Music
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Bridges of Madison County
Produced by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Apr 11th, 2018“You could have driven into someone else’s driveway.” These words summarize not only the randomness of events that leads to a torrid but compassionate love affair in Bridges of Madison County, but to life itself. Under Robert Kelley’s direction, it is extremely well crafted schmaltz with excellent production values that should appeal to a broad audience.
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American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Jazz Rhythms and Dreams
By: - Apr 07th, 2018One of the founders of the American Composer’s Orchestra played jazz piano in nightclubs after he left his day job on Wall Street. The ACO performed five works, three of which came from composers who work in the jazz idiom. This was a thoroughly enjoyable program of new work.
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Esa-Pekka Salonen Conducts the NY Philharmonic
New Work and Old Powerfully Performed
By: - Apr 07th, 2018The New York Philharmonic is back on its home stage of David Geffen Hall, after an extensive tour that saw the orchestra visit multiple Asian countries in March. This week's program, seen Thursday night features a rare podium appearance from composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the premiere of a new work Metacosmos by the young composer and Kravis Prize recipient Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
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Mozart in the Jungle Cancelled
Amazon Bows Out of the Classical Music Series
By: - Apr 07th, 2018The popular and award-winning series Mozart in the Jungle has played its last concert. Today, Amazon.com announced that the series, a dramatic sitcom set in New York City that chronicled the backbiting, infighting and backstabbing of the classical music business, will not be renewed for a fifth season.
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Twist's Symphonie Fantastique at HERE
O'Riley's Liszt and Anniversaries Galore
By: - Apr 06th, 2018It's Berlioz. It's puppets. It's a supershow. The twentieth anniversary production of Basil Twist's remarkable Symphonie Fantastique is at the ever enterprising and surprising HERE in New York. Christopher O'Riley performs Liszt's piano transcription of Berlioz's love letter/nightmare. Twist performs his magic in an aquarium filled with 1,000 gallons of water.
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Iranian Women Composers at National Sawdust
Cultural Hybrids Performed
By: - Apr 04th, 2018Nine Iranian born women composers presented their work in the inaugural concert of their new organization, Iranian Women Composers Association. Is there anything that characterizes this music as Iranian contemporary classical as distinguished from contemporary classical music? Tuning often gives a middle Eastern feel, with harmonies of the region. Classical forms are used. Sometimes the work is an impression. Romantic notes and counterpoint are abundant.
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Luisa Miller at the Metropolitan Opera
Mixing Old and New
By: - Apr 03rd, 2018The Metropolitan Opera's revival of its 2001 production of Luisa Miller looks backwards and forwards at once. It features Placido Domingo singing the latest in a line of Verdi baritone roles that the aging tenor has used to extend his already distinguished career. (It was also supposed to re-unite the singer with James Levine, but the conductor's firing due to repeated accusations of sexual misconduct by multiple parties spoiled that happy event.) It looks forward in that its two leads, Piotr Beczala and Sondra Yoncheva, represent the cutting edge of a new generation of opera singers that are having their well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
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Petrenko Conducts Rosenkavlier at Carnegie
First-Rate Singers Honor Strauss
By: - Mar 30th, 2018Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier is his most beloved opera. Strauss fused rigorous compositional technique, catchy waltzes and superb vocal writing to a charming, sentimental libretto by his longtime collaborator Hugo von Hoffmannsthal. On Thursday night, the Bayerische Staatsoper brought this opera to the stage of Carnegie Hall under the baton of its boss Kirill Petrenko. This was the opera company's first concert performance at the New York venue in its long history.
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Yerma at the Park Avenue Armory
Billy Piper Transfixes as Yerma Today
By: - Mar 30th, 2018Yerma inspired by Frederico Garcia Lorca, written and directed by Simon Stone, is produced in a glass house poised in the middle of the Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory. It is a transfixing work. Billie Piper’s Olivier-winning performance is justly celebrated. All the cast members contribute to the wrenching drama.
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Kirill Petrenko at Carnegie Hall
Bayerisches Orchester Performs Brahms and Tchaikovsky
By: - Mar 29th, 2018Brahms and Tchaikovsky would have been thrilled to hear their music interpreted by Kirill Petrenko, making his conducting debut at Carnegie Hall with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Petrenko selected two difficult pieces by the composers, pieces that have gone out of fashion in the concert hall. He makes a compelling case for both of them.
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Rinaldo Presented by The English Concert
A Parade of Singing Stars at Carnegie Hall
By: - Mar 27th, 2018The arrival of The English Concert at Carnegie Hall is an event that creates excitement in New York. This year, since many people have been induced to listen to Baroque music sung by the world’s most exciting countertenor on Broadway in Farinelli and the King, interest is heightened. Carnegie Hall was packed.
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The little Opera Company's Piramo and Tisbe
Hasse Is a Hot Composer Again
By: - Mar 26th, 2018The superb little Opera company has mounted Hasse’s Piramo and Tisbe, based on the tale told in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Book IV. It resembles Romeo and Juliet. Two young people, who in this case live in adjoining homes in Babylon, fall in love through the wall that separates them, but are driven apart by warring parents. All does not end well. Yet in the process of telling the story, glorious music abounds.
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Brahms Requiem at St. Thomas Church
The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys
By: - Mar 24th, 2018Saint Thomas Church was one of the first buildings constructed with an acoustical architect's guidance. Wallace Sabine, who also gave acoustical advice for the building of Symphony Hall in Boston, guided in New York. Concern then was for the human voice delivering sermons. Listening to Bruckner and Brahms, just the right reverberation is clear.
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On Site Opera at Museum at Eldridge Street
Ricky Ian Gordon's Morning Star
By: - Mar 22nd, 2018The Triangle Fire of 1911, in which more lives were lost than in any other disaster before 9/11, flames in the background of Ricky Ian Gordon and William Hoffman’s opera Morning Star.
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Beth Morrison and National Sawdust
Ten New Composers and Ten New Works
By: - Mar 20th, 2018Beth Morrison and National Sawdust host new composers and new works in a competition for the chance to expand a work next year. The Next Generation is here.
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BLO's The Threepenny Opera Worth Two Cents
Weill and Brecht Classic Full of Jaunty Songs but Hard to Stage
By: - Mar 19th, 2018"The Threepenny Opera" needs to be done with color and verve if it is to speak to today's audiences. The BLO's production was all too beige. Director James Darrah soft-pedaled the politics at the heart of the work, which left it a corpse with some not-so-pretty songs attached.
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Sister Act the Musical
At the Palm Canyon Theatre
By: - Mar 19th, 2018“Sister Act” the Musical owes its theatrical existence to the movie “Sister Act”, starring Whoopy Goldberg. Popularity begets popularity. The movie was then turned into a musical written by Alan Menken and Glen Slater, from a libretto by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner, with additional book material by Douglas Carter Beane. The result is a musical Blockbuster which I believe is one of the best musicals ever produced by the Palm Canyon Theatre.
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Scholarships Available for Summer Sonatina Piano Camps
Kids 7 to 16 Within 100 Miles of Bennington
By: - Mar 17th, 2018Piano students aged 7 to 16 of all skills levels who live within 100 mile radius of Bennington Vermont are encouraged to apply for this summer scholarship opportunity. Deadline is April 6th.
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Alarm Will Sound at Carnegie Hall
A Portrait of György Ligeti
By: - Mar 17th, 2018Alan Pierson of Alarm Will Sound invites us to a salon he conducts with Nadia Sirota. Tonight’s subject would be György Ligeti, the Hungarian composer who many people heard for the first time as they watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Cosi Fan Tutti at the Metropolitan Opera
Coney Island is the Setting
By: - Mar 16th, 2018How do you solve the problem of presenting an opera that forces men and women into the stereotypes of the 18th century to a 21st century audience? If you're director Phelim McDermott, whose dazzling new Cosí fan tutte arrived at the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday night, you roll the score in glue, dip it in glitter, and hope for the best.
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Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall
Toast of Two Cities
By: - Mar 14th, 2018There is no question that the Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the big man on the New York classical music scene at the moment. The music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra was in town with his troops on Tuesday night, for his first Carnegie Hall appearance since being appointed the music director of the Metropolitan Opera.
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Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)
Verdi Opera Produced by Livermore Valley Opera
By: - Mar 14th, 2018Ballo is striking and the score compels from beginning to end with highly melodious arias, ensembles, and orchestral interludes. What it lacks is any “Top 40” type hits, but it really doesn’t matter because every element thrills without being overly familiar. Yet, highlights do exist, and they are spread widely among the roles.
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Met Opera Fires James Levine
Who Knew About Levine's Escapades and When
By: - Mar 12th, 2018The Verdi Requiem was James Levine's final performance at the Metropolitan Opera.
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Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
Ryan H. Walsh’s Landmark Study of the Counter Culture in Boston
By: - Mar 12th, 2018For most of 1968 the then struggling Irish musician and composer, Van Morrison, was on the run from his mobbed up New York manager. Living on Green Street in Cambridge, with local musicians he performed gigs and worked on what became the iconic album Astral Weeks. This is the focus of an enthralling book by Ryan Walsh fleshed out in the context of a meticulously researched account of the vibrant counter culture of that year of living dangerously. Through what evolves as a page turner we learn about Mel Lyman and his Fort Hill Cult, their paper Avatar, founding of WBCN FM as the rock of Boston, the Boston Tea Party, the Bosstown Sound, and Boston After Dark/ Phoenix. Along the way we encounter films, The Boston Strangler and Titicut Follies,as well as LSD gurus Tim Leary and Baba Ram Dass. Long overdue this fiftieth anniversary book sets the record straight.
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Pierre Aimard at Carnegie Hall
A Slew of Interesting Piano Works
By: - Mar 10th, 2018There is no question that the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is among the most innovative and forward thinking masters of the keyboard working today. Carnegie Hall was the stage for a recent performance.
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