The National Youth Orchestra-USA Alumni performed works by George Gershwin and Dmitri Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall. Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted. Daniil Trifonov performed Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with flair, flash and deep feeling.

Of course my painting is not in the realm of the noxious monsters of Lovecraft but the eventual push of the visual event off the surface seems to speak to a similar aggressive desire to reach out and engage the viewer. It also begins to abandon the pleasant color field that had dominated my work from the beginning of the millennium. 

Gee, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco, wishes to visit China but needs documentation that will ensure his return. To obtain that, he must undergo interrogation at the notorious Angel Island detention center. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, immigration officials are loathe to facilitate entry and re-entry into the U.S. by Asians, who are crafty in developing strategies to overcome the resistance.

The American Composers Orchestra joined Carnegie Hall’s musical exploration of the Weimar Republic.  Central to the evening’s presentation were two pieces:  One, ‘Pirate Jenny’ from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera.  The other ‘Clans’ from Lowok Shoppola of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.

The paintings of Mother explore the diverse aspects of Motherhood, from the Divine Feminine to the Kitchen Witch.

It was energizing to meet the 31-year-old artist, Dara Haskins, who was born in Baltimore and now lives in Philadelphia. We found it impossible to resist her charm and enthusiasm. She was eager to sell me a small painting but I fended off stating that I was there as a critic. Her intent is to raise enough money to return to Cuba where she recently resided for a month.

Prominently located at the western entrance to the Williams College campus and the town, the new Williams College Museum of Art is conceived to serve the College, the local community, and visitors to the Berkshires through a cluster of four program areas. While slightly set apart like pavilions, the better to accommodate their multiple uses, the program areas are unified through their materials, their openness to the natural setting, their organization around a central gathering place, and a distinctive overarching roof that shelters them all.

The Clark Art Institute has selected Bénédicte Savoy as the recipient of the 2024 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. Savoy is a professor of art history at Technische Universität in Berlin and is a noted expert on the provenance and repatriation of works of art, including looted art and other forms of illegally acquired cultural objects.

Moulin Rouge the Musical is gorgeous to look at but slight on story An equity national touring production runs through March 17 in Ft. Lauderdale's Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Much of Moulin Rouge carries the celebratory aura of a party.

The brash and lively Castalian String Quartet and man-for-all-seasons Sir Stephen Hough performed at the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

New additions to the Popular Artist Series at the Tanglewood Music Festival bring a parade of classic rock, contemporary pop, and R&B stars to the Koussevitzky Music Shed between June 20 and Independence Day, supplementing several more previously announced dates in July and August. New additions to the Shed lineup include Roger Daltrey with KT Tunstall, Brandi Carlile, and Jon Batiste, as well as John Fogerty and George Thorogood on tour together and Jason Mraz with the Boston Pops conducted by Sean O’Loughlin.

Most of the humor is of the middle-school-boy type – lots of insults and adolescent sexual innuendo. How much of this you find funny or just too much depends on your sense of humor and how much seeing grown men call each other a variety of offensive words is enjoyable. How many sexual jokes do you want John’s father, who is ninety, to make? For me, it was way overdone.

Hunter Foster, who played Sam Philips in the original Broadway cast, directs this production with a fine hand. His experience with the show reveals itself in the nuances and choices he makes. The scenic design by Josh Smith shows us the studio of Sun Records in Memphis in the 1950s. The founder of the studio, Phillips helped put rock ‘n roll on the charts.

The blue heron, a majestic bird with piercing yellow eyes and a spear-like beak, embodies a unique paradox. It is a creature of both profound stillness and lightning-fast action. But it is the heron’s stillness that truly captivates, a quality that has enthralled artists, writers, and philosophers for centuries. This stillness isn’t just an absence of movement; it’s a potent force, a language of patience, focus, and a deep connection with the environment.

In my new paintings I am imagining “evolutants” stuck in the mud, from remains of the flora and fauna of the smallest cell-like creatures to the evolution of our present human form, painted as staggered layers of history. They are colorful, animated patterns of biological and imaginary forms painted in acrylic and oil.

 Spring fast approaches, with good news from our friends at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, and the opening of the box office for our own Pittsfield CityJazz Festival.

I was apprehensive about Long Wharf’s new production, which runs through Sunday, March 10, mainly when I read that director James Dean Palmer is known for his “reinterpretations” of classics.

Redwood, a musical drama conceived and written by Tina Landau and Idina Menzel, is currently playing at the La Jolla Playhouse.  Composer Kate Diaz provides the expansive score with lyrics by Diaz and Landau.  Redwood tells the story of Jesse (played by Idina Menzel), a hard-charging, no-holds-barred New Yorker who is struggling to find purpose in her life following the death of her young adult son. 

The 74th Berlinale is Europe's first international film festival of the year. Always a glamorous happening with stars galore, this year's events from February 15-25th,  2024 have drawn to a close.

The squirrel comes each day to eat peanuts with me on one of the benches in the meditation garden that surrounds my training and teaching deck.  Sometimes she will sit in my lap, sometimes she will sit on the cushion beside me, and sometimes she just sits on the cinder block armrest.  But she comes every day, and several times at that.

First Friday, March 1, 5 - 8:30pm, will feature the reception & artist talks at Boston Sculptors in the South End. Works by Ed Andrews and Leslie Wilcox will be on view through March 31. There will be artist talks on Saturday March 16 from 2-5 PM.

Percy MacKaye’s 1922 poem, Dogtown Common, is a beloved document of Gloucester lore. It tells the story of two legendary figures, Tammy Younger and her niece Judy Rhines, shunned for practicing witchcraft. It was inspired by Charles Mann’s 1906, The Story of Dogtown or In the Heart of Cape Ann, that compiles recollections about the outsiders, berry-pickers, subsistence farms and self-proclaimed witches that inhabited Dogtown after it was abandoned in the early 1800s.

The Guggenheim acquired 102 works by more than 60 artists, over half of whom are new to the collection. The works, spanning from 1928 to the present day, further the Guggenheim’s commitment to expanding the purview of its interpretation and presentation of modern and contemporary art by focusing on acquiring works that embody diversity and innovation.

One of the unique features of the show is that it is up to the director and the performers to decide which famous women performers and songs are in the drag sequences. Here, Connors and the cast have offered terrific performances.

Barrington Stage Company  will celebrate its 30th  anniversary season with two major musical revivals, a world premiere play, two regional premiere plays and a raucous comedy featuring three of BSC’s most beloved associate artists.