Music
-
Victoria Bond's Opera Clara
A Child Prodigy Negotiates Career and Marriage
By: - Nov 09th, 2019Victoria Bond's Clara on the life of the pianist and composer who was married to Robert Schumann premiered at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden Germany last spring. The German Forum offered a concert version in New York. It is a superb exploration of this important musician.
-
Country Women Concert for Women’s Cancer
Rocked Boston's Hard Rock Cafe
By: - Nov 09th, 2019Taking the stage for a “blow-out” sold-out performance, both Massachusetts-area country singers Annie Brobst and her band and Samantha Rae with Whiskey-6 delivered an over-charged performance from the heart. Full throttle voices reminded the Hard Rock Café audience of the importance of funding research for women’s cancer.
-
Manon Lescaut By Puccini
Produced by San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 11th, 2019Manon Lescaut holds some curious distinctions within the Puccini canon. Chronologically, the third of his nine full-length operas, the first two were failures. This was his only opera lauded at its conception by critics and audiences alike.
-
Ain’t Too Proud by Dominique Morisseau
Temptations on Broadway
By: - Nov 15th, 2019Ain’t Too Proud could not exist without high energy performances of the Temptations songs, and they are so authentic, you’d think you’re seeing the actual group. The mix of voices backed by an 18-piece orchestra along with Sergio Trujillo’s exciting choreography hit the mark.
-
Verdi's Requiem with Tedor Currentzis at The Shed
New Views on a Great Work
By: - Nov 14th, 2019A hundred-member orchestra and an 80-member chorus from Perm Russia perform Verdi's Requiem at The Shed in Hudson Yards, New York. Direct from Salzburg where it received rapturous reviews this re-imagining has been eagerly awaited. For ten days prior to the performances on November 19-24, Jonas Mekas' filmed response to the music was screened. It was at first a shocking take, beautiful images of flower blossoms one after another. The Requiem is a work of sublime beauty. It also has Dylan Thomas's rage at death. Mekas shows this in black screens and sometimes winds raging through branches and dessicating leaves.
-
American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Jamie Barton Featured in Ives' songs
By: - Nov 14th, 2019Jamie Barton showed up at Carnegie on the wings of her tweet, "Be there or be square." Nothing about her performance of some of her favorite songs by Charles Ives was square. She is a gorgeous performer who ventures always to the edge of experience.
-
Mallon’s Fellow Travelers
Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Nov 15th, 2019Boston Lyric Opera has once again successfully adapted and tackled politically and socially topical subjects in “Fellow Travelers”, an opera by Gregory Spears with Libretto by Greg Pierce. It is based on the best-selling novel by Thomas Mallon.
-
Don Juan
Westport Country Playhouse
By: - Nov 16th, 2019Westport Country Playhouse is giving us a delightful performance of a new adaptation of the Molière play written by Brendan Pelsue and wonderfully directed by David Kennedy.
-
Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Joyce Di Donato Superb as Cleopatra
By: - Nov 16th, 2019Thrilling moments of the New York fall music season include the arrival of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. They do not disappoint. The first concert brought forward the superb brass section of the Orchestra in an unjustifiably overlooked early work by Georges Bizet, Roma. No one knows where the title came from.
-
Ain't Too Proud
Jukebox Musical About The Temptations On Broadway
By: - Nov 16th, 2019Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations is playing in Broadway. This show, while a jukebox musical, does more than string a series of hits together. The dancing is electric and the singing is expressive.
-
Michelle Wiley et Les Garcons
Evening of Eclipse Cabaret
By: - Nov 17th, 2019It was standing room only last night for a packed cabaret in the gallery of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. The chanteuse, Michelle Wiley et les Garcons, (Opie O'Brian. Carl Oman and guest guitarist) regaled us with two long sets. The program conflated Edith Piaf with Irving Berlin. Dancing was encouraged.
-
Tristan and Isolde Act II at Lincoln Center
White Light Festival Features Goerke and Gould
By: - Nov 18th, 2019Inducing current audiences to listen to Wagner operas is difficult. Ninety minutes seems to perfect time slot for young people. Wagner's operas can last for six hours. Can they be cut? Probably not without violating their essence. Producing an Act in concert form makes sense. The White Light Festival presented a spectacular concert based on Act II of Tristan and Isolde.
-
Artist Jane Hudson at Tourists
Birthday Celebration on Becoming Jane
By: - Nov 21st, 2019The upscale Tourists a hip, designer savvy resort in North Adams, has launched a program of evenings with artists. Last night there was a cozy, well attended fireside chat with artist and musician Jane Hudson. She and her husband Jeff operated Hudsons Antiques formerly at MASS MoCA. They also perform music as Jeff and Jane. Both are widely exhibited artists. She discussed phases of her career which I have followed as friend and commentator since the late 1960s. It was also her birthday.
-
Conrad Tao Debuts at Carnegie Hall
Barefoot and Brazen Tao Makes a Case for the Piano
By: - Nov 21st, 2019The young musical polymath Conrad Tao made his debut at Carnegie Hall. In an ambitious program, designed in part to display the elements of virtuoso performance on the piano, Tao played representative composers from J. S. Bach to David Lang and Julia Wolfe.
-
Tootsie On Broadway
Musical Adaptation Continues Through Jan. 5.
By: - Nov 19th, 2019Tootsie features a Tony-winning performance by actor Santino Fontana. The musical adaptation of the popular 1982 film continues through Jan. 5. The stage show is a big, splashy and funny musical comedy.
-
Teodor Currentzis Brings Verdi to The Shed
Dramatic Performance Accompanied by Jonas Mekas Images
By: - Nov 22nd, 2019The Verdi Requiem conducted by Teodor Currentzis with the musicAeterna Orchestra and Chorus is performed at The Shed through November 24. The McCourt is a grand space and can seat 1,250 and hold 2000 standing. Designed to be flexibly conformed, this performance has bleacher seats extending from the floor before the stage up to the rafters, or heavens if you will. This program's music is both other-worldly and very much in the now.
-
Lucy Dhegrae at National Sawdust
Giving Voice to Rape
By: - Nov 24th, 2019Lucy Dhegrae, a superb mezzo soprano, lost her singing voice after an assault. In finding her singing voice again, she follows the sounds of a human from the first grunts and breaths to the glorious free sounds of song. Dhegrae is National Sawdust's Artist-in-Residence.
-
Hansel and Gretel
At Opera San José
By: - Nov 30th, 2019Opera San José’s production is specifically designed to be family friendly. The opera is sung in English and the supertitles are given in pretty basic vocabulary. Yet, only 15% of the audience is children, so adults, do feel welcomed. It is a quality production, beautifully staged and sung, that will satisfy audiences of all ages and levels of opera understanding.
-
Seance with Benjamin Britten at Crypt
String Quartets One and Two Spectral
By: - Dec 05th, 2019The Crypt Session as imagined and realized by Death of Classical point the way to music’s lifefulness going forward. New, young audiences wait for months to get a ticket to one of these events. Tickets sell out moments after events like this Salon Séance are announced. Andrew Ousley, whose creation Crypt Sessions and The Catacombs assures us that more events in new locations are coming. A cave is promised in the future.
-
Newsies the Musical
At Hillbarn Theatre
By: - Dec 09th, 2019What makes Newsies really jump is the dancing with the accompanying choruses like “Carrying the banner” about the independent but challenging life of selling papers on the streets, and “Seize the day” about striking to get their due.
-
Joe Rosen Presents Clarinet Quintets
New Insights Into the Form
By: - Dec 07th, 2019An active patron of New York music associations, Joe Rosen is a first-rate amateur clarinetist who opens his home to salons. Here young musicians accompany him in chamber music pieces. Recently he changed his method of operation. Instead of transposing one string instrument's part for clarinet, he is performing quintets specifically written for the instrument. The clarinet's mellow, earthy timbre is revealed.
-
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Gian Carlo Menotti's Christmas Spirit for Today
By: - Dec 10th, 2019On Site Opera revived what one hopes will become an annual production of Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors. In choosing settings for familiar and unfamiliar operas, On Site adds an intriguing dimension to the form. With Amahl, the location in the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen returns the opera to its original meaning.
-
Heartbeat Opera's Der Freischutz
Louisa Proske Creates a Present Moment
By: - Dec 11th, 2019Der Freischutz is everything an 1821 opera should be in a present day performance. The brilliant conception by Louisa Proske, credited with the adaptation and direction, surrounds us from the moment with enter the theater. The circle in the square encompasses the audience. Next to the home of Agathe at one point in the circle is a looming rock which is part of the Wolf Canyon. The orchestra is inside the circle under one section of audience. In the largest seating area, a platform extends. The singing actors use all these spaces. They come very close to us at time, ignoring our presence, but allowing us to see into their souls. Immersion hardly describes what the production offers.
-
Lucy Shelton at National Sawdust
Legendary Singer of Contemporary Song Lofts Stravinsky and Rochberg
By: - Dec 16th, 2019Lucy Shelton, the legendary soprano, did not let us forget. If we don't live in the action and passions of our musical times, we risk not having lived at all. Igor Stravinsky vocalise, with no words and only sung notes, introduced the evening.
-
Second Mainstage Musical for Barrington Stage Company
Ain’t Misbehavin’ Joins South Pacific
By: - Dec 17th, 2019Can there be too much of a good thing? Barrington Stage Company is known for staging classical musicals. But now Ain't Misbehavin has been added to South Pacific. This seems more about the bottomline than balanced programming. The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg is the third high season production on the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage. Anna in the Tropics, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Nilo Cruz, will highlight the St. Germain Stage.
<< Previous Next >>