Music
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Remembering Little Richard
When Rock Was Young We Had So Much Fun
By: - May 09th, 2020It was summer of 1954 when I scoured downtown Gloucster to cop a copy of "Rock Around the Clock." A couple of years later Little Richard busted out with "Tutti Frutti." There has never been anyone like him before or since. He died this week at 87.
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Opera Philadelphia Digital Festival
We Shall not Be Moved Reprised
By: - May 09th, 2020We Shall Not be Moved was a hit at the 2017 Opera Philadelphia Festival, a must-attend event held in Philadelphia in the fall. It is available on Facebook, Sunday, May 10 at 7pm.
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Young Arts Foundation Presents Conrad Tao
Gifted Listener Tao at Home
By: - May 09th, 2020YoungArts brings us artist’s self-designed concerts from home. In the interior soundscape of his home, Conrad Tao presents his own compositions and Arnold Schoenberg’s among others. His electronic composition, sometimes mixed with the piano and at others alone, provides an extension into other sound universes. The outside world is omni-present through a window which extends the room into trees and skies.
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Victoria Bond at the Cutting Edge
Composer, Conductor and Musical Polymath
By: - May 10th, 2020Victoria Bond was born to be a musician. Her grandfather was a composer and conductor. Her father was an operatic bass, and her mother, a concert pianist. She found the piano herself. When her kindergarten teacher scolded her mother for pushing Bond too hard, her mother explained that she was trying to hold her back, but could not.
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Music in Berlin and Amsterdam
Meeting the Demands of Covid 19
By: - May 12th, 2020The Berlin Philharmoniker, perhaps the world’s greatest orchestra, has opened their digital concert world for free. This allows us to safely enjoy their music, although of course we are denied the pleasure of live. Their annual European Concert was to have been performed in Tel Aviv. Instead they are at their home in Berlin, celebrating their founding on May 1 in 1882.
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Rene Fleming Sings Strauss on Carnegie Stream
Live from Carnegie Hall Twice Weekly
By: - May 15th, 2020Rene Fleming and Rufus Wainwright entertained us on Thursday. Next week Yannick Nezet-Seguin on Tuesday and a tribute to Lynn Harrell on Thursday. From the Super Bowl to Broadway, Fleming has spread her lovely voice across unusual venues and in unusual projects like the impact of music on health.
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Kirill Petrenko Reimagines Puccini's Suor Angelica
Young Artists in Berlin and Katarina Dalayman Star
By: - May 16th, 2020The second part of Giacomo Puccini's Suor Angelica, is given a deep and satisfying production. Kirill Petrenko, seeking a way to share insights and experiences with young artists, gives us an unexpected and beautifully produced opera. The singing is first-rate throughout. The production, which includes danced gesture and videos, suits the story.
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Nina Stemme and Alan Gilbert from Sweden
Live streaming Debussy, Wagner and Schubert
By: - May 21st, 2020Live streaming from Sweden, where Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, artists sit six feet apart in an empty hall. Sweden, unlike many neighboring European countries, has not imposed quarantine on its population. Instead the government has called on citizens to "take responsibility" and follow the recommendations of the health authorities. "We are not doing business as usual in Sweden," said health minister Lena Hallengren. People over the age of 70 and those deemed "at risk" are encouraged to stay at home, and high schools and universities, which have been closed since mid-March, are being encouraged to offer distance learning courses. The concert halls have opened, to artists, not audiences.
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LES Festival of the Arts at Theater for the New City
Pot Pouri of Events Provide Rich Tasting
By: - May 23rd, 2020Theater for the New City has currently scheduled over 150 performing arts organizations, independent artists, poets, puppeteers and film makers for its 25th annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, which will be mounted virtually for the first time May 22 to 24, 2020. All events and performances will be seen on the theater's website, www.theaterforthenewcity.net. Events will stream for three days, from 6:00 PM Friday, May 22 to 11:59 PM Sunday, May 24. Attendees will be able to select disciplines and artists from the website's online timetable and index.
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Library of Congress and Portland Ovation
What Berkshire Grande Dame Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Hath Wrought
By: - May 29th, 2020Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a grande dame of Berkshire music, financed the building of a concert hall for the Library of Congress. A concert planned at Coolidge Hall this spring was presented live streamed instead. The Library of Congress joined with co-presenter, Portland Ovation, and the International Contemporary Ensemble to present a program that worked amazingly well in Zoom.
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Opera Philadelphia Digital Festival 2
Lembit Beecher's Sky on Swings Reconsidered
By: - May 27th, 2020Can new opera on inmportant contemporary subjects draw in new audiences? Opera Philadelphia's We Shall Not be Moved and Sky on Swings argue yes emphatically. Sky on Swings tackles Alzheimer's. Each member of the creative team reported long conversations following the announcement that they were involved with an Alzheimer's opera.
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Urban Arias Live Streams Independence Eve
Racism Sung Through a Century's Lens
By: - Jun 04th, 2020Prescient or just plain lucky, the streaming of Independence Eve occurred in the midst of a new pandemic of racism in America. The opera premiered in Arlington, Virginia in 2017. A triptych of duets between a white man and black man, who end up as 10 years olds in 2063, is a fresh look at the persistence of racial issues. Urban Arias continues to stream on Facebook.
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Translating Movies into Opera
Why Operatic Movies Fail on Stage
By: - Jun 07th, 2020It is tempting for current composers of new opera to use films as a jumping off place. In two recent efforts, the creative artists miss the strength of the film's story arc and flatten their effort to create opera. Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera (and English National Opera) and Breaking the Waves (Opera Philadelphia) both overlook the strengths which provide drama in the films on which they are based.
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MoMA Streams "Right On" from The Last Poets
Produced by Woodie King Jr and Directed by Herbert Danska
By: - Jun 11th, 2020MoMA is streaming a restored print of Right On!, a classic film released in the early 1970s. Featuring The Last Poets, we are taken back to the origins of Hip Hop and of the first presentation of black culture by blacks. Felice Luciano, one of the original poets, speaks briefly about the prophetic poetry of the group. Fifty years ago they predicted today.
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Orchestra of St. Luke's Presents Bach at Home
Delightful Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 Launches Series
By: - Jun 24th, 2020Musicians return to Bach as a home base. He is not only fundamental, but a composer of sheer beauty, delight and even complexity. As listeners, we can return with the Orchestra of St. Luke's to a series of online concerts for our home bound performance time.
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Woolf Works Streaming from the Royal Ballet
Wayne McGregor and Max Richter Join in Storytelling
By: - Jun 26th, 2020The Royal Ballet's #OurHousetoYourHouse premieres a stream of Wayne McGregor's Woolf Works, featuring music by Max Richter and inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf. It won the Olivier and the Critic's Circle Awards for Dance in 2015. Allesandra Ferri dances Woolf.
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Lawrence Brownlee from Home on Being Black
A Formidable Tenor Speaks Openly About race
By: - Jun 29th, 2020Lawrence Brownlee sang a two-part concert at the Park Avenue Armory in 2017. In the Officer's Room he performed the bel canto arias we have come to associate with him. He is entirely comfortable. And he is sure that Bellini would welcome him, black or not, in any role. He moved to the Veteran's Room for the second part of the program. There he performed pop songs, gospel and folk. He was less comfortable in the more relaxed atmosphere. Now with downtime he discusses race.
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David Lang's Love Fails Streams
Beth Morrison Projects Presents Opera of the Week
By: - Jul 02nd, 2020Beth Morrison brings us the 'love fails' stream. Morrison is a leader in the march forward of opera into the 21st century. The opera was recorded in Poland with the superb Quince Contemporary Ensemble performing. Echo is used effectively to hover voices in the performance space.
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Birmingham Opera's Mittwoch aus Licht by Stockhausen
Listening to the Future and Preparing for What is To Come
By: - Jul 06th, 2020Birmingham Opera streams Karlheinz Stochhausen's Mittwoche, helicopters and call. Graham Vick brings us the humor and mystery of this great work. Housed in an industrial warehouse, the audience sits and lies on the floor to listen and irresistibly engage in the proceedings. They compulsively draw us in, listening to harmonies and melodic lines emerge from a trombonist in a plastic pool, splashing water, and a parliament gathered on tennis umpire chairs to discuss the most important of world subjects, love.
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Tanglewood Goes Online for Summer Festival
Nelsons on the Podium and in Class
By: - Jul 06th, 2020My colleague Phillip S. Kampe spent opening day at Tanglewood. It. was not what he expected. He enjoyed bottled water only. Yet the scenery and the quiet was transforming. You can fill in the real thing with rich program streaming from the Boston Symphony.
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Streaming from Aix-en-Provence
Saariaho, Sellars, Rattle and Kožená
By: - Jul 07th, 2020Aix en Provence is offering a digital festival to those of us who can't enter France. Their selection of recitals, conversations and opera performances is intriguing and invites.
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The Digital Stage from Festival d'Aix
Boesmans, Stravinsky, Simon McBurney Under One Umbrella
By: - Jul 12th, 2020Pinocchio and The Rake’s Progress, video recordings of performances at Aix, are now being offered. They continue on YouTube after the Digital Festival 2020 ends. The importance of Aix as a creator of new work and new productions is clear in these two works.
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Amadeus Streamed by National Theatre
What Salieri Saw in Mozart That Vienna Missed
By: - Jul 21st, 2020Often it is suggested that Salieri was alone in his appreciation of Mozart. He saw immediately his extraordinary gifts. Enjoy Leonard Bernstein’s father’s response to a question about why he did not support his son’s musical aspirations. “I didn’t know Leonard Bernstein was Leonard Bernstein.” Viennese society did not know that Mozart was Mozart. No one did, xcept Antonio Salieri, writers’ observe, beginning with Puskin.
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Fred Plotkin: Renaissance Man
Renowned Expert on Italian food and Opera
By: - Jul 23rd, 2020Fred Plotkin notes: “I am not a singer or musician, yet my working life has a lot of similarities in that most of my income is derived from appearing in front of audiences in places of public assembly. People buy tickets to what I do so, of course, that means that all of my contracts, all of my speaking engagements, have been canceled until November.”
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Bop Singer Annie Ross
Recorded as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
By: - Jul 24th, 2020Among the elite and most innovative jazz vocalists of her generation, Annie Ross who died this week at 89, was born in a suitcase and traveled for the rest of her life. She is best know for recordings with the legendary Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
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