiere production of Tod Machover’s “Schoenberg in Hollywood.” Machover has been hailed for his compositions and also for creating new technologies that allow the boundaries of music to be taken beyond even the atonal heights Schoenberg attained.
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Fresh Acts At Fresh Grass
The Three Day Festival Is In Full Swing
By: - Sep 15th, 2018The Fresh Grass Festival,which takes place in a wide array of venues at Mass MoCA, in North Adams,Massachusetts, offers bluegrass music that is both traditional and cutting edge. There are four stages, three outdoors and one indoors that cater to the musicians and the family friendly audience. Workshops abound in the galleries with members of the bluegrass community sharing knowledge with their fans.
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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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Soundstage by Rob Roth at HERE
Loneliness of Out-Sized Personality
By: - Sep 17th, 2018Soundstage by Rob Roth is playing at HERE through September 29. Using all the facilities that the grand HERE space affords, the production is first rate. Although the author and lead actor Rob Roth identifies this as a queer vision, the piece resonates more widely.
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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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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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Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera Philadelphia
Dark Yet Entrancing
By: - Sep 25th, 2018Rumors that Gaetano Donizetti was of Scotch origin swirled over the Italian countryside when his opera Lucia di Lammermoor was first produced. They were untrue. Now Laurent Pelly gives us a grim, grey countryside to match the mood of the opera's heroine. Brenda Rae triumphs in the role at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.
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Ne Quittez Pas at Opera Philadelphia
Patricia Racette Compels as Elle
By: - Sep 26th, 2018Ne Quittez Pas is writ large on a marquee in a hot neighborhood of Philadelphia. Hold on, it says. Don’t leave. Stay on the line. This is a phrase used repeatedly in the old French telephone service, a main character in the opera to unfold inside the club, Theater of the Living Arts, a disco/nightclub near the harbor.
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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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JACK Quartet at the Catacombs
The Angel's Share Explores Modern Medieval
By: - Sep 28th, 2018We can count the ways the JACK delights in The Catacombs of the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Depth, breath and height, as far as the strings can reach, up and down. The Catacombs, wrapped in a mysterious yellow light ebbing to darkness added to this moving presentation.
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Jean-Luc Ponty at The Cabot Theatre
Jazz Violin in Beverly, Mass.
By: - Oct 01st, 2018The 850 seat, Art Deco, Cabot Theatre in Beverly, Mass. has been beautifully renovated. It is proving to be a perfect setting for jazz concerts. Recently we enjoyed an evening with jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. It was a compelling retrospetive of The Atlantic Years.
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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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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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Tosca at San Francisco Opera
Carmen Giannattasio Debut in Title Role
By: - Oct 06th, 2018A star attraction on the European circuit, Italian Carmen Giannattasio makes her San Francisco Opera debut and role debut as the title character. The soprano was offered the part earlier in her career, but she declined.
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Mile Long Opera at The High Line
Co-Created by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Lang
By: - Oct 06th, 2018The High Line is a big idea writ large, just like operas. It forms a perfect set for Mile Long Opera. Elizabeth Diller gets a director’s credit for an opera written specially for this location by David Lang. Anne Carson is librettist and Claudia Rankine, essayist. Mile Long Opera is subtitled, a biography of 7 pm, a time of transition from work to home.
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Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll
At Chicago's Artistic Home Theatre
By: - Oct 09th, 2018Kathy Scambiatterra directs this complex political/musical story, based on the Czech music fans and political dissidents in the years between the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
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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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