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  • Kevin Puts Discusses His New Opera

    The Hours Premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in the Fall

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 28th, 2022

    The Hours is the highly anticipated new work by Kevin Puts. Renee Fleming, Kelli O'Hara, and Joyce Di Donato will star.

  • Duke Ellington at Carnegie Hall

    American Symphony Orchestra Embraces the Lion

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 31st, 2022

    Leave it to Leon Botstein, America’s great educator, to bring Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige to Carnegie Hall, where is premiered in 1943 as a fundraiser for the Russian war effort, (The world turns.) Eleanor Roosevelt, Marion Anderson and Langston Hughes were in attendance that evening. Now Botstein conducting is cool.  He often listens and taps his foot, slightly swaying to the improvisatory sections of works performed

  • Michel Van Der Aa at Park Avenue Armory

    Upload with Julia Bullock and Roderick Williams

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 01st, 2022

    Michel Van der Aa's music theatre works.  This is a miracle, because he deploys many instruments, not only a libretto, often based on wild imaginings, yet sensibly based on a very simple story. In Upload, we are in the revere of the last act of Walkerie. Now a father is defying his daughter, not the reverse. The Park Avenue Armory mounts a compelling case fot his work

  • Simon Dinnerstein at the Miller Theatre

    Goldberg Variations on a Brand New Yamaha Piano

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 04th, 2022

    Simon Dinnerstein performed Bach's Goldberg Variations at the Miller Theatre. She is a magician at the keyboard, giving us all the spiritual richness of the work along with great joy.

  • Jeremy Gill's Motherwhere Premiers in New York

    Parker Quartet and New York Classical Players Shine

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 15th, 2022

    Jeremy Gill’s Motherwhere premiered with the two stellar ensembles, the Parker Quartet and the New York Classical Player, performing. The evening began with Tchaikovsky's Andante Cantabile from his first string quartet.  Madeline Fayette performed the movement exquisitely. She is known for her phrasing and the beauty of her tones. Gill's new rod followed.

  • Jazz in the Berkshires

    The Joint is Jumpin'

    By: Ed Bride - Apr 21st, 2022

    The jazz scene is alive and well in the Berkshires, as the Berkshire Eagle points out in this deep-dive by Bob Luhmann. Some history and a good look at the current scene combine to provide context for the Pittsfield CityJazz Festival, April 23-May 1

  • Star of Freedom

    World Premiere Musical at Ivoryton Playhouse

    By: Karen Isaacs - Apr 26th, 2022

    Star of Freedom has music by Connecticut resident Jeff Blaney and a book by Lawrence Thelen. The piece began life as the concept album Exodus; Executive/Artistic Director Jacqueline Hubbard saw the possibilities and brought it to Thelen to write the book.

  • Philip Glass Premiere at The Crypt

    Wendy Sutter Performs on Cello

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 26th, 2022

    The suite drew praise from audiences and critics world-widewide and was voted best new CD of the year by listeners of National Public Radio. The Crypt Sessions return with the world premiere of Philip Glass’ Songs and Poems II written for – and performed by – the magnificent Wendy Sutter, whom the Wall St. Journal casually hailed as “one of the great leading cellists of the classical stage.” 

  • Champion: An Opera in Jazz by Terence Blanchard

    At Boston Lyric Opera

    By: BLO - Apr 27th, 2022

    The true story of six-time world champion prizefighter Emile Griffith is told in Boston Lyric Opera’s (BLO) new production of Champion: An Opera in Jazz by Grammy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard (Fire Shut Up in My Bones), with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cristofer.

  • Pittsfield CityJazz Festival

    Swings Into Second Weekend

    By: Ed Bride - Apr 27th, 2022

    The Pittsfield CityJazz Festival is now in full swing (sorry), ushered-in last weekend with the very successful Jam Session at Mission Restaurant. Ten different musicians rotated among the various positions “in the window” at the popular North Street restaurant.

  • BSO's Andris Nelsons to Munich Philharmonic

    New Orchestra Replaces BSO

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 29th, 2022

    The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra will take over two more concerts at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg on May 20 and 21. The orchestra is filling in for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which had to cancel its entire European tour for this spring due to a major corona outbreak among the musicians*. The Munich Philharmonic is looking forward to these two concerts with Andris Nelson.

  • Igor Levit and the NYPhil at Carnegie Hall

    Brahms and Bartok Dramas Unfold

    By: Susan Hall - May 08th, 2022

    The New York Philharmonic returned to Carnegie  Hall, its home until 1962, for a splendid concert. Both works performed reference death.  Brahms had been close to Robert Schumann, who died during the composition of the composer’s 1st piano concerto.  Bartok himself was deathly ill when he wrote the Concerto for Orchestra at a Saranac Lake health resort. 

  • The Orchestra Now at Carnegie Hall

    Adventures in Music

    By: Susan Hall - May 10th, 2022

    The T?N orchestra will perform an adventuresome program twice in New York, this week and next.  They will feature the works of William Grant Still, Carlos Chávez, Witold Lutoslaski and Karl Amadeus Hartmann.  

  • The English Concert at Carnegie Hall

    Harry Bicket Delights with Handel

    By: Susan Hall - May 11th, 2022

    Long before Richard Powers wrote the mega bestseller "Overstory" celebrating man’s relationship with trees, Handel wrote one of the most beautiful arias in the history of song. The cruel King Serse (Xerxes in Plutarch)  opens the opera named for him with an aria celebrating a tree’s understory, its shade. Emily D’Angelo, a glorious mezzo who has graduated from Cinderella’s Prince to a role as King this season, was masterful in her presentation of this love song to a tree.  To be sure, it’s a bit weird.  So too the tangled love relationships in this opera.

  • X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X 

    Pulitzer Prize Winner by Composer Anthony Davis

    By: BMOP - May 11th, 2022

    The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera, two of today’s leading innovators on the classical musical scene, present the New England premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis’s seminal opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (1986) on June 17, 2022, at the Strand Theatre, a short distance from the house where Malcolm Little lived in his teenage years in Roxbury. This sprawling, genre-bending biographical opera unfolds the astonishing life of one of the most misunderstood men in history.

  • New York City Opera in Bryant Park

    Four Free Performances

    By: NYCO - May 12th, 2022

    New York City Opera will present a season of four free, live performances this summer as part of their Park Series in Bryant Park’s Picnic Performances presented by Bank of America. Each performance features City Opera's brightest stars as well as members of the City Opera orchestra and will begin at 7pm on the Bryant Park Stage.

  • Victoria Bond's Gulliver Travels to New York

    Doug Fitch Discusses His Sets

    By: Susan Hall - May 12th, 2022

    On May 13, Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival and Mostly Modern Projects co-present staged scenes from Victoria Bond's puppet operetta How Gulliver Returned Home in a Manner that was Very Not Direct. The production features puppets created by Doug Fitch, the renowned visual artist, designer and director, and libretto by Stephen Greco, prize-winning screen-writer and novelist, complementing the music by Victoria Bond. Fitch also directs the production.

  • Phil Kline Coming to MASS MoCA

    Bang on a Can Member is a Musical Omnivorei

    By: Susan Hall - May 17th, 2022

    Bang on a Can and MASS MoCA present LOUD Weekend, a fully loaded eclectic super-mix of minimal, experimental, and electronic music over three days throughout the museum’s expansive campus. Phil Kline will be featured.  With Jim Jarmsuch he will be improvising on loud guitar,

  • Woodstock's Half Million

    Excavating What Was Left Behind

    By: Woodstock - May 19th, 2022

    For two weeks in June, the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts will turn into an archeological dig site for students from Binghamton University. Their goal? Uncover the untold stories of Woodstock, and provide insight into the entire experience of the iconic festival.

  • Berkshire Gateway Jazz Weekend

    Lineup for June 17-19 Festival

    By: Ed Bride - May 20th, 2022

    Event to feature jazz in the park, brunches, and headline performersKarrin Allyson, Houston Person, Michael Benedict and Bopitude  

  • Puppetopia Festival at HERE

    Master Puppeteer and Artist Basil Twist Presents

    By: Susan Hall - May 21st, 2022

    The Dream music puppet program was inaugurated at HERE in 1998. The iconic puppet drama  Symphonie Fantastique premiered that year.  its creator, Basil Twist now leads the program.  Puppetopia, presenting new work, returned to the stage in the spring 2022.  Each of the shows represented a twist on conventional puppetry.

  • Variant 6 at National Sawdust

    Celebrating the Release of New Suns

    By: Susan Hall - May 22nd, 2022

    To celebrate the release of their first solo album, Variant 6, a noted a cappella ensemble, performed at National Sawdust on May 20th.  This extraordinary group has been heard often embedded in larger groups-The Crossing, Room Full of Teeth, Ekmeles and Seraphic Fire among them. All the members of the group are part of The Crossing. Now we get to hear these virtuoso artists up close and singular.

  • Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame

    Produced by West Bay Opera

    By: Victor Cordell - May 24th, 2022

    Despite the difficulty of casting Russian language opera, two are present in the American repertoire, “Eugene Onegin” and “Pique Dame” (“Queen of Spades” in English).  Although the former premiered 11 years earlier than the latter, they share the same DNA, including source material derived from Alexander Pushkin.

  • Cats With Music by Andrew Lloyd Weber

    Produced by Troika Entertainment, at Golden Gate Theatre

    By: Victor Cordell - Jun 03rd, 2022

    Who could predict that such a musical would set performance records for both the West End (21 years) and Broadway (a mere 18 years)?  But innovation doesn’t put butts in seats.  So, what propelled “Cats” to immortal fame?

  • Basil Twist Alights in Versailles

    Les Arts Florissants Returns An Opera to its Origins

    By: Susan Hall - Jun 07th, 2022

    Jean-Joseph de Mondonville’s Titon et l'Aurore returns to Versaille. It is a pastorale heroique opera in three acts with a prologue. Inspired by Madame De Pompadour, it was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in January 1753.

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