Music
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Sir Simon Rattle and Mahler at Carnegie Hall
The Philadelphia In Magnificent Form
By: - Oct 12th, 2016Sir Simon Rattle, the great conductor of the Berliner Philharmonika, joined forces with an A list orchestra, the Philadelphia, to perform Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony. In an interview Rattle says, Mahler "was my road to Damascus moment. This is something that has lived with me all my life. And it is something that will never stop being a challenge and a discovery."
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Ryan Thorn and Andrew Sun at Carnegie Hall
Marilyn Horne Makes the Case for Song
By: - Oct 09th, 2016How fortunate we are to have class Ambassadors for the new crop of musical talent. Both Ryan Thorn, baritone, and Andrew Sun, pianist, have participated at Marilyn Horne's Santa Barbara school and in its competition. Horne stepped to the front of the altar at a church on the upper West Side of Manhattan and made the case for the importance of Song, from Solomon to Richard Rogers.
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Simon Bolivar Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Gustavo Dudamel Sets the Hall A-Buzz
By: - Oct 08th, 2016Gustavo Dudalmel went from the street to El Sistema with a music program for poor kids in Venezuela. Over time, the role of music in society has become ever more important and consuming for him. He mission is comparable only to Riccardo Muti's.
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Sunday in the Park Stunning at Huntington
Sondheim and Seurat Bring Out the Best in Each Other
By: - Oct 06th, 2016Stephen Sondheim’s stunning masterpiece centers on enigmatic painter Georges Seurat and his obssession with “the art of making art.” Certainly, one of the most acclaimed musicals ever, this Pulitzer Prize winner features a glorious score, with the songs “Finishing the Hat,” “Putting it Together,” and “Move On,” and is directed by Artistic Director Peter DuBois who did a superb job with last year's A Little Night Music.
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Andris Nelsons Delivers a Sublime "Der Rosenkavalier"
Renee Fleming Sings Her Most Sympathetic Role with Susan Graham
By: - Oct 03rd, 2016Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" is a model of passionate communication via music. The story of the Marschallin who hands over her young lover Octavian to a girl his own age drips with fin-de-siecle melancholy. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Richard Strauss’s beloved comedy “Der Rosenkavalier” was as close to perfection as I have heard.
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October Sky at Old Globe
Musical is Outasight
By: - Oct 03rd, 2016“October Sky” is an uplifting, feel-good type of musical that boasts 19 songs with such numbers as “Look to the Stars”, “We’re Gonna Build a Rocket”, “Stars Shine Down”, “The Man I Met”, and “The Last Kiss Goodbye”, the latter number being especially poignant as sung by the miners’ wives and girlfriends.
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On Site Opera with Argento and Berlioz
Stanford White's Harmonie Club Ballroom is the Setting
By: - Oct 02nd, 2016While huge opera houses are the dinosaurs of the 21st century, smaller venues for the presentation of the original multi-media art form are thriving. Opera is alive and well in every nook and corner of the world. Even in grand ballrooms of exclusive Manhattan Clubs like the Harmonie.
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Calixto Bieito's "Carmen" at the BLO
Controversial Production Lives Up to Expectations
By: - Sep 29th, 2016Calixto Bieito restores the sexuality long-missing to "Carmen" - but it is the guys, the half-naked soldiers in Spain's North Africa outpost, who are hot. His Carmen is a cool existentialist, half in love with easeful death. Her murder by a spurned lover on an empty stage outside the bullring could have been staged by Samuel Beckett. This is a controversial production for the expanded Boston Lyric Opera.
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Metropolitan Opera's Controversial Opening
Cast in Trenchcoats Shine in Tristan and Isolde
By: - Sep 27th, 2016Never has the disconnect between glorious singing and a production been so clear. To put Tristan and Isolde in trenchcoats isn't even a starter in a Wagner opera. Stuart Skelton, Nina Stemme, Rene Pape, Ekaterina Gubanova and Evgeny Nitikin are all superb in their roles. It is an insult to put such world class singers on this set. Do not be tempted by the HD. Listen on the radio where you can enjoy the opera's glories.
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Opera Philadelphia's Spiritually Lush Mazzoli
Exciting New Wave in Opera
By: - Sep 26th, 2016Opera Philadelphia is leading the way in America, as it presents adventuresome new operas by contemporary composers exploring subjects of interest. Breaking the Waves is the most ambitious in its complex subject matter. The director, composer and librettist have joined forces to present a wrenching work which is very much embedded in opera tradition, but stretches the form musically and dramatically.
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Roger Nierenberg Teaches Listening
Kodaly, Britten, Wagner and Ravel at DeMenna Center
By: - Sep 20th, 2016The conundrum of declining symphony audiences is being addressed with all sorts of efforts. The Roger Nierenberg proposal, mixing the audience in and with the orchestra, is a bold and helpful approach.
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Fresh Grass Festival: Day Two Line Up
Lots Of Music At Mass MoCA
By: - Sep 17th, 2016The first day of the Fresh Grass Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts, was very lively with the appearance of several major blue grass bands. Day two is a full day of music, a day that will bring together many of the great performers from the industry.
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'62 Center at Williams Announces Its Program
Launching Twelth Season
By: - Sep 16th, 2016The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance unveiled its twelfth season of diverse and challenging theatre and dance programming for the Williams College community and beyond.
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Fresh Grass Festival's Friday Line-Up
Weekend Festival At Mass MoCA
By: - Sep 16th, 2016The three day Fresh Grass Festival kicks off tonight at MASS MoCA with an outstanding line-up.
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New York City Opera Opens in the Rose Theatre
Aleko and Pagliacci Double Bill
By: - Sep 12th, 2016Michael Capusso has breathed new life into the New York City Opera and honors its mission and traditions as well. The fall season opened with a double bill: Aleko by Serge Rachmaninoff and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.
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"The Ouroboros Trilogy" at ArtsEmerson
Three Operas on Ancient Myths by Brookline Librettist
By: - Sep 12th, 2016Cerise Lim Jacobs had a dream: to create three operas incorporating myths from the ancient world, using the Ouroboros, the snake that consumes its own tail in order to be reborn, as a recurring motif. The three works were produced together and they turned out to be engaging, even moving, with music that didn't pander to the audience while also not leaving it out. We'd love to hear it, at least "Madame White Snake" again.
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Hershey Felder's Maestro
Leonard Bernstein's Tanglewood and So Much More
By: - Sep 11th, 2016After an early triumphant conducting performance, the press crowded into the green room to speak to the young Maestro. They then turned to his father Sam and asked," Why did you block your son’s early career in music,?" To which Sam replied "How did I know he was Leonard Bernstein?"
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Fresh Grass Festival Is Now!
Best Bluegrass Festival In The Northeast
By: - Sep 11th, 2016Once a year, the Fresh Grass Festival takes over the grounds of the Mass MoCA art museum in North Adams, Massachusetts. This year's festival features the best bluegrass musicians from all over the world. Fresh Grass takes place from Friday, September 16th through Sunday, September 18th.
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Boston’s The Verb Hotel
Displays Bieber Collection of Rock Memorabelia
By: - Sep 10th, 2016After graduation from the BU School of Journalism David Bieber found that the only way to research and promote rock music was to collect the material. Soon his apartment was cluttered with thousands of albums and related detritus. It is the foremost archive of a formative era when Boston emerged as a major matrix for contemporary music. Now highlights of the Bieber Collection have been installed at Boston's The Verb Hotel.
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the loser by David Lang at BAM
Thomas Bernhard Novel an Opera
By: - Sep 09th, 2016David Lang was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to compose an opera. The remarkable chamber opera 'the loser' is the result. Lang has lifted the author Thomas Bernhard's words, translated by Jack Dawson, intact. He can do this because the author composes with words very much as a musician composes with notes. The subject of the piece is Glenn Gould, whose uncanny ability to separate voices is the same as Bernhard's narrative schizophrenia.
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Tenor Johan Botha Dead at 51
Memories of His Large Glorious Voice
By: - Sep 08th, 2016Johan Botha died today in Vienna at 51. He had suffered from liver cancer, but was scheduled to sing at the Wiener Staatsoper this fall. The September 10th performance of Turandot will be dedicated to him. He once said, “The biggest milestone for me is to make people happy and smile.”
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Train, Yo-Yo Ma, Jeremy Denk and The B52's
Tanglewood Rocks.
By: - Sep 04th, 2016The 2016 Tanglewood season come to a close with a long time commitment from Conductor Andris Nelsons to lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2017.
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Mark Morris Dance at Mostly Mozart
Morris Paints Notes in Dance
By: - Aug 27th, 2016Mark Morris is billed as a musician, and has, in fact, been music director of the Ojai Festival. He is clearly a musicians’ musician and knows as much about music as most professionals. His main gig is choreography. He insists on using live ‘bands,’ in this case, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra. Morris channels Mozart's notes in surprising and apt movements.
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Naughton Twins Play Messiaen
Genetics Gives a New Dimension to Duo Piano at the Crypt
By: - Aug 26th, 2016Two pianos. Four hands. One heart. A spiritual beauty lurks in the origins of Messiaen's music. Certainly duo pianists Michelle and Christina Naughton seem spiritually bound to one another, although there a sparks of difference. This does not suggest conflict, but rather an opportunity to work to achieve unity, as Messiaen must have worked to embrace his God in the face of the Nazi occupation of France.
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Josephine Baker JB Julia Bullock
Hello Blackbird at Mostly Mozart
By: - Aug 25th, 2016Peter Sellars suggested that Julia Bullock interpret Josephine Baker. The young African American, who is more interested in creating musical moments than she is in taking on conventional opera roles, is riveting as Baker in a piece composed by Tyshawn Sorey.
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