Music
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Stones Busted Enroute to Boston Garden
What Really Happened That Night
By: - Feb 07th, 2019During a 1972 tour the Stones connecting from Toronto got diverted to Warwick, Rhode Island. Waiting for a limo to Boston Garden Keith clocked a photographer who got too close. Cops busted him as well as Mick who chimed in. After hours of delay Mayor Kevin White told 14,000 fans that the Stones were busted but "I got them out." That's not really true. The Stones went on stage at 1 AM for one of the great concerts in Boston rock history. Decades later attorney Martin Kaplan relates what really happened that night.
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Barbara Hannigan Conducts Juilliard Orchestra
A Soprano at the Helm
By: - Feb 09th, 2019Barbara Hannigan, one of the world’s leading sopranos, conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in a thrilling performance of Strauss, Haydn, Debussy, Sibelius and Bartok. The orchestra responded with music-making worthy of concert halls across the globe.
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Honky Tonk Laundry by Roger Bean
At Coyote StageWorks of Palm Springs
By: - Feb 11th, 2019Coyote StageWorks of Palm Springs delivers an early Valentine to fans and lovers of Country Music with a country-western comedy romp and hoot called “Honky Tonk Laundry”, written and directed by prolific playwright Roger Bean. It all comes out in the wash.
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Moby Dick a Whale of an Opera
At Opera San José
By: - Feb 12th, 2019Although Moby-Dick adheres to the continuous melody mode, many striking set pieces punctuate the score. Much beauty also derives from the orchestral interludes which reflect smooth seas as well as storm with equal competence. But the most striking pieces are the many rousing choruses.
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Opera Philadelphia's A Midsummer Night's Dream
Acclaimed Robert Carsen Production Makes US Debut
By: - Feb 12th, 2019Opera Philadelphia has mounted a delightful production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The company reminds us, as it does so often, that opera can be highly entertaining and occasionally hilariously funny. Created by Robert Carsen thirty years ago in Aix-en-Provence, the stage is full of royal blues and lime forest greens until all is resolved in white. A new moon hangs in the sky.
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I Due Foscari by Verdi
Produced by West Bay Opera
By: - Feb 18th, 2019Like much early Verdi, I Due Foscari lacks the memorable arias and ensembles that appear on compilation recordings. However, it may be that we just haven’t heard these enough to become familiar with them.
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Salonen Conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra
Strauss and Bartok Featured
By: - Feb 19th, 2019In recent seasons, Esa-Pekka Salonen has shifted his emphasis from conducting to his first love, composition. However, Friday’s matinee program at the Philadelphia Orchestra at Verizon Hall featured none of Salonen’s own catalogue. Rather, the composer led a program consisting of workers by Béla Bartók and Richard Strauss, two very different composers who are each in their own way, touchstones of the twentieth century.
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Violet the Musical in San Francisco
Book and Lyrics by Brian Crawley and Music by Jeanine Tesori
By: - Feb 20th, 2019The year is 1964. Violet, a young woman with suitcase in hand, is about to board a Greyhound bus to leave her hometown of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Her destination – Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bay Area Musicals offers a lively and well-staged representation of a journey that changes its central figure in unexpected ways.
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Brian Coleman’s Buy Me Boston
A Picture Book of Local Ads and Flyers
By: - Feb 20th, 2019Brian Coleman has published several successful books on hip-hop. The latest of which is a picture book “Buy Me Boston: Local Ads and Flyers, 1960s – 1980s, Volume 1.” It is compiled from thousands of scans of pages of vintage publications.
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Victoria Bond at the Cutting Edge
Barnes, Glass, and Enchants
By: - Feb 19th, 2019The program at Cutting Edge Concerts at Symphony Space opened with a delightful bird romp by Maria Newman. Hal Ott on the flute, Scott Hosfeld on viola and the composer on the violin created pictures of four different birds. Olivier Messiaen recorded birds in their native habitats, focusing on their identifying songs. Newman widens the frame to include pictures of the birds' movements and suggests purpose, like the melancholy watchfulness of a snowy owl and the ravenous detection of prey for the falcon.
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BMP's Next Generation at National Sawdust
Composers Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran
By: - Feb 21st, 2019National Sawdust, a leading venue for new music, mounted the work of two finalists in the BMP Next Generation Competition, Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran. Last March, their compositions were selected from a field of ten, winnowed down from 75 applications.
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Wadada Leo Smith’s latest CD
Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs
By: - Feb 24th, 2019On his highly acclaimed and awarded release, America’s National Park (2017, Cuneiform Records), Leo Smith won DownBeat Magazine’s Best Album of the Year, 2017. It also earned DB’s Annual Critics Poll in 2017 for best artist and trumpeter.
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Falstaff at the Met
Verdi's Final Work
By: - Feb 28th, 2019"It's not going to be my favorite Verdi opera." This, from an attendee on the 1 train riding away from Lincoln Center after the Metropolitan Opera's Wednesday night performance of Falstaff, efficiently sums up the attitude of audiences toward the composer's final opera--and his only successful attempt at writing comedy. Falstaff is a masterwork, but one held in high regard not for its considerable qualities but for its place as Verdi's last musical utterance. On Wednesday night under the baton of Robert Carnes, the opera received a performance that just might change that gentleman's opinion.
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WBCN and the American Revolution
Bill Lichtenstein Discusses His Documentary Film
By: - Mar 03rd, 2019On March 7 the documentary film WBCN and the American Revolution will have a sneak preview at the DC Film Festival. On March 9, 12 and 13 there will be screenings at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose. A world premiere is being planned for Boston in April. The day after wrapping the film Bill Lichtenstein discussed the project which started in 2006. The story of WBCN is set against events from the launch of the radical FM station in 1968 to developments surrounding the resignation of Richard Nixon seven years later.
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Al Perry Talks About WBCN
Former Station Manager
By: - Mar 05th, 2019While many during the Golden Age of WBCN had their heads in the clouds former station manager, Al Perry, had his feet on the ground. Somebody had to stay straight and pay the bills. He is a talking head in Bill Lichtenstein's documentary film WBCN: The American Revolution.
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Christie and Les Arts Florissants at BAM
Jean-Philipppe Rameau Delights
By: - Mar 04th, 2019William Christie and his Arts Florissant created two dance/opera entertainments by Jean-Philippe Rameau at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. As usual, this group sells out in New York and it is easy to see why. Christie conducts with poise and precision. He enlists a first rate ensemble of musicians to perform period music. To this is added stylized dance and gorgeous operatic voices. In the second one act dance/opera, La Naissance d'Osiris, we saw and heard a divertissement of dances, the gavotte, sarabande and minuet among them.
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Boston Rock Archivist David Bieber
Collection of 600,000 Objects
By: - Mar 07th, 2019The vast archive of some 600,000 objects was a primary source for the Bill Lichtenstein film WBCN: The American Revolution. When in college David Bieber became a campus correspondent for Billboard Magazine. In graduate school at Boston University he wrote a thesis on the impact of WBCN and the growing counterculture media on changing the mainstream of Top 40 radio and the straight press. He became music director of WBUR and went on to work for WBCN and the Boston Phoenix. He provides an insightful overview of an era of social and poltical change for the vast college/ youth market in Boston.
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Aspect Foundation Concert at Italian Academy
Alexander Sitkovetsky and Wu Qian Team for Dramatic Beauty
By: - Mar 07th, 2019The Aspect Foundation is committed to making the concert experience memorable. By offering food and drink before the concert and during intermission, and selecting unusual and glistening venues, audience members are swept into their commitment to first-rate music-making. Evenings Aspect presents are unforgettable. Go to one and you will be hooked.
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Bridget Kibbey and Friends at Merkin Hall
WQXR's Terrance McKnight Hosts
By: - Mar 07th, 2019Bridget Kibbey is a superb musician on her instrument of choice, the harp. She was joined by two friends on violin and flute/recorder to perform J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, Orlando de Lassus and Tarquinio Merula in Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Center in New York. The event was hosted by Terrance McKnight of WQXR.
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Rock Archivist David Bieber Part Two
Boston Media and Counterculture
By: - Mar 09th, 2019Several years ago The Fenway Motor Inn, morphed into the boutique, rock themed, Verb Hotel. David Bieber was commissioned to provide vintage memorabelia from his vast archive. Since then, with a small staff, he has been unpacking and cataloguing the collection. He also worked with the late Stephen Mindich to archive The Phoenix material at Northeastern University. Bieber discusses an era in the counterculture of Boston when there was a community of music makers, promo men, writers and DJs. Rent was cheap compared to now and we were living large on other people's money.
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Sonja Friseli's Aida Is Retired at the Met
The End of Aida As We Loved Her
By: - Mar 09th, 2019The production mounted at the Met thirty years ago is to be replaced, under the injunction: if it's not broken, break it. Sonja Friseli's Aida is perfect and satisfies audience members of all ages and all hues. Why should a new one be created? If you are having financial troubles, spend more in the wrong place?
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Earth Wind and Fire at Tanglewood
Friday June 28 at 7 PM
By: - Mar 12th, 2019n Friday, June 28, at 7 p.m., Earth, Wind & Fire returns to Tanglewood, bringing its U.S. tour to the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Earth, Wind & Fire are a music institution. Over a five-decade history, they have sold out concerts all around the globe, scored eight number one hits, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.
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Diana The Musical
Premiere at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - Mar 12th, 2019La Jolla Playhouse presents a new musical about Diana and Charles who as heir to the British throne, at 70, is still waiting. For global fans she was a fairybook princess in real life.
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Baruch Performing Arts Center's Spoken Songs
Spears and Argento Sung by Brian Mulligan
By: - Mar 14th, 2019Baruch Performing Arts Center presented a Thoreau song cycle by Gregory Spears and Virginia Woolf's Diaries by Dominic Argento. Spears, a phenom among contemporary composers, loves Henry David Thoreau, but found his poetry less than thrilling. Diving into his prose, he decided to take up the more difficult challenge of setting prose to music.
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The Rape of Lucretia
Review at Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Mar 16th, 2019Boston Lyric Opera’s production and interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s contemporary tragic opera “The Rape of Lucretia” is once again an example of a willingness and commitment to perform dramatically intense and socially relevant subject matter.
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