Music
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Candide by Voltaire with Bernstein’s Music
Sante Fe Opera Celebrates Composer’s Centennial
By: - Aug 18th, 2018From its inauspicious Broadway debut in 1956, Candide has led a checkered existence with revisions continuing through 1988. But, despite whatever flaws, it possesses wonderful music, is highly literate and stingingly political. Its real narrative weakness is that there is too much of it. The theme gets driven home too many times with repetitious vignettes that add little. That said, Santa Fe Opera commemorates the Leonard Bernstein centennial with a superior and visually spectacular production of this important work.
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The Fresh Grass 2018 Festival
Three Days Of Bluegrass Music
By: - Aug 17th, 2018MASS MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts, prepares for its annual bluegrass festival, Fresh Grass. This years, three day event takes place from the 14th to 16th of September, on the grounds where art, music, dance and film thrive. .
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West Side Story at Barrington Stage Company
Smash Hit Celebrates Bernstein's Centennial
By: - Aug 15th, 2018Barrington Stage Company produced West Wide Story eleven years ago and now celebrating the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein. In 2013 Barrington sents its production of Bernstein's On the Town to Broadway. With three productions in such a short span it's clear that artistic director, Julianne Boyd, views Bernstein as a bankable winner. Yet again, audiences agree with a sold out run in Pittsfield.
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Mark Morris at Mostly Mozart
Dancing Against the Current
By: - Aug 15th, 2018Mostly Mozart presents the Mark Morris Dance Group, accompanied by three excellent chamber and vocal music performances.
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Come To South Florida's Cabaret
Iconic Musical In Suburban Miami
By: - Aug 14th, 2018Area Stage Company's Cabaret reminds us of turmoil in today's world. Respected South Florida theater company scores a triumph with a vivacious mounting of Kander and Ebb's classic. ASC's interpretation of the 1998 Broadway revival runs through Aug. 26.
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The Fabulous Lipitones in Pittsfield
By John Markus and Mark St. Germain
By: - Aug 11th, 2018Whitney Center for the Arts presents the Berkshire Premiere of The Fabulous Lipitones by John Markus and Mark St. Germain, a fully staged Musical, directed by Monica Bliss and Musical Director Jeff Hunt with Choreographer Ruslan Sprague, August 10-19th.
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Intimate Musica Marin
A Conversation With Kahn and Furr
By: - Aug 11th, 2018Musica Marin, with four years of producing chamber music for audiences of 60-80 guests in residential settings makes a big leap. September 21-23, 2018, they present the inaugural Musica Marin Festival in beautiful Tiburon and Belvedere. We had a chance to talk with Founder and Artistic Director Ruth Ellen Kahn and Culinary Director Mark Furr about the exciting event.
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Bridget Kibbey at The Angel's Share
A Unison Green-Wood Concert in Brooklyn
By: - Aug 09th, 2018Andrew Ousley continues to present top musical talent in unusual but intriguing settings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. On a dark and stormy night, an audience of new music appreciators were captivated by the prospect of whiskey in a cemetery followed by a walk through beautiful grounds and an ineffably beautiful concert in the Catacombs of the land marked Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
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Mata Hari at West Edge Opera
By Matt Marks and Paul Peers
By: - Aug 08th, 2018Opera permits some amount of spoken dialogue, often resulting in a reclassification of the piece, as opera buffa or operetta. Here, the title character, Mata Hari, is a spoken role. Unfortunately, supertitles are not provided for the spoken word, and many details of the story are unnecessarily lost to audience members who can’t hear all of the dialogue clearly.
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Teatro Nuovo's Bel Canto at SUNY Purchase
Thunderbolts Out of the Blue
By: - Aug 07th, 2018Will Crutchfield’s Bel Canto operas were always a highlight of the Caramoor season. He has now moved to the Performing Arts Center at Purchase, which offers more space, closer to New York. His inaugural program unfolding over 10 days, offered a master class and smaller concerts interspersed with the semi-staged productions of three operas.
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The Only Opera by Claude Debussy
At West Edge Opera
By: - Aug 07th, 2018Claude Debussy’s only opera, the tragic Pelléas & Mélisande, is considered one of the most important 20th century operas and a highlight of French music. West Edge Opera has produced an absorbing realization with strong performances and simple but striking visuals in its home for this season, the Craneway Pavillion in Richmond, California.
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Joshua Bell And Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk
Popular Concert at Tanglewood
By: - Aug 06th, 2018A cool Joshua Bell entertained the large crowd at Tanglewood on a warm and sunny summer's day. Conductor Dima Slobodeniouk made his debut at Tanglewood with a forty-five minute Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, Opus 100. The first half of the show was all Joshua Bell, but, after intermission, Conductor Slobodeniouk took over.
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The Demon at Bard's Summerscape
Anton Rubenstein Re-Introduced in America
By: - Jul 31st, 2018Leon Botstein is presenting Anton Rubenstein’s The Demon at Bard’s Summerscape. Annually, he offers meritorious works, long buried or ignored by opera companies. He makes the case now for Rubenstein.
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Legendary Boston Jazz Impresario Fred Taylor
At 89 Writing Memoir with Dick Vacca
By: - Jul 31st, 2018Now 89, legendary Boston jazz impresario , Fred Taylor, is busy booking one nighters for the Cabot Theatre in Beverly, Mass. Asked if it is time to retire he replied with the title of his memoir "What and Quit Show Biz." It's a work in progress with Dick Vacca. They hope to publish the book in spring, 2019. With typical wit and insight it recaps a career booking clubs like Jazz Workshop/ Paul's Mall, and Sculler's. He founded the Tanglewood Jazz Festival and produced concerts at Symphony Hall and other venues.
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West Side Story at Tanglewood
Summer Long Bernstein Celebration
By: - Jul 29th, 2018With an up-to-date LED screen and a full house, 'West Side Story' , the movie version, was in synch with conductor David Newman and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. The score and movie hold their original lure with flawless tour de force.
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Sunday in the Park with George
Sondheim at San Francisco Playhouse
By: - Jul 29th, 2018James Lapine’s book of Sunday in the Park with George focuses on change, not just change in art, but in life. Stephen Sondheim is noted as perhaps the most intellectual among composers of musicals
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Oliver at Goodspeed
The Dickens of a Musical
By: - Jul 29th, 2018Director Rob Ruggiero has done the same thing with this production of Oliver! now at Goodspeed Musicals through Sept. 13. Perhaps you have forgotten or never knew the basic plot of the show. Oliver Twist is a young orphan who escapes from a workhouse where food was scarce and love non-existent, into an underworld of pickpockets and worse.
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Lempicka an Art Deco Musical at Williamstown
World Premiere by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould
By: - Jul 26th, 2018Fleeing the Russian Revolution Tamara Lempicka (born Maria Gorska, 16 May 1898-18 March 1980) settled in Paris. Initially the couple with an infant girl survived selling the last of family jewlery. Her husband, Tadeusz Lempicki, a lawyer and aristocrat at first refused to get a job. She took up painting society portraits as a means of supporting their daughter. During the 1920s she was a leading exponent of the Art Deco style. It fell out of fashion during the depression and war years. Williamstown Theatre Festival has a world premiere musical about her life and career.
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Lawrence Brownlee Rocks The Crypt
Myra Huang and Damien Sneed Collaborate
By: - Jul 25th, 2018Lawrence Brownlee names his performance in July "Up Close and Personal". Brownlee is a singer who feels up close and personal on the stage of the great opera houses of the world, because his voice is warm and inviting. As we listen to a program which begins the iconic ‘single tear’ from L’Elisir d’Amour of Gaetano Donizetti, we too have "our hot pulses beating", like Adina, whose tear is addressed. Andrew Ousley of Unison again produces a gem.
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Handel's Atalanta at Caramoor
A New Opera Initiative
By: - Jul 24th, 2018Nicholas McGegan and his San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performed Handel's Atalanta at Caramoor. The pastoral opera was written to commemorate the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales and son of King George II to a German princess. This is Handel the craftsman at his best, with enchanting melodies, cascades of inventive orchestration and vocal fireworks.
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Ninagawa's Macbeth at Mostly Mozart
Lincoln Center Farewell to Japanese Classic
By: - Jul 22nd, 2018Ninagawa’s Macbeth packs a wallop at the Koch Theater. Presented as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival, Shakespeare in Japanese sits well in the highly dramatic Gabriel Fauré Requiem, and other music of the classical West.
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On A Clear Day at Irish Repertory Theatre
Charlotte Moore Keeps Lerner Alive!
By: - Jul 19th, 2018On a Clear Day You Can See is running at the Irish Repertory Theater. Charlotte Moore adapts and directs this musical in an intimate production. The story has been pared down and shaped to display the lush score of Burton Lane. The cast has been reduced to 11 and the chamber orchestra four instrumentalists multi-tasking on cello, harp, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, violin and viola. The result is delightful theater.
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On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
Musical at Irish Rep in NY
By: - Jul 18th, 2018On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the Alan Jay Lerner/Burton Lane musical, is getting a delightful production at the Irish Rep under the skilled hand of director (and adaptor) Charlotte Moore.
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The Wedding Singer
At The Palm Canyon Theatre
By: - Jul 17th, 2018“The Wedding Singer,” the stage musical is based on the Adam Sandler movie of the same name that debuted in 1988. The current ‘Wedding Singer’ stage musical now on the Palm Canyon Theatre stage has been updated with a total of 20 musical numbers; some of which are new. The PCT show also retained some the original songs written in 2006.
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Kevin Puts' Silent Night at Glimmerglass
Pulitzer-Winning Opera Wrenching and Gorgeous
By: - Jul 16th, 2018Silent Night by Kevin Puts with libretto by Mark Campbell is being presented at the Glimmerglass Festival. Tomer Zvulen directs this complex tale revealing each subtle turn in the story of a 24 hour truce during the First World War. Nicole Paiement conducts to bring forth all the subtlety and beauty of Puts’ score. Puts is both a fabulously gifted entertainer and a deep musical thinker. The music paints the scenes. The singers capture the tone in gorgeous melodies and often appropriately harsh recitative.
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