Music
-
Chelsea Opera's Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein and Picasso
Tom Cipullo's Opera Featured
By: - Nov 27th, 2018Chelsea Opera is a vibrant company committed to presenting new opera as well as the classics. On 1 December they will mount two one act New York premiers by the gifted composer, Tom Cipullo. Cipullo is rightly known as a composer for the voice, as well as a dramatist who creates a sound world of apt harmonies and melodies which reveal deep character and emotion. Opportunities to hear his work in New York are eagerly anticipated.
-
Disney's Frozen
Magical Winter Wonderland
By: - Nov 24th, 2018Despite some critical pans, Frozen has a strong enough pre-sale to guarantee many weeks on Broadway’s turf. Thanks are due to all the little girls who can’t get enough of the tale of Elsa and Anna, two Scandinavian sisters who yearn to be close despite mysterious magic separating them.
-
It’s a Wonderful Life
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 22nd, 2018It’s a Wonderful Life is a quintessential American opera in its language, content, and social perspective. Composer Jake Heggie has never been intimidated by cutting-edge contemporary opera standards and has created work that unapologetically draws on past musical forms with warmth, emotion, and melody.
-
Judith Lorick CD Release
The Regatta Bar, Cambridge
By: - Nov 22nd, 2018For her CD release party at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Judith Lorick shared her soul, thoughts and beautiful voice, as she chose top-drawer selections from her 2018 release, The Second Time Around (JLJ, 2018).
-
Kaija Saariaho Premiere at White Light Festival
Lincoln Center Produces Only the Sound Remains
By: - Nov 18th, 2018Kaija Saaariaho weaves live music, enhanced voices and electronically generated extensions of the orchestra through the Rose Theater in Only the Sound Remains. Her opera based on two Noh stories is having its US premiere at the White Light Festival of Lincoln Center. This is an intimate work which succeeds mysteriously in filling a large space.
-
Schoenberg in Hollywood by Boston Lyric Opera
Emerson Paramount Center
By: - Nov 17th, 2018As the mostly sold-out shows for the Boston Lyric Opera’s premiere of Schoenberg in Hollywood attest, the internationally acclaimed composer Tod Machover’s brilliant operatic treatment and modernist-like musical score shines. A minimal cast is “small but big.”
-
Tanglewood Program 2019
Preseason Starts June 15
By: - Nov 15th, 2018The 2019 Tanglewood season will see Boston Symphony Music Director Andris Nelsons in residence throughout the month of July, leading 14 programs, including a first for Tanglewood—a concert performance of Wagner’s complete Die Walküre with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and a star-studded cast, presented in three [Andris Nelsons]concerts over a two-day period, July 27 & 28. Tanglewood will also be the setting for the BSO’s Nelsons-led world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts’ The Brightness of Light, a work for voices and orchestra inspired by letters between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz; it was written especially for Renée Fleming and Rod Gilfry, who will be the featured soloists.
-
Severin von Eckardstein Performs at the Park Avenue Armory
Schumann Featured in The Officer's Room
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Severin von Eckardstein, the young German pianist, trailing multiple awards, arrived in New York for two concerts featuring Robert Schumann, for whom he has a clear affinity. If the composer was with us, he would have reciprocated.
-
The Gershwin's Crazy for You
At the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco
By: - Nov 15th, 2018In addition to great music and dance, Crazy for You is full of some of the corniest imaginable humor and inside jokes that are compatible with the tone of the work. And they are delivered well.
-
King Kong as Spectacle
But Is the Musical Spectacular Enough for Broadway
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Yes size is definitely on the theatrical table for purposes of this “review/essay” of King Kong along with other observations. Perhaps, I should label this review with a sub-headline called “In Defense of Spectacle”.
-
Joyce di Donato, Mason Bates and Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin Leads
By: - Nov 15th, 2018Before he took the job as the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin became leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Happily for both ensembles he appears willing and able to balance duties in both cities. On Tuesday night, the maestro and his band came to Carnegie Hall for the first of their scheduled subscription appearances this season. They brought with them an impressive centuries-spanning program that played to the many strengths of this remarkable ensemble.
-
Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra’s CD Release
At The Lilypad, Cambridge
By: - Nov 14th, 2018Ayn Inserto delivered a tour-de-force performance with her personal journey Down the Rabbit Hole accompanied by an orchestra that was sharp and flexible. She is clearly at home in any environment, executing complicated orchestration of original jazz pieces in a small, tight venue for 17 plus musicians.
-
The Book of Merman at the St. Luke's Theatre
A Parody of a Parody is Brash and Fun
By: - Nov 12th, 2018The Book of Merman is an engaging musical playing at the St. Luke's Theatre in New York. A parody of a parody, it is fresh from the first moment the two Mormon Elders, who are very young indeed, start knocking on doors in the theater district.
-
Mefistofele at the Metropolitan Opera
Christian Hale is the Devil
By: - Nov 12th, 2018The Devil always gets a bad rap. That's the premise behind Mefistofele, Arrigo Boito's lone completed opera. An ambitious setting of Goethe's Faust that retells the story from the Devil's point of view, Mefistofele used to prance its sulfur strut across the world's opera stages. But Thursday night's revival at the Metropolitan Opera was the first time that the opera had been seen, fully staged, in New York in eighteen years.
-
The Doctor in Spite of Himself at Odyssey Opera
Gounod's 200th Birthday Celebrated in Style
By: - Nov 10th, 2018Odyssey Opera mounted a terrific production of Charles' Gounod's A Doctor in Spite of Himself at the Huntington Theater in Boston. Gil Rose, the inspired founder of this company, points out that critics often blame institutions for riding the coattails of a big birthday of an musical original. If this is so, why is Gounod's 200th not being celebrated. It turns out that it is, in Boston.
-
Ivan Fischer at the New York Philharmonic
The Hall Configured for Mozart
By: - Nov 10th, 2018Wednesday night's concert at the New York Philharmonic felt more like Mostly Mozart. It wasn't just the program: a brief but satisfying blend of Beethoven and Schubert. It was the presence of frequent MM guest Iván Fischer, who, for a number of seasons has enlivened that summer festival by bringing his orchestra charges: the Budapest Festival Orchestra (an ensemble he founded and still currently leads) to play symphonies and operas at Lincoln Center. Here, Fischer found himself at the helm of the New York Philharmonic, but wasted no time in ensuring that this was a very different kind of concert.
-
Phantom Limb Company at BAM
Next Wave Festival Presents A Different Wave
By: - Nov 10th, 2018The Phantom Limb Company presents Falling Out at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A decade after 9/11 in the US, an earthquake in Japan created a tsunami which swept over swept over Otsuchi, Japan. A terrorist attack and nature's own are comparable in the name dates by which they are remembered. The tsunami caused meltdowns at three nuclear reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant. Hundreds of thousand of residents were affected in what came to be called 3/11.
-
Broadway Goes Ape For King Kong
Remake of Classic 1933 Rumble in the Jungle
By: - Nov 08th, 2018During the exposition of this retelling of the classic 1933 film there is an enervating response to a generic musical. It conveys the familiar tale of a pretty farm girl falling on hard luck trying to make it big in show business. Lured into a film shoot on remote and unihabited Skull Island things change big time. From the first thrilling appearance of Kong there is little doubt that he is the new King of Broadway.
-
Hungarian State Opera Orchestra
Terrific Performances of UnusualFfare
By: - Nov 07th, 2018The Hungarian National Opera's arrival in New York for a two week stay has been among the more interesting events of this fall season. Unfamiliar operas, unique productions and some vocal discoveries have been made at Lincoln Center. On Monday night, the Opera's orchestra, under the leadership of music director Balász Kocsár came to Carnegie Hall for a marathon concert: its one chance to display a wide variety of orchestral wares.
-
Hungarian State Opera Arrives in New York
Superb Company Offers Seldom Heard Masterpieces
By: - Nov 06th, 2018The Hungarian State Opera is a company full of talented artists whose work has not been presented to American audiences, unless they are fortunate enough to have visited Buda and Pest, and cities throughout the country that presents opera all the time, everywhere. The troop is in New York for two weeks, presenting opera, their orchestra and also dance, for which the Hungarians are famous.
-
St. Thomas Church Presents a New Organ
Parry, Janacek, Poulenc, Bernstein and Barber Featured
By: - Nov 05th, 2018St. Thomas Church in New York is introducing its magnificent new organ with a series of concerts. A recent program of ferociously reverent music displayed the grand instrument in all its glory. The Choir of Men and Boys was joined by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Sara Cutler was featured on the harp, soprano soloist Hyesang Park, and Benjamin Sheen on the brand new organ.
-
Satyagarha by Philip Glass at BAM
Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör Add to the Meditation
By: - Nov 01st, 2018The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting Philip Glass' Satyagraha at the Harvey Theater in Brooklyn. Not every opera can be mounted by a circus troop, but the forms are complimentary. When they meld, as they do here, it is a thrilling evening of theater. Folkoperan / Cirkus Cirkör from Sweden brings a matching visual rhythm and pace to the classical forms of Glass and extend our sense of this meditation on pacifism
-
Tughan Sokhiev at the New York Philharmonic
Formerly Relatively Unknown
By: - Oct 30th, 2018Prior to this week, the Russian conductor Tughan Sokhiev was an unknown quantity at the New York Philharmonic. Currently music director of the Bolshoi Theater and the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, he made his debut on the podium at David Geffen Hall, armed with a triptych of works from his native land by Borodin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.
-
Charles Wuorinen's 80th at the Guggenheim
Goeyvaerts String Quartet Performs at Works & Process
By: - Oct 30th, 2018In celebration of his 80th birthday, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presented Charles Wuorinen's two String Trios, composed fifty years apart. In conversation before and between the superb performances of the Goeyvaerts String Trio, whose take on his work was praised by the composer, Wuorinen commented on his state of mind and ear at the time of the first composition. The Second String Trio is a world premiere commissioned by Works & Process.
-
Marnie at the Metropolitan Opera
Nico Muhly's North American Premier
By: - Oct 26th, 2018Nico Muhly’s third opera, his second for the Metropolitan Opera, has its North American premiere this month and next. Muhly states clearly that when he was approached by director Michael Mayer about making the book Marnie into an opera, he was intrigued. At the end of opera, one wonders what happened to the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock’s film based on the book.
<< Previous Next >>