Susan Hall
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Charlotte Moore Directs Irish Repertory Theatre Front Page
The Streets of New York Sizzle
By: - Dec 31st, 2021The Streets of New York laugh and cry as they burst into song in Charlotte Moore’s production. Everyone you've ever met is on stage. Celebrate the holidays at the Irish Repertory Theatre
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Becoming Dr. Ruth with Tovah Feldshuh Front Page
A remarkable life at Museum of Jewish Heritage
By: - Dec 26th, 2021Mark St. Germain has crafted a moving and funny portrait of the great radio and television sex-pert, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. It plays at the Safra Hall in the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Scott Schwartz directs. Dr. Ruth triumphs over Hitler.
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Inna Faliks at The Barge Front Page
Generational Response Moves Beautiful Music to the Present
By: - Dec 22nd, 2021A new work by George Meyer and commissions by Inna Falik are performed in New York. This program took place on The Barge, one of New York’s most charming venues. You rock on the boat as you watch perfumers reflected in the boat’s windows. Boats pass by outside, traveling up and down the East River. The Wall Street skyline shimmers in the background. A welcome way to end a difficult year. Live music.
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Conrad Tao at the 92nd Street Y Front Page
Melody in Sound Clouds
By: - Dec 21st, 2021Conrad Tao is a special pianist. He is a master of technique and so much more. He performs as a listener, always hearing the harmonics of a note he strikes (or even plucks). In his own compositions and in his interpretation of the work of others, he calls our attention to the richness of a tone, colored by many notes, in geometric order above the note struck.
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James Lapine's Flying Over Sunset Front Page
Lincoln Center Theater Mounts Premier
By: - Dec 19th, 2021Flying Over Sunset, a new musical with book by James Lapine and music by Tom Kitt premieres at the Lincoln Center Theater. It features Aldous Huxley ( Harry Hadden-Paton), Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck)and Claire Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack), who all experimented with LSD in the 1950s. Both Huxley and Luce wanted to expand their horizons. Grant went to a psychiatrist for a supervised dose of the drug at the recommendation of his then wife, Betsy Drake.
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Roundabout Theatre's Trouble in Mind Front Page
Alice CHildreds' Drama Transfers after Decades in Limbo
By: - Dec 18th, 2021Roundabout Theater is mounting Alice Childress’ play, Trouble in Mind. It premiered off Broadway in 1957 to excellent reviews. Transfer to Broadway failed when the producers demanded changes the playwright refused to make. Now we get a look.
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MJ Moonwalks to Broadway Front Page
Aces the Audience
By: - Dec 15th, 2021Lynn Nottage, the first female American playwright to win two Pulitzers, has created the story for MJ, the musical celebrating Michael Jackson. It has been due on Broadway for a while. The opening date is now postponed until February. Previews opened this week. If it stays in previews until the line of tickets dwindles, it will be a financial success. If it formally opens to reviews, it will succeed despite pederasty accusations.
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Pianist Inna Faliks Finds Kindred Spirits Front Page
The Schmanns, Beethoven and Ravel Explored
By: - Dec 13th, 2021Inna Faliks is a superb concert pianist, who also heads the piano studies department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her recordings are devoted to revealing kindred spirits. Husband and wife, Robert and Clara Schumann, are offered together in The Schumann Project. Their entwined influence is suggested. Her interpretations of Beethoven will be presented as part of a Barge Concert in New York on December 16.
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TON Orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum Front Page
The Piano Explored
By: - Dec 10th, 2021It comes as no surprise that the oldest piano in the world, created in 1720 by Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, is now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. An earlier instrument was recorded in the inventory of the Medici family in 1700, but the Met’s piano is the oldest to survive today. It has hammers and dampers, two keyboards, and a range of four octaves, C–c”’ The instrument was on view for concertgoers, who enjoyed a talk by Leon Botstein om the development of the instrument. He focused on Beethoven's response to more notes with a wider dynamic range, The Orchestra Now performed the Emperor Concerto, Shai Wosner at the modern Steinway and Leon Botstein conducting.
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Jeremy Denk Performs The Well Tempered Clavier Front Page
Bach is Still Full of Joy at 300
By: - Dec 06th, 2021Jeremy Denk performed “The Old Testament of Keyboard Music,” Bach’ s Well Tempered Clavier (WTC) , at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The artist selects works to which he can bring new insights. Bach, he sensed, was trapped by the Glenn Gould performances in the mid-20th century. Audiences found the neuroses Gould implanted in Bach suitable for the century’s mood. They also appreciated the humming he added to the piano notes. Other performers flatten the work to sound more like a harpsichord, sewiwgmachine style.
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Vasily Kandinsky at the Guggenheim Front Page
Amidst Circles
By: - Nov 27th, 2021The painter Vasily Kandinsky belongs in the Guggenheim Museum. The new show titled "Around the Circle" spirals up to the top of Frank Lloyd Wright's monument.
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Cullud Wattah at the Public Theater Front Page
Powerful Public Issue Dramatized
By: - Nov 22nd, 2021The Public Theater presents Cullud Wattah, a timely social protest drama written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones Profound contradictions are dramatized and shown throughout the drama. Adam Rigg (scenic design) creates a cozy furnished home of a working class African-American family surrounded by a macabre curtain of plastic bottles of dirty water.
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Thoughts of a Colored Man On Broadway Front Page
Twenty-nine Producers Express Faith in a Terrific New Play
By: - Nov 21st, 2021Keenan Scott, playwright, objected to the widespread notion that black men don’t express themselves. In his play, Thoughts of a Colored Man, they do. Our conventional notions of black silence are shattered by a rich rhetorical tradition of the group that Eldridge Cleaver called the most challenged in American society. In some ways not much has changed since Cleaver made that statement over a half century ago. Black men have an expiration date that expires before everyone elses'.
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Cullud Wattah at the Public Theater Front Page
Powerful Public Issue Dramatized
By: - Nov 21st, 2021The Public Theater Presents Cullud Wattah, a timely social protest drama written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Candis C. Jones Adam Rigg (scenic design) creates a set full of profound contradictions. They weave through the drama on every level. A cozy furnished home of a working class African-American family is surrounded by a macabre curtain of plastic bottles of dirty water.
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Will Eno Takes on Peer Gynt Front Page
GNIT a Delight at Theatre for a New Audience
By: - Nov 12th, 2021Theatre for a New Audience is presenting GNIT, an update of Hendrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt. The new version by Will Eno is daring in its exposition of many characters reaction to the her and their plight.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art Presents Arvo Part Front Page
The Temple of Dendur is a Location Favored by the Composer
By: - Nov 03rd, 2021Arvo Pärt has celebrated birthdays at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His music is often performed at the Temple of Dendur where one wall dances with reflections from a pool of water, reflections that seem to move with the beat of the music. They soothe and elevate, a mood captured by the Nile River in the temple’s original Egyptian location.
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Thomas Wilkins Conducts the BSO Front Page
Coleridge-Taylor, Victor Wooten and Duke Ellington At Symphony Hall
By: - Oct 31st, 2021Across the country arts organizations are making a concerted effort to include Americans of color in their presentations. The concert at Symphony Hall in Boston this week was a highly successful concert of inclusion.
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M. Butterfly, the Opera, to Premiere in Santa Fe Front Page
Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang Join Forces
By: - Oct 25th, 2021The world premiere of M. Butterfly, the opera, will take place on July 30,2021 at the Santa Fe Opera. We got a taste of its music, its story and the sound of the delicious man/girl Song. Kangmin Justin Kim is a countertenor with special tremulos and vibratos which suggest the feminine voice. Many layers weave through the new telling to the tale made famous in its first iteration as a Tony and Pulitzer-finalist play by David Henry Hwang. He is the librettist for the new work by composer, Huang Ruo.
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Faure's Consoling Requiem at Greenwood Cemetery Front Page
Angel's Share Concludes Its Season
By: - Oct 22nd, 2021Andrew Ousley has just the right touch as he presens music from all time and places in surprising venues across the city of New York. Earlier concerts at the Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn took place in catacombs. For the performance of Gabriel Faure’s Requiem by Cantori, Ousley moved outside. The audience sits among the dead, consoled by a requiem at peace.
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Mussorgsky's Original Boris Godunov at the Met Front Page
How Do we Assess Versions
By: - Oct 18th, 2021Alternate versions of an opera arouse controversy.The multiple versions of Verdi’s grand opera Don Carlos (Don Carlo) were a response to different productions. Terrence Blanchard adapted his opera Fire Shut up in My Bones for the Metropolitan Opera’s stage. Now we have the magnificent, original Boris Godunov.
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Diversity at The Metropolitan Opera Front Page
Composer Terrence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up In My Bones
By: - Oct 14th, 2021The Metropolitan Opera got a public relations boost when they mounted Terrence Blanchard’s ""Fire Shut up in My Bones" as their season opener. An unusually packed theater sweetened the Met's premiere. No question "Fire" is a wonderful piece of orchestral work. Elements of black folk music like gospel, jazz, and stepping, fit seamlessly into the overall scheme.
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A.R. Gurney's Sylvia in Arvada Colorado Front Page
Brilliant Production of an Odd Love Triangle
By: - Oct 03rd, 2021A. R. Gurney’s Sylvia had a 1995 production in New York featuring Charles Kimbrough, Blythe Danner and Sarah Jessica Parker. It is one of Gurney’s most frequently produced plays. A husband in mid-life crisis would prefer the compansionship of a dog to a mistress.
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Steel Magnolias Blooms in Denver Front Page
Robert Harling's Classic Perfetly Produced
By: - Oct 02nd, 2021Steel Magnolias is staged by the Cherry Creek Theater in Denver, Colorado. This comic tragedy comes alive in a beauty parlor, whose window frames look out on the talk of the town parading by. In the South, men sit under a pecan tree and talk about affairs as if they all had PhDs from Harvard. The women hunker down to have their hair and nails done.
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Yehuda Hanani and Close Encounters Return Front Page
Classic, Jazz, Whimy and Bee Bop in One Splendid Evening
By: - Sep 30th, 2021An invitation to a close encounter with very special music. Paul Schoenfield’s runaway classical hit, Café Music for piano trio, sets the tone for a celebratory re-opening. Combining elements of classical, jazz, klezmer and whimsy, Café Music is caffeine-fueled and irresistible.
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Cleo Parker Robinson, Going the Distance Front Page
Celebrating 50 Years of Black dance
By: - Sep 29th, 2021Cleo Parker Robinson is celebrating the 51st anniversary of the founding of her dance troupe. Covid buried the 50th. This celebration had added sizzle. Live dance is happening at last.
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