Music
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Mark Morris: Two Operas
An Evening of Britten and Purcell
By: - Mar 16th, 2017Mark Morris does not leave not-well-enough alone. He enlivens Benjamin Britten's Curlew River with instruments on stage as they would be in the Noh drama on which this opera is based. He places the singers in the pit for Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. On stage, dancers enact the roles to entrance and also enhance the music. Morris conducts, directs, conceives and pleases along the way.
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James Cohn All American Composer
Rich Brew of National, Folk, and Classical
By: - Mar 17th, 2017Joe Rosen, n crucial patron of the arts in New York City, often introduces the work of a composer who should be better known, James Cohn. Like Bartok and Dvorak, Cohn has plucked melodies from America’s folk music, adding distinctly modern disharmony, and yet capturing the rhythms, for instance, of the West.
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Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress
The Boston Lyric Opera Production is Stylish and Sexy
By: - Mar 22nd, 2017The morality play, inspired by Hogarth, was turned into an overlong, prolix opera by Stravinsky and his collaborators W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. An attractive young cast does its best but can barely bring this dud to life. Special shout-outs to set and costume designers who made the production hip and racy.
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American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Reich, Hertizberg, Prestini and Weston Rock Zankel Hall
By: - Mar 26th, 2017Contemporary classic music is thriving. No longer is the ACO alone in performing new composers. Yet over the years they have commissioned and performed contemporary classical composers when few others would.
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TenThing Brass Comes to New York
Tine Thing Helseth's Group Dazzles with Class
By: - Mar 28th, 2017TenThing brass came to Scandanavia House. The group consisting of four trumpets, four trombones, a horn and a tuba, has been touring the US to great success. Brassy and classy, they are as infectious as they are intimate. Ten, long-stemmed musicians delight.
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Janácek's Adventures of Vixen Sharp Ears
Natural World's Entrance at Manhattan School of Music
By: - Mar 30th, 2017When the Adventurs of Vixen Sharp Ears was selected for the spring opera production at the Manhattan School of Music the prescience in this time of challenge to our climate and natural world could not have been foreseen. Yet watching the moving and charming production this week, the impact of our country’s abandonment of planetary care makes Leoš Janácek's opera all the more touching
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Adams and Riley at Carnegie Hall
Saved by the Bells
By: - Mar 31st, 2017For the past half century our ears and minds have been assaulted with sound. Many of us have ceased to hear. Yet modern composers are creating music to which you must listen to enjoy. They are opening up our ears. This spring, in the intimate Zankel Hall, Carnegie is presenting three generations of contemporary composers led by curator Steve Reich. There is no better way to start listening again. No matter how minimal the style, this music is saved by the marimba and vibraphone bells.
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Conrad Tao Rages at Crypt
Copland and Rzewski Featured
By: - Apr 06th, 2017Conrad Tao is a fearless performer. He is open to reactions that can be very harsh and cruel, and also very beautiful. The Aaron Copland Piano Sonata that sat in the center of the program is a very calm, contemplative and yearning piece. It is during this almost withheld performance that you can clearly feel Tao’s art.
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Michael Tilson Thomas at Carnegie Hall
San Francisco Orchestra Comes in From the Storm
By: - Apr 08th, 2017The San Francisco Orchestra arrived in New York at 4:30 am on the morning of their first concert. Storms had delayed them, and stormy music formed the center of their magnificent concert at Carnegie Hall. You would never guess that these performers were sleep-challenged as they played John Cage’s Seasons, the Shostakovich Cello Concerto and Bartok’s intimate Concerto for Orchestra, a marvel in its ability to engage and draw us in.
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Three Generations of Composers at Carnegie
Part, Glass and Reich Featured
By: - Apr 07th, 2017The Deans of Contemporary Music for the past fifty years were represented at Zanekl Hall, in Carnegie Hall. Steve Reich is curating this series of concerts. They are revealing and surprising.
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Can the Metropolitan Opera Survive
The House is One-Quarter Full
By: - Apr 10th, 2017Sitting in the 7th row of the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, in a skimpy house, most of my neighbors had paid between $20 and $37.50 for their tickets. Fortunately for the Met Opera, HD fans have a different take on Met productions than people who like their opera live.
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Mason Bates and Mark Campbell's Steve Jobs
New Opera at Santa Fe Previewed at the Guggenheim
By: - Apr 12th, 2017Mason Bates, one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers, has created an opera about Steve Jobs. Mark Campbell, the go-to librettist for contemporary opera, is Bates' teammate in the (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. A teaser was presented at the Guggenheim Museum’s indispensable and entertaining Works and Process series.
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Rocker J. Geils at 71
Leader and Namesake of a Boston Band
By: - Apr 12th, 2017J. Geils (1946-2017) was the guitarist and leader of Boston's iconic J. Geils Band. The blues and rock group started in 1987 when lead singer Peter Wolf joined after Hallucinations broke up. Initially a blues based band they toured relentlessly while enjoying modest hits and mostly FM radio play. That changed when they left Atlantic Records and released the hit album Centerfold for Capitol/ EMI in 1981. While touring arenas for several years the band broke up after one last album when Wolf left to pursue a solo career.
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Figaro 90210
Direct from Hollywood to Broadway (Off)
By: - Apr 12th, 2017Figaro 90210 may mess with Mozart, but he would have loved the result. The updated opera is hilarious. All the singing actors bring to their individual characters voices that are rich and illuminating. Action is packed with gesture, silly and often touching.
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MASS MoCA Season Starts May 28
Gallery and Performance Updates
By: - Apr 18th, 2017MASS MoCA launches into the summer season on May 28 with the opening of Building 6, the third phase of campus development, which encompasses more than 130,000 square feet of interior renovations to its 19th-century mill buildings.
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Tilson Thomas and Gehry's New New World
Miami Beach Leads the Way to Future of Classical Music
By: - Apr 18th, 2017Frank Gehry babysat for Michael Tilson Thomas in Los Angeles where they both grew up. Now they are building a new world for classical music together.
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Wilco Headlines Solid Sound
June 23-25 at Mass MoCA
By: - Apr 20th, 2017Wilco headlines and supports a biannual music and art festival at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The festival this year takes place from Friday, June 23rd to Sunday June 25th.
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Berlin Artists at Carnegie Hall
Showing the Way to Music's Future
By: - Apr 21st, 2017As the music world becomes omnivorous and all-encompassing, it is terrific to spend an evening with consummate young musicians playing whatever their bliss is and making it ours.
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Anthony Marwood and Les Violons du Roy
Sheen Center Scene of Extravagant Music-Making
By: - Apr 25th, 2017The intimate 273 seat theatre at the Sheen Center on Bleeker Street is a perfect setting for chamber music. Anthony Marwood and members of Les Violons du Roy performed Strauss, Mozart and Enescu in the intimate space. Opening out from a sextet to an octet, the group became increasingly animated and in fact agitated in a pleasing style, amusing the audience at the end with their passionate bowing and music making.
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Boston Baroque's Giulio Cesare
Handel's Greatest Opera a Real Challenge
By: - Apr 27th, 2017Boston Baroque's "Giulio Cesare" marked the role debut of soprano Susanna Phillips as Cleopatra in this tale of love and war with Cleopatra and Julius Caesar its central protagonists. Full of ravishing arias and ensembles, the opera is almost an embarrassment of riches. Boston Baroque did it justice if not in the elusive definitive production it deserves.
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Natalie Dessay at Carnegie Hall
Love Explored from Heaven to Hell
By: - Apr 27th, 2017Hearing this perfectly beautiful voice reminds us of all the pleasure Natalie Dessay has given as an opera performer. As a concert artist, she brings dramatic talent to the words of song writers and adds a soupçon of opera to completely satisfy.
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War Paint on Broadway's Dueling Divas
Veterans Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole Star
By: - Apr 28th, 2017As wonderful as soprano Christine Ebersole cum Elizabeth Arden is – and the lady does have a couple of sensational show stoppers - it is the in-your-face belter Patti LuPone’s Helena Rubinstein who commands the most on stage attention in this show, as Rubinstein did in her every day life with her exotic wardrobe and jewelry, her thick European accent, and fast-flying zingers. “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones,” is one of her more famous quotes.
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Babes in Toyland by MasterVoices
Kelli O'Hara and Bill Irwin Headline Superb Cast
By: - Apr 29th, 2017Babes in Toyland debuted over a century ago. It has been reprised in many film and TV versions. Now we have it as it started out, as one of the first American musical comedies, a genre in which this country specializes. MasterVoices concocted a delicious concert version at Carnegie Hall.
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Three Generations Curated by Steve Reich
Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly st Carnegie Hall
By: - Apr 28th, 2017The fourth and last concert of the Three Generations series that took place in Zankel Hall was dedicated to the third generation: composers Nico Muhly and Bryce Dessner. Steve Reich who orchestrated this event, highlighted the composers who contributed to "changing the direction of concert music", as the subtitle further implies and actually unites them under the "same roof".
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Di Donato in Handel at Carnegie Hall
Harry Bickett Conducts The English Concert
By: - May 01st, 2017After his patron King George I died, Handel made a big comeback with three operas. Ariodante is the last and glorious. Set in Scotland, it is important to understand that, like the state of Texas in the US, women get killed if they are unfaithful. The culprit here is exonerated. The music and the singing triumph over all.
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