Music
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Opera Philadelphia Presents 10 Days in a Madhouse
World Premiere by Rene Orth
By: - Sep 24th, 2023Rene Orth’s opera 10 Days in a Madhouse enjoyed a World Premiere at the Opera Philadelphia Festival. A tip off to where the weight lies in the opera was the stage set, immediately apparent when we enter the Wilma Theatre. The set is dominated by a Richard Serra-like sculpture. Our eyes and then our ears are fixed up where the orchestra tops the sculpture.
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The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs
Technology Scores Big in the Storyline and the Score
By: - Sep 26th, 2023Composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell strike gold with this focused bio that should find a place on the opera circuit. San Francisco Opera's stunning production along with superb performances make it even better. The title character is portrayed with all of his positive and negative complexity, and even operagoers who learn nothing new about Jobs will find the opera highly involving and entertaining.
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Fall for Jazz in the Berkshires
Grace Kelly at Stationary Factory
By: - Sep 26th, 2023If you’re a follower of the regional jazz scene (and, the fact that you are on our mailing list suggests that you are), you may have already noticed that it is shaping up to be a busy autumn in the Berkshires. Starting with saxophone titan Grace Kelly this Friday at the Stationery Factory, something is going on every week…and often weekdays. Here’s a look at the first half of the season.
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La Jolla Playhouse Goes Gonzo
Hunter Thompson Musical Premieres
By: - Sep 27th, 2023The world premiere of The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, is presented by the La Jolla Playhouse. Fifteen years in the making, the musical envisions Hunter’s life from childhood to his tragic death. The book is by Joe Iconis and Gregory S. Moss, music and lyrics by Iconis, and choreography by Jon Rua.
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Dopplegangers at the Park Avenue Armory
Jonas Kaufman and Helmut Deutsch Double Our Pleasure
By: - Sep 28th, 2023I like to attend an event without reading the build-up. This gives me a chance to respond viscerally. Every event at the Park Avenue Armory is tasteful. Pierre Audi, the artistic director, provides this. He is unique in New York.
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Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at Opera Philadelphia
Stellar Cast, Moving Production
By: - Oct 02nd, 2023Opera Philadelphia knows how to produce opera. They recognize its multiple forms and multiple historic periods. No company in this country has spearheaded the development of new opera with such an effective program. Yet Philadelphia also continues to produce the tried and true with great style.
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The City Without Jews Screened in New York
An Important Silent Film With Wonderful New Music
By: - Oct 04th, 2023What a silent film can teach us – about history and the relationship between the visual and the auditory. The City Without Jews is a famous 1924 silent film directed by H. K. Breslauer who would go on to become a Nazi, probably out of convenience. In this film, he actually seems to like Jews, to find them charming, bright and funny. Presented at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York.
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Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie
The Maestro Takes Us on an Italian Journey with Philip Glass
By: - Oct 06th, 2023Riccardo Muti’s long and winding road in this country has led him from Philadelphia to Chicago. He is always rooted in Carnegie Hall whose acoustics benefit the micro-miniaturizing attention to a music’s score. Even Philip Glass, whose repeated phrases sometimes merge one to the other, seemed as clear as the strings that dominate in Glass’s composition dedicated to the Maestro.
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Of Mice and Men - Opera Version
Livermore Valley Opera's Compelling Production
By: - Oct 09th, 2023Composer/librettist Carlisle Floyd drew on Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck for one of his most successful operas, “Of Mice and Men.” It hews closely to the simple plotline of the novella, which is one of America’s distinguished, if controversial literary works, locally banned on various grounds, including sex, violence, racism, and euthanasia.
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Vermont Symphony Orchestra
Made in Vermont Series
By: - Oct 10th, 2023The Vermont Symphony Orchestra is returning to Bellows Falls on Sunday, November 5, with a special matinee at the Bellows Falls Opera House. The performance is part of the VSO’s 2023 “Made in Vermont Series;” shows highlighting guest artists from the Green Mountain State’s vibrant indie, folk, and rock scene.
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The 12 at Goodspeed Opera House
A Zesty Musical
By: - Oct 13th, 2023The 12 looks at the immediate days following the crucifixion of Jesus through the eyes of his Apostles. Scared, uncertain, questioning. How do they stay safe? What should they do? What do they really believe?
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Wim Wenders at Lincoln Center
Film Festival Premieres The Tokyo Toilet
By: - Oct 13th, 2023Wim Wenders new film, "The Tokyo Toilet," had its New York premiere at the New York Film Festival in Lincoln Center in New York. A Tokyo toilet cleaner, Hirayama, is played brilliantly and subtly by Yakusho Koji. Hirayama steps out of his small Tokyo home and looks up at the sky. Another perfect day begins. Now. Not Next. These phrases pepper the film often.
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The Defiant Requiem Foundation Explores Survival
Verdi Requirm Was Performed at Terezin
By: - Oct 13th, 2023The Defiant Requiem Foundation, has a signature concert performance of the Verdi Requiem, as it was performed in the Terezin concentration camp over and over again. The original chorus changed constantly as members were transferred to Auschwitz.
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San Diego Symphony at Carnegie Hall
Rafael Payare and Alisa Weilerstein Entrance New York
By: - Oct 15th, 2023Many adjectives have been thrown at or glued to the conductor Rafael Payare, who came to Carnegie Hall with the San Diego Symphony he conducts. We haven't heard him live. He has a life-and-death urgency to his music-making. Carlos Simon and Shostakovich seemed so present, so thrilling and so important.
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Lohengrin
A Compelling but Foreboding Realization by San Francisco Opera
By: - Oct 17th, 2023Within Wagner’s canon, "Lohengrin" represents the apotheosis of his Romantic period and the launch point for his magnum opus, the four-opera music drama, the Ring Cycle. As with much of the composer’s output, “Lohengrin” draws from Norse-Germanic mythology with strong fairy tale elements and moral-religious overtones. The libretto is considered by many to be to be his best plotted. Its breadth is breathtaking with themes of love, fidelity, trust, belief, misogyny, sacrifice, betrayal, revenge, tribalism, militarism, and more.
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Lizzie – a rock concert in forty whacks
Hartford Theatre Works
By: - Oct 19th, 2023Historians and biographers do not agree that Lizzie, in fact, did commit the murders. They point to her uncle as having motive and opportunity, plus the fact that her father was not well-loved in the town.
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Without You
A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical "Rent"
By: - Oct 20th, 2023Anthony Rapp revives his 2013 one-man show, supported by a five-piece rock band. He shares vignettes about the launch of the 1996 rock musical "Rent," singing songs from the musical as well as his own compositions. But his real emphasis is on the deaths of two people close to him. The creator of "Rent," Jonathan Larson died unexpectedly after the dress rehearsal to "Rent," while Rapp's loving mother suffered decline before her death from cancer.
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The Crossing Named Ensemble of the Year
Special Choir Honored by Musical America
By: - Oct 22nd, 2023The Crossing has been named Musical America's 2024 Ensemble of the Year. Musical America's article states: "The Crossing is one of the most innovative choirs on the planet. Not only are they committed to issues of social justice, but the music they sing is brand spanking new. Under conductor Donald Nally, their performances have increasingly embraced theatrical elements, while their recordings have notched up a staggering three Grammy wins in under 20 years."
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Handel at the Hudson Opera House
Rondelina Directed by R. B. Schlather Goes Local
By: - Oct 25th, 2023The future of classical musical performance in America may well be local. One marker of the trend is the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, New York. They are currently producing Handel's Rondelinda.
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Joyce Di Donato Teaches at Carnegie Hall
Master Classes for Artists and Listeners Too
By: - Oct 26th, 2023Joyce Di Donato offered three master classes at Carnegie Hall. Di Donato discussed something she learned during that long-ago City Opera performance of "Dead Man Walking." You have to leave space for the listeners to enter the music. This space is created by not answering all the questions the listening ear may have. That is something for all of us to think about – particularly people committed to the long-range success of classical music.
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The Emissary
Opera Parallele's World Premiere of Hands-On-Opera With Environmental Focus
By: - Oct 28th, 2023In this family-oriented opera, Japan has endured an environmental catastrophe that isolates it from the rest of the world. Children are more feeble than the aged. Despite his prognosis, the young Mumei is optimistic and gives cheer to his great-grandfather Yoshiro.
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The Fall Jazz Sprawl
Music in the Berkshires
By: - Oct 30th, 2023Berkshires Jazz, Inc. brings the legendary Django Festival Allstars to the area on Sunday evening. Nov. 12, for an 8pm concert at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center (Barrington Stage’s facility at 36 Linden Street, Pittsfield). It’s the only New England appearance of this remarkable group, who will be en route to their 5-day residency at the annual Django Reinhardt New York Festival at Birdland.
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Wenner Is a Loser
Former gatekeeper to Rolling Stone and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
By: - Oct 30th, 2023As co-founder (with Ralph Gleason) of the most influential rock and popular culture magazine of its era, Jann S. Wenner is anointed and had the platform to make Zeus-like Olympian statements. But pure ego consumes his assumption that his short list of “friends” represents “the greatest rock stars and cultural icons of our time.” The seven that he crowned in his book The Masters are all white, straight and male.
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Bulrusher
Relationships and Mysticism in the California Redwoods
By: - Nov 03rd, 2023A black foundling with a gift for reading the future is raised in a seemingly color-blind community. The people relationships that surround her are sometimes complicated and opaque. And when the niece of the only black man in town arrives, the horizons of the now 18-year old, Bulrusher, expand.
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Kronos Quartet Turns Fifty at Carnegie Hall
Celebration is a Cause for Joy
By: - Nov 07th, 2023The Kronos String Quartet and their collaborators, among them Carnegie Hall which presented this evening, celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of this radical and exciting group.
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