Music
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Beck Rocks Mass MoCA
Opening Set by Sean Lennon
By: - Jun 25th, 2014On a sultry summer evening Beck charmed some 5,000 fans crammed into Joe Thompson Field on the campus of Mass MoCA. While Wilco's Solid Sound weekend festival is taking a break this season, on a Tuesday night in June, Beck put up Wilco numbers. It strongly indicates that MoCA is in the rock concert business as a viable alternative to Tanglewood with far more imaginative programming.
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The Rise and Fall of WBCN
Carter Alan’s Book on Radio Free Boston
By: - Jun 17th, 2014Between 1968 and its demise in 2009 Boston's rock station WBCN was the epicenter of an alternative lifestyle. Its DJ's interviewed and broadcast live concerts and studio sessions with virtually every major band of the era. It was a strong advocate of local band breaking many including J Geils, The Cars, Aerosmith, Boston and British stars from Bowie and The Who to Ireland's U2. Carter Alan's superbly researched book covers it all from A to Z.
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Odyssey Opera Inaugurates June Opera Festival
Three Italian Rarities, Including Verdi's First Comdy
By: - Jun 16th, 2014Odyssey Opera is devoted to taking its audience on a journey "through the lesser known reaches of the opera world." On paper, it was an enticing idea. I could hardly wait. And in execution, it turned out to be a promising start of what one hopes is a long-lived local company.
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ICE, Dan Dehaan in Chicago
Claire Chase's Ensemble Ends Brilliant Season
By: - Jun 16th, 2014This was the International Contemporary Ensemble’s final performance of the season in which they have performed hundreds of new works in countries around the world. Founder Claire Chase’s ability to attract musical talent and to commission cutting edge works in her ICELab, is the musical adventure of a lifetime.
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Rene Fleming at Tanglewood
Opens BSO Bershire Season on July 5
By: - Jun 09th, 2014The Boston Symphony Orchestra begins its 2014 Tanglewood season on Saturday, July 5, at 8:30 p.m. in the Shed, with an all-American Opening Night at Tanglewood program featuring superstar soprano Renée Fleming.
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The Arvo Part Project at Carnegie Hall
Presented by St. Vladimir's Seminary
By: - Jun 06th, 2014A recent Carnegie Hall concert presented works by the composer Arvo Part for the first time since 1984. The rare event resulted in a sold out performance featuring his tintinnabuli works. The exotic and evocative museum was preformed by Tallin chamber orchestra and the Estonian philharmonic chamber choir led by Tonu Kaljuste.
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Dmitri Hvorostovsky Sings Russian Songs
Russian Baritone Electrifies Jordan Hall Audience
By: - Jun 02nd, 2014Hvorostovsky plumbs every shade of melancholy in his sets of songs by Tchaikovsky, Medtner and Rachmaninoff. There is no classical song literature more soulful than the Russian.
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Memorial Day with Chicago Symphony
Jaap van Zweden Unearths Hidden Truths
By: - May 25th, 2014It is the human terms of war we remember on Memorial Day. No one has portrayed them more movingly in music than Dmitri Shostakovich. Born in Leningrad, and living there when the Germans began their almost 900 day seige in 1939, Shostakovich remained in his home and began to compose his Leningrad Symphony.
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Serenata Italiana
Encore Performances by Hubbard Hall Opera Theater
By: - May 24th, 2014HHOT takes a concert featuring music from powerful and familiar arias by Verdi and Leoncavallo, to popular songs by Tosti, Donaudy to Bennngton and Saratoga.
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I Puritani at Boston Lyric Opera
Bel Canto Masterpiece Features Two Mad Scenes.
By: - May 05th, 2014BLO production got most of it right, although director Crystal Manich, fooled with the ending. But singing didn't soar, leaving the audience with dry eyes at the end of evening.
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Deborah Voigt Sings at Symphony Hall
Program Highlights Her Vocal Strengths
By: - May 02nd, 2014Deborah Voigt has spoken frankly about cutting back on her opera performances. A set of Strauss songs showed how great she could be in that repertoire. A set of American art songs suggest her new direction.
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The Sound of Music at the Lyric Opera
The Hills Are Alive in Chicago
By: - May 01st, 2014The Sound of Music has been a staple of musical theatre since 1959. While the music seems tame compared to South Pacific and Carousel, its songs stick with you. As a matter of fact with the title song and "Do-Re-Mi" "My Favorite Things" "Climb Every Mountain" "So long, Farewell" and "Edelweiss" The Sound of Music has more hit songs than any other musical. In Vienna, the audience sings along with "Edelweiss," but we are more restrained in the US.
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Deborah Voigt Sings at Symphony Hall
Song Recital features Strauss and Tchaikovsky
By: - Apr 29th, 2014Voigt scaled her huge voice down for the intimacy of the song, but let it soar at the conclusion of a Strauss favorite
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Boston Baroque Does Monteverdi Rarity
Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria
By: - Apr 28th, 2014Left only in a production book, Monteverdi masterpiece must be recreated for performance. Boston Baroque's Martin Pearlman and his superb production team and cast of singers and instrumentalists made it a vibrant experience. Pearlman gets more credit for “Ulisse†than he might for his many other triumphs as company founder, director and conductor because he helped, in a way, to compose it.
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Grande Old Opry in Nashville
Yee Hah Y’All
By: - Apr 22nd, 2014While in Nashville we attended a broadcast of the legendary Grande Old Opry. Much has changed since the first radio show on November 28, 1925. While as big and glitzy as a Vegas casino the venerable Opry adheres to tradition and carefully guards its legacy and hallowed ground.
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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Conversations
Mitsuko Uchida and Muti Lead the Dialogue
By: - Mar 23rd, 2014The mighty Riccardo Muti conducted. The powerful and yet delicate Mitsuko Uchida was piano soloist. An extraordinary oboist, Eugene Izotov, led us through Schubert's Great 9th Symphony. Such pleasure in sharing musical greatness in the Symphony Center in Chicago.
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Nadine Sierra Triumphs with Boston Lyric
Verdi Masterpiece Stylishly but Traditionally Staged
By: - Mar 19th, 2014One of the Boston Lyric Opera's most successful recent productions, "Rigoletto" is an unabashed melodrama but its dramatic truths are relevant to a day when the powerful and corrupt can get their way no matter what.
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Fresh Grass Set for September 19-21
Lineup for Mass Moca Event.
By: - Mar 18th, 2014Fresh Grass returns to Mass MoCA from September 19 to 21. This year's lineup is the deepest yet, including The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Railroad Earth, Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn,Sam Bush, The Infamous Stringdusters, David Grisman Sextet, The Gibson Brothers, Alison Brown, Valerie June, Aoife O'Donovan, Rodney Crowell, Sam Amidon, Liam Ó ManolaÃ, Michael Cleveland,Claire Lynch,Darol Anger, Martha Redbone Roots Project, and more to be announced later in the spring. Last year's FreshGrass Award recipient, Cricket Tell the Weather, will take the stage for a full set.
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La Clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera
Mozart Triumphs in the Human Voice
By: - Mar 18th, 2014La Clemenza di Tito is full of glorious Mozart arias and recitatives, and an occasional duet. It is an odd opera, which does not have a developing story arc, but rather presents one emotionally-telling vignette after another: thwarted love, political trickery, treachery and betrayal, noble friendships and a hero’s stance. The singing is classic Mozart in this Lyric Opera production.
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Gonzo Chronicles: Roger Lifeset Two
Captain Beefheart Wanted a Lobster
By: - Mar 15th, 2014Don van Vliet, known by the stage name of Captain Beefheart, was an eccentric genius of rock and roll. His double album Trout Mask Replica is considered a masterpiece. Most of his albums didn't sell well and he bounced around labels. Roger Lifeset connected me with Beefheart when he was promoting Spotlight Kid for Warner Brothers. Once Don got his hooks in me he wouldn't let go.
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Gonzo Chronicles: Roger Lifeset Three
J. Geils, Modern Lovers, Springsteen, The Cars, Boston, Aerosmith
By: - Mar 15th, 2014In the lively 1970s a lot of bands broke out of Boston: J Geils, The Cars, Modern Lovers. Real Paper rock critic Jon Landau discovered and then managed Bruce Springsteen. Promo Man Roger's Lifeset's Warner Brothers partner, Charlie McKenzie, and colleague, Paul Ahern, signed Boston to Epic Records. Filthy rich McKenzie, as we discuss with Lifeset, lived the life of the Great Gatsby and died just as tragically.
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Gonzo Chronicles: Promo Man Roger Lifeset
How Alice Cooper Trashed My Cambridge Apartment
By: - Mar 14th, 2014On a balmy January night some 300 to 400 rockers crashed, trashed and smashed my basement Harvard Square apartment during an "Intimate VIP" party following an Alice Cooper concert. It was instigated by Warner Brothers promo man and ubermensch, Roger Lifeset. As part one in the ongoing Gonzo Chronicles we discuss the utter madness of the Boston rock scene.
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Natalie Dessay Sings French at Jordan Hall
Opera Diva Featured Elegant Songs of Love
By: - Mar 13th, 2014Natalie Dessay has been one of the most electrifying singer/actresses on the opera stage for nearly 30 years. Now, she is focusing her career on pop songs and the classic song literature. Dessay assembled a primarily French program with enough German songs to give the evening some weight.
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An Incandescent Salome at BSO
Andris Nelsons Knows His Way Around Opera
By: - Mar 11th, 2014A top-tier cast tears the top off Symphony Hall in Richard Strauss's decadent take on the dysfunctional family with a religious prophet thrown in for good measure. The orchestra is enormous: 32 violins, a dozen violas, ten cellos, eight double basses and it seemed like every woodwind and brass player in the greater Boston area. And that doesn’t even account for the harps, tambourine, xylophone, harmonium, gong, kettledrum, timpani, castanet, triangle, glockenspiel and celesta. Andris Nelsons, the BSO director designate, kept them all in control.
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First Petrof Pianojazz Festival in Prague
At Famous Jazz Dock, February 24-27, 2014
By: - Mar 07th, 2014A new, young contributor to BFA, photographer and writer Ioana Taut, grew up in Romania. Her field of passion is Jazz ! Here she's reporting in word and image about a recent festival in Prague, where she's currently residing. Jazz is alive and well in Eastern European countries!
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