Andrew Ousley’s remarkable concert cocktail evenings at The Crypt presented Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. This most famous of Messiaen’s works had a moving performance in a setting that resonated with crystal liturgy.

During a 1972 tour the Stones connecting from Toronto got diverted to Warwick, Rhode Island. Waiting for a limo to Boston Garden Keith clocked a photographer who got too close. Cops busted him as well as Mick who chimed in. After hours of delay Mayor Kevin White told 14,000 fans that the Stones were busted but "I got them out." That's not really true. The Stones went on stage at 1 AM for one of the great concerts in Boston rock history. Decades later attorney Martin Kaplan relates what really happened that night.

A Band of Actors theater company has joined the South Florida theatrical scene. The Delray Beach-based troupe is performing an absurdist play in the vein of Beckett titled Momo & Toto (Together Forever in Perpetuity). Troupe to focus on experimental work, shy away from traditional, naturalistic "kitchen sink" dramas.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC) will feature four world premieres including the new musical from BSC’s Musical Theatre Lab, Fall Springs by Niko Tsakalakos and Peter Sinn Nachtrieb; America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of The American Negro by Stacey Rose; American Underground by Brent Askari; and Ragtag Theatre’s Hansel and Gretel, commissioned by BSC.

Barbara Hannigan, one of the world’s leading sopranos, conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in a thrilling performance of Strauss, Haydn, Debussy, Sibelius and Bartok. The orchestra responded with music-making worthy of concert halls across the globe.

Although Moby-Dick adheres to the continuous melody mode, many striking set pieces punctuate the score. Much beauty also derives from the orchestral interludes which reflect smooth seas as well as storm with equal competence. But the most striking pieces are the many rousing choruses.

The pipeline in Dominique Morisseau’s play is the school-to-prison path followed too often by young people from disadvantaged backgrounds because of harsh school and police policies.

The Lucas Hnath sequel to Ibsen A Doll's House-Part 2 was a hit on Broadway. The door slammer is making the rounds of regional theatre. This production runs at TheaterWorks in Connecticut through February 24.

Through March 10, the Clark Art Institute is presenting a compact exhibition Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape. Curated by Alexis Goodin is installed in about a third of the museum’s special exhibition space. It allows us to compare and contrast the twin towers of British landscape painting: Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) and John Constable, (11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837).

Kudos to Barrington Stage Company for bringing theatre back to the Berkshires in the dead of winter. Yesterday we enjoyed a matinee of the eighth annual, 10X10 New Play Festival. It runs February 14 - March 10, 2019 at BSC’s St. Germain Stage.

Like much early Verdi, I Due Foscari lacks the memorable arias and ensembles that appear on compilation recordings. However, it may be that we just haven’t heard these enough to become familiar with them.

In recent seasons, Esa-Pekka Salonen has shifted his emphasis from conducting to his first love, composition. However, Friday’s matinee program at the Philadelphia Orchestra at Verizon Hall featured none of Salonen’s own catalogue. Rather, the composer led a program consisting of workers by Béla Bartók and Richard Strauss, two very different composers who are each in their own way, touchstones of the twentieth century.

The year is 1964. Violet, a young woman with suitcase in hand, is about to board a Greyhound bus to leave her hometown of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Her destination – Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bay Area Musicals offers a lively and well-staged representation of a journey that changes its central figure in unexpected ways.

National Sawdust, a leading venue for new music, mounted the work of two finalists in the BMP Next Generation Competition, Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran. Last March, their compositions were selected from a field of ten, winnowed down from 75 applications.

The Irish Repertory Theatre captures the quotidian of life in Dublin, 1920 as it plays out in Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman. We sit in the extension of a room in a tenement which a poet and a suspender salesman share. Above us, laundry hangs from a window. Charlie Corcoran’s set brings us completely into a day-in-the-life of a wouldn’t-be gunman.

Meeting on a Saturday afteroon in the dead of winter the agenda was a wine stating at Spirited in Lenox. First lunch at a new taco joint just up the road from Pittsfield.

David Mamet's Race ratchets up the heat in South Florida. A superb cast disappears into their roles in a production that immediately communicates the racial tension in this country. Miami Lakes-based Main Street Players continues to produce quality work as a professional company.

Director finds mounting the "monster" play A Raisin in the Sun a huge challenge. Mary Elizabeth Gundlach relies on cast members to help her direct them. Ft. Lauderdale-based New City Players is presenting the complex, layered play through March 10.

The Whole World a Bauhaus, the 100th anniversary exhibit of Bauhaus work, is now on display at the Elmhurst Art Museum. There are national and global Bauhaus exhibitions. This one is on view in Chicago.

"It's not going to be my favorite Verdi opera." This, from an attendee on the 1 train riding away from Lincoln Center after the Metropolitan Opera's Wednesday night performance of Falstaff, efficiently sums up the attitude of audiences toward the composer's final opera--and his only successful attempt at writing comedy. Falstaff is a masterwork, but one held in high regard not for its considerable qualities but for its place as Verdi's last musical utterance. On Wednesday night under the baton of Robert Carnes, the opera received a performance that just might change that gentleman's opinion.

On March 7 the documentary film WBCN and the American Revolution will have a sneak preview at the DC Film Festival. On March 9, 12 and 13 there will be screenings at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose. A world premiere is being planned for Boston in April. The day after wrapping the film Bill Lichtenstein discussed the project which started in 2006. The story of WBCN is set against events from the launch of the radical FM station in 1968 to developments surrounding the resignation of Richard Nixon seven years later.

The vast archive of some 600,000 objects was a primary source for the Bill Lichtenstein film WBCN: The American Revolution. When in college David Bieber became a campus correspondent for Billboard Magazine. In graduate school at Boston University he wrote a thesis on the impact of WBCN and the growing counterculture media on changing the mainstream of Top 40 radio and the straight press. He became music director of WBUR and went on to work for WBCN and the Boston Phoenix. He provides an insightful overview of an era of social and poltical change for the vast college/ youth market in Boston.

The strengths of the Regional Theatre Movement include 'extraordinary artistry,' 'so many phenomenal writers' and 'so much wonderful new work.' Challenges facing theaters today include competition from other entertainment options, high ticket costs and minimal government funding. The panel comprised Theatre Communications Group Executive Director Teresa Eyring and Florida Professional Theatres Association Executive Director Sherron Long. The discussion was part of Palm Beach Dramaworks' Dramalogue series.

The Aspect Foundation is committed to making the concert experience memorable. By offering food and drink before the concert and during intermission, and selecting unusual and glistening venues, audience members are swept into their commitment to first-rate music-making. Evenings Aspect presents are unforgettable. Go to one and you will be hooked.

Several years ago The Fenway Motor Inn, morphed into the boutique, rock themed, Verb Hotel. David Bieber was commissioned to provide vintage memorabelia from his vast archive. Since then, with a small staff, he has been unpacking and cataloguing the collection. He also worked with the late Stephen Mindich to archive The Phoenix material at Northeastern University. Bieber discusses an era in the counterculture of Boston when there was a community of music makers, promo men, writers and DJs. Rent was cheap compared to now and we were living large on other people's money.