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Although the first conductors were themselves composers, the wearing of both hats at the helm of a symphony orchestra is always cause for comment. On Wednesday night, the British composer Thomas Adès, who is currently in the new role of "Artistic Partner" with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, led that band at Carnegie Hall in a program featuring the New York debut of his Piano Concerto.

Little Lord transforms the Fourth Street Theater of New York Theater Workshop into a one room schoolhouse. We the audience get to face the demons of our early education where "Run Dick Run" at the very least bored us to tears. Based on the educational theories of William McGuffey, who after roaming the midwest as an itinerant teacher, created elementary readers for grades one to six, McGuffey's texts were used throughout the US for a hundred years.

Aaron Sorkin received permission from author Harper Lee before she died in 2016. However, when Tonja Carter whom Lee had named as her personal representative, learned of some of the changes lawsuits ensued. Eventually the matter was settled.

Founded shortly after World War I in Germany, the Bauhaus was the most famous and influential avant-garde art and design school in the 20th Century. Its artists, architects, designers craftpersons and students generated a creative, all-encompassing conversation about the nature of architecture, art and design in the modern era. Over the course of its relatively short, 14-year history, Bauhaus was at first located at Weimar, then Dessau, and finally Berlin (closed by order of Nazi Party, 1932). Outside of Germany, Harvard University became the center for all things Bauhaus

Sean O’Casey, considered one of Ireland’s finest playwrights, was born in the Dublin slums and was involved in the Irish Nationalist cause for years. His Dublin trilogy focuses on the Irish wars and their impact on the Irish people. Irish Repertory, New York’s distinguished Irish theater company, is in the midst of its O’Casey Cycle, three plays by Sean O’Casey set during the Irish war for independence and the civil war that followed.

Theatre of Voices returned to Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall to perform the music of Arvo Pärt alongside the New York premiere of visual poems accompanied by a picture poem by Phie Ambo. No Mickey Mousing was intended. Instead the pictures were suggested by changing seasons, and a farm in Denmark. Both Pärt and David Lang were beautiful, deep meditations on nature, man's the the world's.

Memphis the Musical sizzles in South Florida. Cast and crew shine in mounting by Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre. The show's themes resonate powerfully. This production features a mix of local and regional talent, as well as a member of the Broadway national tour of Memphis.

“CHESS,” is a musical written by three giants of the Broadway stage: librettist Richard Nelson, lyricist Tim Rice, and a musical score composed by two members of the world-famous Swedish pop music group ABBA: Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. It was a glorious evening several years in the making, but the result is a stunning Broadway-like venue of comfortable 208 seats to please even the fussiest of theatre-goers.

Recently, WBCN: The American Revolution had its first public screening at DC Independent Film Festival. It was judged Winner Best Documentary 2019. Bill Lichtenstein launched the project in 2009. There was at the time no archive dedicated to the legendary alternative rock station. Now there is as the film conflates talking heads, images, sound tracks and vintage footage. More than a radio station, WBCN provided the sound track and social media platform for the coming of age of 250,000 college students during an era of war, protest, and a dynamic counterculture.

Jacob’s Pillow announces that internationally sought-after Colombian-Belgian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is the recipient of the 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award.

Man of La Mancha acted and sung with all the passion it can arouse, is revived by the Compass Rose Theater in Annapolis, Maryland. It is a treat. While its score may be Broadway- lite, a reminder that there is hope for humans who dream is a welcome.

In the opera canon, The Barber of Seville is one of relatively few that can ease many unfamiliar with opera into enjoying it.

Hairspray challenges prejudices against women who lack an idealized body type and pushes for racial integration and acceptance of non-binary genders. It slyly and adroitly conveys its message even to conservative audiences through an entertaining package of sympathetic characters and shared enjoyment.

Ashes is touring the world and landed at the adventuresome theater HERE in New York. Billed as a puppet show, yet so much more, Ashes tells the tale of a pyromaniac in 1970s Norway as the story is being woven by Gaute Helvoli. In his novel Before I Burn, the author strives to tell the story of arson in his own town at the time he was a very young child. Parallels between his story, typed on a scrim and intermittently woven into Dag, the arson's story, are Biblical in dimension. Fathers and sons are the subject.

True West, Roundabout Theatre’s staging of the Sam Shepard play, stars two fine actors—Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano. It’s a play that descends from brotherly rivalry to rage and chaos, amidst a dozen toasters and piles of toast. And then Mom arrives home from vacation to her little tract house east of LA and her sons turn into little boys—briefly.

Mother Road by Octavio Solis is produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival and plays in repertory at its August Bowmer Theatre in Ashland, Oregon through October 26, 2019. The tone of Mother Road successfully drifts between realism and dream state, between drama and comedy.

Crossing Delancey is heartwarming and life-affirming at the Levis JCC Sandler Center Theater at the J. The stage version of this well-known story is the source material for the 1988 movie starring Amy Irving. The play is faithful to the film, but different. Cast members and behind-the-scenes folks excel in their work on the production in Boca Raton.

In Lauren Yee’s tense and scintillating comedy/drama, Cambodian Rock Band, lead character Chum had escaped Cambodia during the height of the atrocities and resettled in Massachusetts. It is produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival and plays in repertory through October 27, 2019.

Sean O’Casey’s play, The Shadow of a Gunman, now on stage at Irish Repertory Theatre, tricks us into thinking this might be a comedy about drunken and verbose Irishmen.

The Warhol exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art leads you through the commercial illustrations, personal drawings, paintings, prints, photos, silkscreens, films, videos, music production, his Factory years and more. The last galleries show his giant Mao painting, works in collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the 35-foot mural titled Camouflage Last Supper 1986, a rendition of the Last Supper under camouflage print.

Boston Lyric Opera’s production and interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s contemporary tragic opera “The Rape of Lucretia” is once again an example of a willingness and commitment to perform dramatically intense and socially relevant subject matter.

n Friday, June 28, at 7 p.m., Earth, Wind & Fire returns to Tanglewood, bringing its U.S. tour to the Koussevitzky Music Shed. Earth, Wind & Fire are a music institution. Over a five-decade history, they have sold out concerts all around the globe, scored eight number one hits, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Baruch Performing Arts Center presented a Thoreau song cycle by Gregory Spears and Virginia Woolf's Diaries by Dominic Argento. Spears, a phenom among contemporary composers, loves Henry David Thoreau, but found his poetry less than thrilling. Diving into his prose, he decided to take up the more difficult challenge of setting prose to music.

La Jolla Playhouse presents a new musical about Diana and Charles who as heir to the British throne, at 70, is still waiting. For global fans she was a fairybook princess in real life.

“The Judas Kiss”, written by playwright Hare, is deftly directed by Boston Court’s co-artistic director Michael Michetti, and, boldly explores Hare’s raison d’etre for his roman a clef story. Act One of the play is set in the Cadogan Hotel in London, in 1895.