Music
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Ellen Reid Wins Pulitzer for Prism
Composer's Generosity of Spirit and Notes
By: - Apr 16th, 2019Ellen Reid has been a hot item this year. Four venues in Los Angeles commissioned work from her. Now Prism, a Beth Morrison production, has won the Pulitzer prize for music. We wandered her soundscape in Omaha created for her by Opera Omaha at the Josyln Art Museum. Distinguishing composing notes from the listener's experience, Reid brings new sounds to an audience.
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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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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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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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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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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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