Music
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The Resurrection of Son House
Legendary Mississippi Blues Singer
By: - May 11th, 2019The show is emotional, bewitching, and always entertaining. It is based on the biography of Son House by Rochester native Daniel Beaumont. But ultimately it is a celebration.
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Die Komische Oper Berlin, Germany
Poro and M-eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder
By: - May 13th, 2019At the end of the 2018/19 season the Komische Oper Berlin produced two more operas: 'Poro,' by Georg Friedrich Haendel, and 'M- Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder,' by Moritz Eggert. Two very opposite experiences!
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Patience & Sarah at Danny Kaye Theater
Paula Kimper's Folktale of Love Come True
By: - May 14th, 2019Patience & Sarah was one of the first same sex love stories produced in the United States. It was radical subject matter in the 20th century. It hardly seems daring today, as Brokeback Mountain has stormed opera houses and a transgender work, As One, will have a New York premiere later this month. Yet the production by Hunter College and American Opera Projects was lovely and hopeful.
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Anne Bogart Directs Boston Lyric Opera
Vivid production of The Handmaid’s Tale
By: - May 17th, 2019Boston Lyric Opera has surpassed their charge to “translate this story in the moment for the audience” as stated by renowned theater and opera director Anne Bogart, who joined the creative team at the helm of “The Handmaid’s Tale” production.
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Kopernikus at the Image Project Room
Claude Vivier Takes the Fear Out of Death
By: - May 18th, 2019Claude Vivier died in 1983 at age 35. He lived in Paris at the end of his life and was stabbed to death by a young man he had been attracted to. His final opera which told this story before it happened was sitting on his work table. He never heard Koperikus produced, but in this century it has built up a head of steam. Its New York premiere was held at the Image Project Room in Brooklyn.
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Murasaki's Moon at Metropolitan Museum
Michi Wiancko's Opera Debuts
By: - May 20th, 2019Musical artist Michi Wiancko under the wing of the American Lyric Theater’s development program and backed by Opera America has written a new opera with librettist Deborah Brevoort. The 17th century Astor Chinese Garden Court was the setting of a modern take on the 11th century Tales of Genji. It was written by court lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu who lived between 973-1025 C.E. in Japan. She was the daughter of a petty court noble.
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Music Man
Opening Goodspeed's Season
By: - May 21st, 2019It’s amazing that this classic musical by Meredith Willson is having its first production at Goodspeed. It seems perfectly suited to the theater.
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Barbara Hannigan at the Ojai Festival
From The Rake's Progress to a Crazy Girl Suite
By: - May 21st, 2019What makes the Ojai Festival in California unique among festivals? Its Artistic Director continues year after year. Each year a different Music Director is chosen. That person curates the festival as through-performance. You are led by the music on a journey full of surprises and delights.
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Green River Festival
Good Vibes on Tap for Greenfield Mass
By: - May 22nd, 2019This year, Green River will host over 30 bands on three stages that will ensure a constant groove and plenty of options for music lovers of every stripe. While many come for a particular artist, many more recall finding new favorites throughout the weekend. So whether you think you are a dyed-in-the-wool Americana, Blues, Cajun, Country, Jazz, or Soul fan, by the end of the weekend, you might just change your (i)tune. Regardless, you are sure to find plenty to like and do.
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Young People's Chorus Premieres Ellen Reid
Joined by Shallaway Choir and Mantra Percussion
By: - May 23rd, 2019The Young People’s Chorus gave their third annual Vocal Resolutions Concert on May 19th at the Gerald Lynch Theater in New York. This group, founded by Francisco Nunez three decades ago, has reached the pinnacle of professional success. They invited an equally celebrated group, the Shalloway Choir from Newfoundland, to join them this year. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2019, Ellen Reid's world premiere composition for YPC was a highlight of the program.
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Tootsie the Musical
On Broadway at Marquis Theatre
By: - May 25th, 2019Tootsie may not be the perfect adaptation of a hit movie, but it is very good and very enjoyable
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Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi
By West Bay Opera
By: - May 28th, 2019Verdi was no doubt drawn to the bigger-than-life character of Falstaff. Lecherous and self-indulgent, he is one of the great comic characters from literature. The success of the production rides first on the able shoulders of Richard Zeller, a classic Falstaff. With the aid of costumery, makeup, and wig, he looks the part of the corpulent rogue.
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TON Performs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Top Young Musicians under Leon Botstein Reveal Webern and Feldman
By: - May 28th, 2019The Orchestra Now (TON) is brave. In taking on two of the seminal composers of modern music, they tackled the presentation of developing ideas about sound as music, to which the 20th century composers have added new dimensions. Some composers took the sounds out of time. Anton Webern often composed suggesting different tempi measure to measure. While Morton Feldman did not go as far as John Cage, inviting musical artists to perform whatever, whenever, he often suspended his work out of time.
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Deep Dirt on Annie Lennox
Installation of Detritus at MASS MoCA
By: - May 31st, 2019As an epic memento mori the 64-year-old British pop star has created “Annie Lenox: Now I Let You Go…” A huge mound of earth scattered with her memorabilia will be on view long term at MASS MoCA. The ambitious installation will be of great interest to her global fans.
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Experiments at the NY Opera Festival
A.M. Homes Writes Her First LIbretto
By: - Jun 03rd, 2019Experiments in Opera was co-founded in Brooklyn in 2010 by composers Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch and Jason Cady. They contributed Chunky in Heat to the New York Opera Festival. It was a wild, wacky and moving work.
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David Lang World Premiere at NY Philharmonic
A Take Off from Beethoven's Fidelio
By: - Jun 05th, 2019The world premiere of David Lang's prisoner of the state takes place in David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic. The 106 member orchestra will perform, but this can hardly be called a concert production. Instead the Hall has been transformed into a prison. Even the instrumentalists on stage are in prison. Costumes, chains and handcuffs were ordered from Bob Barker, the country's leading detention supplier.
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Brian Wilson Cancels Tanglewood
BSO Has Special Offer for Ticket Refunds
By: - Jun 06th, 2019Tanglewood would like to offer ticket buyers the opportunity to exchange into any concert at Tanglewood this summer, with the exception of the James Taylor performances on July 3 and 4, which are sold out. Patrons who choose to exchange their Brian Wilson ticket(s) for another Tanglewood performance (see list below) will receive an additional bonus, an undated Tanglewood lawn ticket—a $24 value—for each ticket exchanged, valid for any Boston Symphony or Boston Pops concert throughout the season (not valid for Popular Artists Series concerts).
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Dr. John at "77"
Voodoo Hoodoo at MASS MoCA in 2002
By: - Jun 06th, 2019New Orleans master Dr. John has died. Perhaps he was 77 but like most aspects of the musician it is yet another factoid swathed in swamp gas. On June 1, 2002, with singer Jimmy Scott, he jammed the inner court yard of MASS MoCA. Over the years I covered him numerous times including his witch doctor Gris Gris phase in the late 1960s. He long ago earned a spot in the pantheon of America's greatest musical tradition.
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The Flamingo Kid at Hartford Stage
Delightful New Musical
By: - Jun 07th, 2019Darko Tresnjak is going out with a delightful, tuneful musical that will touch your heart. For his last show as artistic director at Hartford Stage he has directed the world premiere musical, The Flamingo Kid now through Saturday, June 15.
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Georges Bizet’s Carmen
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Jun 10th, 2019Carmen is conducive to fresh, modernized productions, often with changes in time period, geography, and more. Here we have a traditional approach, including the original spoken dialogue, which mark it as an opera comique. This rendition confirms why the opera has stood the test of time.
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Ojai Festival Magic Making 2019
Thomas W. Morris and Barbara Hannigan
By: - Jun 12th, 2019The Ojai Music Festival in California is almost 75 years old. In this magical setting an hour and a half north of Los Angeles, music making is very much here and now. Each year, an artistic director selects a music director and works with her to program four days of performance, talk and film screenings. While coming for one program undoubtedly gives pleasure, the maximum effect of this festival is to be had by immersion. This is not your ordinary concert program. One performance follows another by design and relationships become more clear as the days pass.
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Experiencing Barbara Hannigan
Ojai Music Director 2019
By: - Jun 13th, 2019As a conductor, Barbara Hannigan is full of physical energy and a dynamic beat. Listening to her sing and conduct feels intimate, intuitive, and collaborative. Bowled over by Hannigan’s deep musicality, her sense of the proper degree of vibrato is often overlooked. She has just the right amount of delicate breath in each note, giving the slightest hint of texture to a smooth and pure line. One’s sense of this may be a matter of taste, but the style suits the music she chooses to sing.
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Paul Pelkonen of Superconductor
Recalling a Brilliant Music Critic
By: - Jun 17th, 2019Paul Pelkonen, a brilliant critic, died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 46. Paul was one of the great pleasures of reporting on music. He loved it as much as anyone could, and knew more about it than most people. His taste was impeccable.
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Stonewall the Opera, World Premiere
Iain Bell and Mark Campbell with NY City Opera
By: - Jun 22nd, 2019Stonewall, an opera by Iain Bell with libretto by Mark Campbell, had its world premiere at the New York City Opera. The work was commissioned as part of a commitment by NYCO to produce an LGBT Opera during Pride Month every year. It is a triumph for the artists and the company.
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Rusalka by Antonín Dvorák
Produced by San Francisco Opera
By: - Jun 22nd, 2019This production shows Rusalka in all its glory. Yet the opera is not often performed in this country, despite the resurgence of Czech opera. The clock time, a little excessive at 3:40 including intermissions, poses many additional costs and burdens.
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