Music
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Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
35th Annual Festival June 26 to July 6
By: - Mar 04th, 2014This summer marks the 35th annual Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. There are many highlights with international artists slated to perform. It's worth planning for for the trip north to hear Diana Ross, Keith Jarrett, Bobby McFerrin, Ginger Baker, Rufus Wainwright and the music of Frank Zappa.
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Student Opera Offers Deep Satisfactions
Boston's Opera Stars of Tomorrow
By: - Mar 01st, 2014In Boston, the two music conservatories and the Boston University Opera Institute offer a mix of warhorses and rarities with young singers variously ready for the next step. Often student performances are frustratingly uneven with various degrees of accomplishment on display, but sometimes they come together with well-balanced casts, offering the experience of professional opera at a quarter the price.
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Rusalka Re-Imagined in Chicago
Ana Maria Martinez Captivates as Rusalka
By: - Mar 01st, 2014In the front row of the Civic Opera House, Renée Fleming sat watching an enchanting water nymph take on the role which has been Fleming's signature for decades. The audience fell for Ana Maria Martinez from her first notes and throughout the challenging first Act. What would Fleming make of the performance?
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Michael Fabiano Wins Beverly Sills Award
The Young Tenor Captured Our Attention Immediately
By: - Feb 21st, 2014The Sills Award honoring and supporting up and coming opera singers is one of the most prestigious. This year the Award was given o Michael Fabiano, a wonderfully gifted young singer.
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Barber of Seville at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Rob Ashford Makes a 198-Year -Old Opera Fresh
By: - Feb 19th, 2014Anthony Freud, the non pareil general manager of opera, brought Rob Ashford to the Lyric to mount his first opera. The Tony and Emmy award winning choreographer and director does a brilliant job by honoring the form of Beaumarchais and Rossini.
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Amanda Forsythe Keeps The Garland Fresh
Boston Baroque Presents Rameau's Rarity.
By: - Feb 18th, 2014Jean-Philippe Rameau's one-act opera "La Guirlande" might seem to be a frivolous pastoral, but he brings it to life with rich and subtly detailed music. The afternoon belonged to Amanda Forsythe. She is as fine an actress as singer, imbuing everything with the force of life. Where other singers make you aware of the effort expended to hit high notes (or low), Forsythe makes it all sound easy. She moves without break through the vocal registers that loom as roadblocks to other singers.
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Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
With Guest Conductor Bernard Haitink in a Ravel Program
By: - Feb 17th, 2014In celebration of his 85th birthday Bernard Haitink has arranged several New York concerts as a guest conductor. We covered his Carnegie Hall appearance in an all Ravel program leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Tanglewood Chorus.
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2014 Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival
Saturday, June 28 and Sunday, June 29
By: - Feb 09th, 2014The 37th annual Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival, one of the most celebrated and longest running jazz events in the world, will be held on Saturday, June 28 and Sunday, June 29 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. This year's festival headliners include Earth, Wind & Fire, Trombone Shorty, Terence Blanchard, Dave Holland Prism, Patti Austin, Jon Batiste & Stay Human, Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra, Quinn Sullivan, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Newport Jazz Festival®: Now 60, among others.
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Aliens Arrive at Symphony Hall in Chicago
City on High Alert, but Children Entranced
By: - Feb 09th, 2014Aliens from Planet X landed in Chicago on the stage of Symphony Hall at approximately 11 am on Saturday, February 8th. Quickly word spread that a Martian cylinder had landed in Chicago. Orson Welles broadcast an earlier Martian arrival. While the city’s panicked citizens fled town through fat puffs of snowflakes falling over Michigan Drive, many young people embraced the two ETs on stage, who were unable to speak an earthly language, but gestured in a language of signs.
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Under Riccardo Muti
Musical Messages Delivered with Passionate Panache
By: - Feb 07th, 2014This evening introduced spaghetti-Western composer Ennio Morricone. Often nominated for an Academy Award, he finally won one for lifetime achievement. Clint Eastwood translated his acceptance speech live. Before Muti began to conduct Morricone’s tribute to 9/11, Maestro Muti pointed out that this music has a message. The piece begins with a poem by the South African Richard Moore Rive. Ora Jones beautifully articulated the rainbow of our world, where words are neither white nor black. “Where the rainbow ends, there’s going to be a place…where we can sing together, a sad song. “
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NEC Presents A Hard Rain's Gonnah Fall
February 18 at Boston's Jordan Hall
By: - Feb 04th, 2014Join New England Conservatory's Eden MacAdam-Somer and Contemporary Improvisation department students and faculty in a concert featuring original works and recompositions that offer a kaleidoscopic perspective on protest music and social change throughout history. The concert takes place on Tuesday, February 18 at 8 p.m. in NEC's Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA. It is free and open to the public.
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Remembering Folk Legend Pete Seeger
We're All Brothers And We're Only Passing Through
By: - Feb 02nd, 2014I have few if any idols in my pantheon, but if there is anyone that I admired enough to put there, Pete Seeger might well be the one.
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Ear Say: Closing Out 2013
This, Too Long Left Unsaid
By: - Feb 02nd, 20142013 got a bit complicated at its end and I find myself struggling to catch up with writing of those events, sorting out the ones on which I want to comment and deciding which deserve sharing.
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Wilco Returns to Mass MoCA in 2015
Will Skip This Summer
By: - Jan 24th, 2014The Solid Sound Festival of Wilco has been a shot in the arm for the Northern Berkshire County tourism and hospitality industry. They will return to North Adams in 2015 but not this summer. This will be fourth festival organized by the band for Mass MoCA.
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Tanglewood Tickets on Sale January 26
The Best Seats Go Fast
By: - Jan 24th, 2014Tickets to the 2014 Tanglewood season, priced from $10 to $121, go on sale, Sunday, January 26, at www.tanglewood.org, through SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office (301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA). The 2014 Tanglewood season, June 27-August 30, features more than 100 performances, including concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center (the BSO’s prestigious summer music academy); chamber music, recital, and concert opera presentations in Ozawa Hall; and a series of Popular Artist concerts.
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Sondheim's A Little Night Music
I Could Have Waltzed All Afternoon at Emmanuel Music
By: - Jan 22nd, 2014Emmanuel Music's semi-staged performance of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" demonstrated to me that the Broadway musical has its merits. I had expected that whatever the quality of the performance I would be writing a review mourning Emmanuel Music’s decline from pursuing high seriousness in music to reveling in kitsch. How could I have been so wrong for so long?
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Newport Jazz Festival 2014
Schedule for August 1 through 3
By: - Jan 22nd, 2014The Newport Jazz Festival is the most renowned of its kind. This is the lineup for the festival at Forth Adams State Park in Newport Rhode Island. Be there or be square.
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New England Conservatory Free Jazz Concert
Jordan Hall January 27
By: - Jan 20th, 2014Join NEC's celebrated jazz and contemporary improvisation faculty in concert on Monday, January 27 at NEC's Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston. Performing are world renowned artists including Anthony Coleman, Jerry Leake, Jorrit Dijkstra, Ben Schwendener with Marc Friedman and Kenwood Dennard, Tim Ray, Ralph Alessi, Amir Milstein with Henrique Eisenmann and Jason Davis and more
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Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers at 74
Bye, Bye, Love
By: - Jan 04th, 2014The first appearance of the Everly Brothers on the Ed Sullivan Show was 30 June 1957 and their last 28 February 1971. In a career as pioneers of rock 'n' roll they charted 27 Top 40 singles and 35 Top 100 singles. As Mom put it, like Elvis, they were "Cheap and Common." Which is precisely why we loved them.
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Peter Mattei Superb at Carnegie Hall
The Met Orchestra Struggles with the Return of Levine
By: - Dec 23rd, 2013All was not well at Carnegie Hall as James Levine conducted Mahler with Met Orchestra. Despite inconsistencies this afternoon was wonderful because Peter Mattei sang.
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Bizet's Carmen
Presented by Hubbard Hall Opera Theater
By: - Dec 22nd, 2013In early February the Hubbard Hall Opera Theater will take another of their succinct piano reductions of a classic opera on tour to the Dorset Playhouse and the University of Albany. What better way to spend a cold winter night or a cozy afternoon before the Superbowl?
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Terry Teachout’s Definitive Book on Duke Ellington
We Loved Him Madly
By: - Dec 21st, 2013Wall Street Journal theatre critic, Terry Teachout, wrote a superb jazz biography "Pops: A Life of Duke Ellington." That became the one man play with John Douglas Thompson "Satchmo at the Waldorf" which opens soon Off Broadway. Now Teachout has written an even better biography "Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington." He is in the process of transforming that material into a play.
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Taking the Holidays in Strad
On Performing with the Legendary 1718 Firebird Violin
By: - Dec 19th, 2013Musician and author Gerald Elias reports on an offer he could not refuse. "I got to perform on the 1718 “Firebird†Stradivarius, one of the greatest violins in the world. Ever." Now based in Utah he travels to Tanglewood each summer to play with his former BSO colleagues. He also writes mystery novels with classical music themes.
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Die Fledermaus Rollicks at Lyric Opera
Who Wins: The Butterfly or the Bat?
By: - Dec 17th, 2013Only the Bat knows. Loren-Meeker who has mounted showcase and studio productions at Houston Grand Opera, a Hoffman for the ages at the Danny Kaye in New York and has directed at smaller opera houses around America, hits her stride in the big-time in the Johan Strauss, Jr. operetta, the most popular operetta of all time.
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Boston Baroque's Messiah
Historically Informed Performance
By: - Dec 16th, 2013"Messiah" might be a Christmas cliche, but Martin Pearlman and his Boston Baroque keep it light and fleet. The chorus was superb, composed of individuals who could sing in unison, but who were also able to break out of the group with their individual voices. I don’t recall ever hearing a chorus with so many distinct individuals.
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