Music
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The Infinite Hotel at Irondale
New Music/Theater Captures Audiences
By: - Jan 12th, 2019Death hangs over the exuberant music/drama The Infinite Hotel. Jib sings of the pain of loss from beginning to end. Her music is lifeful, as is the music of Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley who gave new work to this production.
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Maui-Wowie with Charles Laquidara
Former WBCN DJ Retired to Paradise
By: - Jan 12th, 2019From 1968 to 2000, first on WBCN and then for the last five years with WZLX, Charles Laquidara was one of the most beloved, outspoken, and controversial DJ’s during a golden era of counter culture in Boston. At his prime he was one of America's most influential, top rated DJ's. We dicussed his unique career during two lengthy calls to his home in Maui.
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Prism in Rolling World Premiere at Prototype
Ellen Reid's Powerful Opera
By: - Jan 11th, 2019Ellen Reid has an unusual knack for drawing the colors of emotion from an orchestral ensemble and the human voice. Aware of this talent, the composer chooses to present a story with an emotional rather than a narrative arc. The rolling premiere of her new opera, Prism, is presented at LaMama in New York.
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The Infinite Hotel at Prototype Festival
Michal McQuilken's Rollicking Celebration of Community
By: - Jan 10th, 2019The Prototype Festival rolls on with a big production at Irondale, a Brooklyn venue which offers a large space and unusual opportunities for audience viewing. The Infinite Hotel by Michael Joseph McQuilken is having its world premiere. This is a rollicking, joyful and often touching production. It is full of surprises.
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THISTREE with Leah Coloff at Prototype
World premiere at HERE
By: - Jan 08th, 2019A mysterious figure hidden in a huge poke bonnet parades onto the rear of the Mainstage Theater at HERE. She is trailed by figures bearing jeans, an icon of the American West. These are dropped to form a trail, like Hansel and Gretel's candies, leading to the pioneer, Leah Coloff's, seat on stage. Coloff with Ellie Heyman has created a lament modeled on a traditional cowboy ballad.
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Tao and Teicher at the Guggenheim Museum
World Premiere of More Forever
By: - Jan 07th, 2019Caleb Teicher is no stranger to Jacob's Pillow. This summer he will perform More Forever, which had its world premiere at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this weekend. It is a glorious piece developed in collaboration with pianist, composer and actor Conrad Tao.
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4:48 Psychosis at the Prototype Festival
Philip Venables' Remarkable Opera Arrives in the US
By: - Jan 06th, 20194:48 Psychosis, an opera by Philip Venables, had its North American premier as part of the Prototype Festival in New York. It feels like exploding moments of Ophelia’s descent into madness. Based on a play by Sarah Kane, and often called her suicide note, musical moments of both beauty and anguish depict emotions leading to death by hanging.
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Lucas Pino’s That’s a Computer
CD Release by Saxophonist & Composer
By: - Jan 04th, 2019Saxophonist & composer Lucas Pino has released a title that even in the creative jazz world needs some explanation. “That’s a Computer,” released in the fall of 2018 with his 10-piece jazz band No Net Nonet, takes its title from a comment made by one of Pino’s’ professors at the Julliard School.
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Adriana Lecouvreur at Metropolitan Opera
Gala Features Beczala, Maestri, Netrebko, and Rachvilishvili
By: - Jan 03rd, 2019Adriana Lecouvreur was brought to New York most recently in a Carnegie Hall concert by Eve Queller’s Opera Orchestra of New York. Angela Gheorghiu came to sing the diva role and was delicious, both touching and full of haughty allure. When Anna Netrebko expressed interest in the Adriana role, The Metropolitan Opera joined with five partners and hired the stalwart Sir David McVicar to produce.
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Schnapps with Dexter Gordon
Hard Bop in Copenhagen
By: - Dec 31st, 2018During a 1972 week in Copenhagen I had an aquavit infused, acid trip lunch with bop, tenor sax player, Dexter Gordon. He had lived in Europe for a decade and was relatively unknown in the States. Four years later he returned with a well staged comeback. He signed with Columbia, was featured in major festivals, and toured relentlessly. He performed an Oscar nominated role as the lead of the 1986 film “Round Midnight” by French director, Bertrand Travernier. The publication of “Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Times of Dexter Gordon” (University of California Press, 2018) by his wife Maxine Gordon jogged memories of close encounters with a consummate hipster.
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El Nino, a Nativity Oratorio, at Cloisters
Julia Bullock and the American Modern Opera Company Featured
By: - Dec 23rd, 2018John Adams and his frequent collaborator, Peter Sellars, focused on the Nativity when they created El Nino, a Christmas Oratorio. Handel's Messiah, the most frequently performed music for Christmas, sprawls into Easter. Now we have marvelous seasonal music for our time.
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All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914
Stranger Than Fiction at Loreto Theatre on Bleecker Street
By: - Dec 23rd, 2018What is remarkable about this production directed by Peter Rothstein with music direction by Erick Lichte is both the simplicity and the complexity of the production. There is no set; the stage is a black box. No orchestra or piano accompanies the actors as they sing; it is a capella. The harmonies arranged by Lichte and Timothy C Takach are wonderful.
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Into the Light by Jérôme Brunet
Album of Rock and Blues Images
By: - Dec 19th, 2018The French born Jérôme Brunet started shooting concerts in 1994. This book of just under 200 images in black and white resulted in part from a kickstarer campaign that raised $30,000. There is a mix of celebrity rockers and less well known blues artists. Images include U2, The Who, Cream, Stones, Pink Floyd, Yes, Slash, Tom Petty, Carlos Santana, Van Morrison, Steve Miller, and Bruce Springsteen. Some of the killer shots were of B.B. King one of which is on the cover of a compelling book.
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Thomas Oliemans at Park Avenue Armory
Malcolm Martineau Joins Baritone
By: - Dec 18th, 2018Thomas Oliemans, a Dutch baritone, sang in the Officer's Room at the Park Avenue Armory. His first line evokes love's bite, suggesting a mix of pleasure and pain that would inform his program. The tall-full-voiced baritone was accompanied by Malcolm Martineau whose delight in the songs of Charles DuParc and Gustav Mahler was apparent.
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J'nai Bridges and Mark Markham at Carnegie
Songs and Spirituals Tell a Story
By: - Dec 14th, 2018J’nai Bridges told us stories at her concert in the Weill Hall of Carnegie. The program began with a spiritual arranged by Bridges and her stunning partner on piano, Mark Markham. Spirituals and lullabies bracketed the program.
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Matthias Goerne at the New York Philhamonic
A Journey into Mystery
By: - Dec 11th, 2018For their last program before the annual dive into holiday season concerts, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic gave their audience something unique: a song cycle created from the work of two composers and featuring the voice of Matthais Goerne, the German lieder specialist who sings Wotan on van Zweden's new recording of Wagner's Ring.
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Honoring Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues
All Stars at The Cabot in Beverly, MA.
By: - Dec 11th, 2018The Cabot in Beverly, Mass. is gearing up for its Centennial in 2020. It escaped the wrecker's ball a few years ago and is now in the midst of renovation, Toward that end there was a gala, all star benefit tribute to a 1920s icon Bessie Smith The Empress of the Blues. It was a night to remember and indicator of the next chapter of a venerable venue.
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Scat Singers Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton
Keeping Jazz Alive at 90
By: - Dec 10th, 2018Now 90, in 2012 Sheila Jordan was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. With fellow singer and educator, Jay Clayton, they conducted a workshop. Last night they, and nine singers, performed during a pot luck gig at The Firehouse in swinging downtown Adams, Mass.
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Onsite Opera Follows Menotti's Star
Amahl and the Night Visitors Reimagined
By: - Dec 08th, 2018Amahl and the Night Visitors was commissioned as a Christmas television special a half century ago. The composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, would appear often at its live presentations. He often pointed out that this is a story of a boy who has problems with his mother. He would ask members of the audience to raise their hands if they did. Most of the audience held their hands up high. That is not the only reason to enjoy this Christmas classic to which OnSite Opera has brought a new vision for today.
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The Apple Boys by Jonothon Lyons and Ben Bonnema
A Barbershop Quartet Offers Joy at HERE
By: - Dec 07th, 2018Apple Boys bring the Barbershop Quartet into the 21st century. This musical form my have started as early as Beaumarchais in Barber of Seville in the 18th century. Both black and white musicians claim ownership. Every culture which discovered “harmony” in combined voices has used the four singer form.
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Boston Boy by Nat Hentoff
A Memoir by a Radical Journalist and Jazz Critic
By: - Dec 04th, 2018Nathan Irving “Nat’ Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) passed at 91 some time ago. Why then, in the waning moments of 2018, write a review of a book written some 32 years ago? Reading a memoir by a legendary radical journalist and jazz critic resonated with my own memories of growing up as a Boston Boy.
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War at the New York Philharmonic
Jaap van Zweden Conducts
By: - Dec 02nd, 2018The extraordinary history of the Second World War casts a long shadow on any art music written in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. This week, the New York Philharmonic paired two of these works in a program of extraordinary intensity under music director Jaap van Zweden: a program that seemed to ask the following. Can art music, created under the shadow of extraordinary political and human event, somehow manage to transcend its origins and remain relevant to the audiences of today?
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Chelsea Opera: Tom Cipullo One Acts
Melissa Wimbish, Jennifer Beattie, Steven Eddy and Sara Paar
By: - Dec 02nd, 2018Chelsea Opera is an enterprising company, now over fifteen years old. They presented two one-act operas by composer Tom Cipullo, a master of drama and the placement of notes in the voice. The setting in Christ and St. Stephen’s Church worked perfectly as staged by Dean Anthony, a singer who has spent the last decade successfully directing. A golden glow surrounds the now 68-year-old Josephine Baker who is being interviewed in her dressing room.
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MasterVoices Handel's Israel in Egypt
Carnegie Hall Stage Bursting with Artists
By: - Nov 30th, 2018Handel’s Israel in Egypt was performed at Carnegie Hall by MasterVoices under Ted Sperling’s baton. The Oratorio planned for Easter and Passover is often presented at Christmas and Hanukkah.
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Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera
Placido Domingo Celebrates 50 years at the Met
By: - Nov 28th, 2018No work by Puccini has suffered more neglect and critical ignorance than Il Trittico, his "triptych" of three single act operas that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera one hundred years ago. Part of what has hurt the reputation of this work- comprised of three operas designed to be performed together and in a certain sequence- is the unfortunate habit producers have of playing these works individually, or pairing them "Cav-Pag" style with operas by other composers.
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