Music
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Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
By: - Mar 17th, 2019In Lauren Yee’s tense and scintillating comedy/drama, Cambodian Rock Band, lead character Chum had escaped Cambodia during the height of the atrocities and resettled in Massachusetts. It is produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival and plays in repertory through October 27, 2019.
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Hairspray at Oregon Shakespeare
Baltimore Based Musical Packs Hefty Impact
By: - Mar 18th, 2019Hairspray challenges prejudices against women who lack an idealized body type and pushes for racial integration and acceptance of non-binary genders. It slyly and adroitly conveys its message even to conservative audiences through an entertaining package of sympathetic characters and shared enjoyment.
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Man of La Mancha in Annapolis
Patrick Gerard Lynch Plays the Don and his Creator
By: - Mar 18th, 2019Man of La Mancha acted and sung with all the passion it can arouse, is revived by the Compass Rose Theater in Annapolis, Maryland. It is a treat. While its score may be Broadway- lite, a reminder that there is hope for humans who dream is a welcome.
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WBCN: The American Revolution
Award Winning Documentary Film by Bill Lichtenstein
By: - Mar 19th, 2019Recently, WBCN: The American Revolution had its first public screening at DC Independent Film Festival. It was judged Winner Best Documentary 2019. Bill Lichtenstein launched the project in 2009. There was at the time no archive dedicated to the legendary alternative rock station. Now there is as the film conflates talking heads, images, sound tracks and vintage footage. More than a radio station, WBCN provided the sound track and social media platform for the coming of age of 250,000 college students during an era of war, protest, and a dynamic counterculture.
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The Barber of Seville
At Livermore Valley Opera
By: - Mar 20th, 2019In the opera canon, The Barber of Seville is one of relatively few that can ease many unfamiliar with opera into enjoying it.
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Theatre of Voices at Carnegie Hall
Arvo Part and David Lang Featured
By: - Mar 21st, 2019Theatre of Voices returned to Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall to perform the music of Arvo Pärt alongside the New York premiere of visual poems accompanied by a picture poem by Phie Ambo. No Mickey Mousing was intended. Instead the pictures were suggested by changing seasons, and a farm in Denmark. Both Pärt and David Lang were beautiful, deep meditations on nature, man's the the world's.
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Memphis In South Florida
A Rousing Production by Actors' Playhouse
By: - Mar 21st, 2019Memphis the Musical sizzles in South Florida. Cast and crew shine in mounting by Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre. The show's themes resonate powerfully. This production features a mix of local and regional talent, as well as a member of the Broadway national tour of Memphis.
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Popular Artists at Tanglewood
Adding Three New Acts to Full Season
By: - Mar 23rd, 2019The 2019 Popular Artist Series includes performances by Brian Wilson (6/16), Richard Thompson (6/21), Earth, Wind & Fire (6/28), Josh Groban (7/2), James Taylor and his All-Star Band (7/3 & 4), Train and the Goo Goo Dolls (8/5), Gladys Knight and The Spinners (8/28), Squeeze—The Squeeze Songbook Tour (8/29), Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo and Melissa Etheridge (8/30), Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals and Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue (8/31), and Reba McEntire (9/1). American Public Media’s Live From Here with Chris Thile also returns on June 15, opening the 2019 season.
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Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall
Thomas Adès Conducts
By: - Mar 22nd, 2019Although the first conductors were themselves composers, the wearing of both hats at the helm of a symphony orchestra is always cause for comment. On Wednesday night, the British composer Thomas Adès, who is currently in the new role of "Artistic Partner" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led that band at Carnegie Hall in a program featuring the New York debut of his Piano Concerto.
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John Hochheimer on WBUR 1968 to 1971
Progressive Programming Terminated by John Silber
By: - Mar 25th, 2019Now retired, professor John Hochheimer of Southern Illinois University, recalls undergraduate years at Boston University’s then progressive station WBUR. He started as a high school volunteer in New York at WBAI. During sophomore year at BU, in 1968, he started at WBUR. He was influenced by the free form programming of Tom Gamache, AKA Uncle T. Rock archivist, David Bieber, was a friend and flat mate. He once spent five hours on air with David Bowie and became friends with B.B. King and Elton John. The programming staff was fired not long after John Silber took over at BU in 1971.
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Today It Rains
Composed by Laura Kaminsky Libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed
By: - Mar 30th, 2019Maestra Nichole Paiement conducts the chamber orchestra to its polished sound with energy and precision, finding a visual and aural expressiveness in the combining of the instruments, parallel to that of Georgia O’Keeffe combining her paints. Laura Kaminsky honors this great artist with her world premiere opera Today It Rains, commissioned and presented by Opera Parallèle.
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Choir of King's College at Saint Thomas
Lenten Season Music
By: - Mar 29th, 2019Concerts at Saint Thomas continue their 2018-19 season with a guest performance by the acclaimed Choir of King’s College, Cambridge at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. This marks the choir’s final North American tour with current Director of Music Stephen Cleobury, who will retire after 37 years in September. His position will be filled by current Saint Thomas Organist and Director of Music Daniel Hyde.
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Jeremy Gill and Port Mande at National Sawdust
Genre-breaking jazz to Contemporary Classical
By: - Apr 08th, 2019Mark Dover and Jeremy Ajari Jordan worked Debussy, Schubert and angst into a wild evening of jazz. Jeremy Gill has a quiet about his work from which he builds and to which he then retreats. There is something satisfying in this bracket, in which we share in the rougher emotions of the interior.
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Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptation
At Broadway's Imperial Theatre
By: - Apr 10th, 2019I wish that I could say that Ain’t Too Proud turned me inside out and sent me directly to heaven. But if the truth be told the first act is a painful 30 minutes too long, and Dominique Morisseau’s mechanically written fact-filled book based on the group’s original founder Otis William’s 1988 memoir – lots of "I did that and he did that and then we all did that" – is as engaging as bad coffee and a failed omelet on a gray day.
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Norma Jeane Baker of Troy at The Shed
Ben Whishaw and Renee Fleming Star
By: - Apr 10th, 2019Poet Anne Carson has a special touch, embedding a conversational tone in lilting lines. While Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is billed as a melologue in which some words are sung and some spoken. It asks the question opera composers always ask: what words should be spoken, and what words sung? As a struggling writer's secretary, Fleming becomes muse, moving from speech to song. She is glorious. So too is Ben Whishaw, who moves from writer to the embodiment of Marilyn Monroe.
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Verb Is the Word
Rediscovering Boston’s Late 1960s Counter Culture
By: - Apr 13th, 2019In 2017 San Fransicso celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. By 1968 the torch of the counterculture, with a radical twist, was passed to Boston. Cops and feds cracked heads when hippies and radicals protested in Boston and Cambridge. Just as in 1776, there were shots heard round the world. There has been no such celebration in Boston. In feisty increments there is ever increased interest and attention to a forgotten era. You can see it at The Verb Hotel, in the new film WBCN; The American Revolution, and books like Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968.
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Madama Butterfly
At Opera San José
By: - Apr 15th, 2019Opera San José has mounted a stunning production of Madama Butterfly. Maria Natale leads the cast as Cio-Cio San, or Butterfly, with a remarkable performance.
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Bound by Huang Ruo at Baruch Performing Arts Center
Freshly Squeezed Opera Presents New York Premiere
By: - Apr 16th, 2019Bound, Huang Ruo's chamber opera, is produced at the Rose Nagelberg Theatre in the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Originally commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, this production is the New York premiere. It is a fresh take by Freshly Squeezed Opera. Ashley Tate who specializes in multi-media production, directs.
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Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate
On Broadway at Roundabout Theatre’s Studio 54.
By: - Apr 20th, 2019It is great to have Kelli O’Hara back on Broadway. As Lilli/Kate she once again proves herself a fine actress who can develop chemistry with every leading man she plays opposite.
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ONE Festival at Opera Omaha
Philip Glass, Ellen Reid and Charles Gounod Featured
By: - Apr 21st, 2019The ONE Festival of Opera Omaha celebrated its 2nd anniversary this year. It has already become a must visit for opera lovers throughout the world. The productions here are first rate. Bringing in James Darrah, who is a director of choice for many of the best young composers, has excited opera fans. This year did not disappoint.
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Tanglewood Adds Pops Tribute to Queen
Marc Martel to Perform Freddie Mercury Hits
By: - Apr 23rd, 2019On Thursday, June 27 at 8 p.m., the Boston Pops and special guest Marc Martel join together for a celebration of the legendary rock band Queen. Martel, known for his striking vocal resemblance to Freddie Mercury, Queen’s lead singer, has been fronting Queen's official tribute show, The Queen Extravaganza, since 2011.
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Hilma af Klint, The Opera
Guggenheim Presents Benjamin Staern's Chamber Opera
By: - Apr 23rd, 2019The Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum is full of surprise and delight. The notion that one’s experience of art can be enhanced by music is not new. Yet in the case of Hilma af Klint, the exhibit of whose works has been the sensation of the New York art season, using a chamber opera to take us inside her experience, was enormously helpful for a better understanding of the woman and her work.
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The Pretenders Coming to MASS MoCA
North Adams Back on the Chain Gang
By: - Apr 23rd, 2019Yet again MASS MoCA has scored the top rock event of the summer. Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders will perform on Friday, July 26.
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Boston Lyric Opera’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Based on the Novel by Margaret Atwood
By: - Apr 24th, 2019The award winning Hulu production of Margaret Atwood's "The Hanmaid's Tale" will make this Boston Lyric Opera production readily familar to audiences. Composer Poul Ruders’ stunning contemporary score brings this dark social tale to the stage in large-scale, presenting his work with a massive, multi-faceted approach to orchestration. BLO has commissioned Ruders to create a new edition of the opera, bringing an expected orchestra size to approximately 65 players, with a chorus of about 34 singers.
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Emmeline by Tobias Picker
Classic Contemporary Opera at Manhattan School of Music
By: - Apr 27th, 2019Manhattan School of Music mounts a superb production of Tobias Picker's Emmeline this spring. Directed by the gifted Thaddeus Strassberger, the work has been moved into the present and resonates as a universal tale. George Manahan. who conducted the world premiere of the work at Santa Fe Opera over twenty years ago, led the orchestra, revealing all the richness of the score. Young talent created unforgettable characters in this re-telling of a Greek myth.
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