Music
-
Oyayaye and Fortunio's Lied, Komische Oper
Of Course in Berlin
By: - Jan 10th, 2023The Komische Oper Berlin is one of three opera houses in the Capital. Committed to presenting lighter fare, it just celebrated its 75 birthday in January with a big gala and two operas by Jaques Offenbach: Oyayaye and Fortunio's Lied.
-
Prototype Festival Captures New York
Forms of New Opera Abound
By: - Jan 12th, 2023All the big opera companies have something to learn from the Prototype Festival, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
-
Remembering Jeff Beck
Relentless Innovator of the Electric Guitar
By: - Jan 13th, 2023While manager of the Boston Tea Party Steve Nelson booked, first the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page, then later the Jeff Beck band for four nights. Beck was touring with Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Mick Waller. (Editor: I saw that lineup at the Newport Jazz Festival.) On the cusp of superstardom Beck broke up the band. Rod went solo and Ron eventually joined the Rolling Stones.
-
Victoria Bond Conducts at the United Nations
Composer in Stockton, California Performing Ray Charles
By: - Jan 17th, 2023Victoria Bond will conduct at the UN on January 27. The event can be live streamed. She will then travel to Stockton, California for a tribute to Ray Charles .
-
David Lang at the Prototype Festival
A Chamber Opera Based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa Short Stories
By: - Jan 18th, 2023David Lang is not surprisingly a highly educated, impish composer. We can’t take him at face value. Or perhaps we can. Discussing his new opera, presented as part of the Prototype Festival, he said that although he had first been intrigued by Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short stories at age 16, he knows nothing about Japanee culture. Yet he is Japanese.
-
Berkshires Remember David Crosby
Bad Boy With a Sweet Voice
By: - Jan 20th, 2023Berkshire fans will recall seeing Crosby Stills and Nash at Tanglewood, September 2, 2010. Crosby known for a crash and burn lifestyle, as well as an angelic voice that made gorgeous harmonies, has died at 81. I first heard him with the Byrds at Soundblast '66 at Yankee Stadium.
-
Pauline Oliveros Celebration at Zankel Hall
Claire Chase Invites Listening at Carnegie
By: - Jan 23rd, 2023The 90th birthday of composer Pauline Oliveros was celebrated on Saturday at the newly reconfigured Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall. The steeply raked seating on two sides of the hall, leading to a central stage area embedded in seats on all four sides, felt like an Oliveros’ creation. We are brought to the hall to listen, deeply.
-
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Bizet’s Carmen Starring J’Nai Bridges
By: - Jan 26th, 2023Opera’s legendary femme fatale returns to Lyric Opera of Chicago with Bizet’s Carmen — March 11 – April 7, 2023 — starring J’Nai Bridges, a leading interpreter of the famous title role and a singer with deep Chicago roots.
-
Rhiannon Giddens at Carnegie Hall
Calling Us Home
By: - Jan 30th, 2023Rhiannon Giddens talks often of being comfortable in the crossroads of her art. The new configuration of Zankel Hall in Carnegie looks like a crossroads. The audience comes from every direction to focus on the world being presented. The stage is a hybrid space where different music from different times can exist side by side.
-
Opera Philadelphia Mounts Credos
Margaret Bonds and Carl Orff in One Performane
By: - Feb 06th, 2023In one smashing performance, Opera Philadelphia presented two Credos, statements of belief by composers who lived and worked at about the same time, in strikingly different circumstances. Carl Orff survived the Nazi regime in Germany by not protesting. Margaret Bonds grew up in a thriving Chicago art community.
-
Berkshire Opera Announces Season
Exciting Prospects
By: - Feb 07th, 2023The "innovative, clever and thoroughly professional" BERKSHIRE OPERA FESTIVAL (BOF) announces its 2023 season in Great Barrington and Pittsfield, MA, and for the first time in New York City. The only company of its kind in the Berkshire region, BOF produces opera at the highest level under the vision of esteemed co-founders Brian Garman (Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production). The festival has "destination" status. Others write: "No longer need we confine our opera-going to HD films—now we have the highest quality productions and performers in our own backyard."
-
& Juliet (and Juliet) on Broadway
Stephen Sondheim Theatre
By: - Feb 07th, 2023The new Broadway musical – already seen in London and Toronto — & Juliet (and Juliet) has a clever concept, that grows on you. I like the play now more than I did while I was in the theater. The clever idea behind & Juliet is what saves it from being preachy and predictable.
-
New York Festival of Song Celebrates Steven Blier
Anniversary Presents Stellar Singers
By: - Feb 13th, 2023New York Festival of Song Presents Amor: A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Steven Blier's Professional Debut at Kaufman Music Center on February 15, 2023
-
Ann Bogart Directs Boston Lyric Opera
Bela Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Four Songs by Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler
By: - Feb 14th, 2023A brand-new production that blends Bela Bartók’s 1918 one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle with 1915’s Four Songs (Vier Lieder) by his contemporary Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler – and immerses audiences in a multi-room installation including a pre-show musical salon – arrives at the Flynn Cruiseport Boston for four performances. The legendary Ann Bogart directs for Boston Lyric Opera.
-
Jazz in the Berkshires
Three Upcoming Events
By: - Feb 17th, 2023There is a lot of great music on tap for the next three weeks. It's time to shake of cabin fever and get out and about. Laissez les bons temps roule as they say in Creole.
-
London's V&A Acquires David Bowie Archive
Encompassing More Than 80,000 Items
By: - Feb 23rd, 2023Spanning Bowie's career, the archive features handwritten lyrics, letters, sheet music, original costumes, fashion, photography, film, music videos, set designs, Bowie's own instruments, album artwork, and awards. It also includes more intimate writings, thought processes, and unrealised projects, the majority of which have never been seen in public before.
-
Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis
At Shakespeare & Company
By: - Feb 26th, 2023What a thrill it is to bring NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis to the Berkshires, as guest soloist with the UMass Jazz Ensemble 1. A scion of New Orleans’ fabled music family, Delfeayo Marsalis’ appearance in the March 11 concert (Shakespeare & Co., Lenox) marks the first time that he has appeared with the UMass big band.
-
The Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall
A Prelude to Carnegie's Weimar
By: - Mar 08th, 2023The Vienna Philharmonic arrived at Carnegie Hall, a highly anticipated occasion that enticed the cast of Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera to come over for a busman’s holiday. Richard Strauss, who was featured in the first program, loved Lohengrin. His last tone poem, The Alpine Symphony was performed in a program with Arnold Schoenberg's Vertlarke Nacht.
-
Tosca
Livermore Valley Opera's Fine Production of Puccini's Searing Verismo Opera
By: - Mar 15th, 2023In its essence, the opera is an intimate triangle of love, predation, betrayal, and murder. Yet the intimacy of “Tosca” plays against a grand canvas of three unrelated settings, which LVO executes deftly.
-
The Horse at Long Beach Opera
James Darrah, a Most Modern Opera Artist, Makes His Mark
By: - Mar 14th, 2023Long Beach Opera presented an intriguing new music and dance performance, The Horse. Created and performed by Chris Emile, Cody Perkins wrote the music and vocals are by Alexis Vaughn. When you arrive, you are impelled to look around Rancho Los Cerritos. The area is wooded, a lone rabbit makes its way to a tree, looks around and across the road. It bounds off into the woods.
-
Lawrence Brownlee Comes to Carnegie
Rising, Poems by Harlem Renaissance Poets Set to Music
By: - Mar 17th, 2023Larence Brownlee tours with Rising, a program of songs based on poems of the Harlem Renaissance and music by composers of color. He is at Carnegie Hall on March 23rd.
-
FreshGrass at MASS MoCA
2023 Lineup
By: - Mar 21st, 2023FreshGrass, MASS MoCA’s annual three-day festival of bluegrass and roots music, announces the initial 2023 lineup, featuring Dropkick Murphys Acoustic—playing songs from their two albums with the lyrics of Woody Guthrie - plus acoustic arrangements of all your DKM favorites—Lukas Nelson + POTR, Sierra Ferrell, Rhiannon Giddens...
-
Lawrence Brownlee at Carnegie Hall
Amplifying a Peoples' Voice
By: - Mar 24th, 2023Lawrence Brownlee came to Carnegie Hall to present a program he has developed called Rising. In the second part of his show, Jasmine Barnes, Branson Spencer, Damien Sneed, Shawn Okpebholo, and Joel Thompson, young up-and-coming composers, set poems to their music. Carlos Simon offered vocalese
-
Art Bath Overflows in New York
Wildly Original Programming Delights
By: - Mar 28th, 2023The producers of Art Bath, who dance together at the Metropolitan Opera, are warm individuals who make inspired selections for programs that range from conventional songs accompanied by live, drawn art to wild Moroccan sintir music which inspires accompanying clapping and ululation in joy.
-
Elvis Costello at Tanglewood
Added to Popular Artists Series
By: - Mar 28th, 2023The Boston Symphony Orchestra announces that Elvis Costello and The Imposters with Charlie Sexton as special guest have joined the lineup for the Popular Artists Series at Tanglewood. This will be the 2003 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee’s first appearance at Tanglewood.
<< Previous Next >>