Music
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Jesse Colin Young -Natick Center For The Arts
Smoother Than Ever
By: - May 23rd, 2012Jesse Colin Young is well remembered and appreciated in this area as was indicated by the full house that assembled Saturday night, May 5th at TCAN’s elegantly refurbished firehouse in downtown Natick. I suspect that many, like myself, had memories somewhat faded around the edge of that moody introspective rebel with long dark locks, brooding expression and clear bright tenor tone.
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Peter Gelb and the Met Get More Bad News
76 Year Old Opera News Stops Reviewing
By: - May 22nd, 2012In response to ever more devastating criticism Pater Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, is struggling to spin damage control with the media. For the past 76 years, Opera News, circulation 100,000, has enjoyed a close relationship with the Met. It has now announced that it will no longer review the Met and will focus its coverage on other companies.
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Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Celebration
All Star Concert July 14
By: - May 21st, 2012The musical centerpiece of the evening will be the Tanglewood 75th Celebration Concert featuring performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, as well as the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, led by conductors John Williams, Keith Lockhart, and Andris Nelsons. These legendary Tanglewood ensembles will be joined on stage by several of today’s leading artists, including violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianists Emanuel Ax and Peter Serkin, and vocalist James Taylor.
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Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society's Grand Finale
Why the CMS is More Valuable than Facebook
By: - May 20th, 2012Your friends are live performers and their instruments playing music, new and ages-old, rocking the wonderful wooden walls to make sounds you can't get canned. Chamber music is all about instruments conversing with each other and you, in the world's universal language. The CMS can teaches us how to do this.
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Wynton Marsalis at Tanglewood August 20
Season Closes with Pops/ Michael Feinstein/ Christine Ebersole Sept. 2
By: - May 16th, 2012While not exactly an overhaul, Mark Volpe appears to be tweaking the programming at Tanglewood. Sticking with the mantra of Tanglewood as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra means facing the reality or an eroding, senior audience. The annual season ending Tanglewood Jazz Festival has been scrapped replaced by booking A list jazz artists Wynton Marsalis and Christain McBride in Ozawa Hall and Pops in the Shed for a boldy revamped Labor Day weekend. And that's not all.
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A Conversation With Herb Gart - Part IV
Putting Programming Experience to Use
By: - May 13th, 2012The first thing I did was go to the New York folk managers and try to book their clients - Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and others. However, for whatever reason, they turned me down flat. I then, out of necessity, had to prove that a few managers in New York didn’t ‘own’ the folk scene.
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New York City Opera Triumphs with Orpheus
Rachel Taichman's Production is Perfect
By: - May 13th, 2012The score for Telemann's Orpheus was finally found in 1978, 250 years after its premier in the Goosemarket Opera of Hamburg. Taichman gives it a delightful new twist.
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Billy Budd, The Makropulos Case and Sex at the Met
Janacek and Britten Deliver the Real Goods Without Help
By: - May 12th, 2012Since General Manager Gelb arrived at the Met, every production features a diva in a nightgown. Carmen is the exception, and she symbolizes sex. Productions that precede regnum Gelb were able to be sexy just because they were created to be sexy.
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Luis Miguel at Caesar's Palace September 13 to 15
That's Vegas Baby
By: - May 11th, 2012Latin music superstar Luis Miguel will return to The Colosseum at Caesars Palace for a record sixth consecutive year during Las Vegas Mexican Independence Day weekend 2012 Thursday, Sept. 13 – Saturday, Sept. 15 at 9 p.m. The three night engagement is presented jointly by AEG Live and Caesars Palace.
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Karita Mattila in Janacek's Makropulos Case
Metropolitan Opera Offers the Elixir of Life
By: - May 09th, 2012Janacek considered The Makropulos Case one of his finest operas. After fighting for the rights, composition went smoothly. With his 70th birthday approaching, he may well have been thinking about extended life. Surely in Europe after World War I, in which 6,000,000 young men had died, the subject of life was at the front of many minds. An elixir to add a few centuries?
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Boston Baroque Presents Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice
Lean Production Brings Out Opera's Beauties
By: - May 08th, 2012Gluck attempted to strip baroque opera of its excesses. His major effort, based on the Orpheus myth, remains a singular work today. Is Gluck’s classic “reform†opera the most perfect work in the operatic repertory?
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Monadnock Music Festival 2012
Opening Night July 6 Peterborough Town House
By: - May 07th, 2012As it closes in on a half century of presenting exceptional classical music to New England, the Monadnock Music Festival is already beginning a new era with the announcement of its 2012 season.
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A Conversation with Herb Gart - Part III
Establishing Credibility
By: - May 06th, 2012"The Earle Hotel was one of the few buildings in Manhattan still wired for DC current. I watched my tape recorder go up in smoke. " With the decision to move his base of operations permanently to NYC, Herb finds his path beset with unexpected pitfalls from the very start. Of course he is not alone in the struggle and it is not long before he finds others depending on him. He also finds himself going head to head with some of the most powerful people in the industry.
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Kioi Sinfonietta Tokyo at Alice Tully Hall
Thierry Fischer Leads a Celebration of Cherry Blossoms
By: - May 04th, 2012The Japanese group of fabulous musicians is debuting in the US as they raise money for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami.
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Tanglewood Ticket Deals
$75 Season Lawn Pass for Berkshire Residents
By: - May 03rd, 2012Tanglewood, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this season, June 22-September 2, is offering a number of ticket programs designed to give visitors and Berkshire residents a wide variety of options when planning their visit to the BSO’s summer home. Kripalu and the Clark Art Institute are each teaming up with the BSO this summer to offer three new ticket deals showcasing a variety of different Berkshire summer attractions.
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Cutting Edge Operas by Wiprud and Sirota
Robert Browning and Boccaccio Stories Featured
By: - May 02nd, 2012Victoria Bond concluded her lively and provocative Cutting Edge concerts with two one act operas about ladies who scan passions far from the marital bed. In The Last Dutchess, Lucrezia has her head cut off. Lessons are learned by the time the second opera opens. The Clever Mistress, solicting help in the confession booth and taking advantage of her tottering husband's business obligations, gets off scot free.
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Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks at TCAN
Delightful 1960s Reset Thrills Natick Audience
By: - May 02nd, 2012Dan first came to our attention during the mid ‘60s as the drummer and then guitarist /vocalist for the under rewarded though widely acknowledged Charlatans. The Lickettes, Roberta Donnay and Daria, tarted up as floozies but unmistakably accomplished Jazz vocalists on their own, offered their backup vocals, instrumental percussion, hand gesture accompaniments, and playful body language commentary.
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Wagner Rings the Met
Live in HD Starts May 7
By: - May 02nd, 2012The mounting of Wagner's epic Ring Cycle by the Metropolitan Opera has provoked debate and controversy. Through global Live in HD broadcasts the controversial productions will be coming soon to a theatre near you. The cycle begins on May 7 with a screening of the Susan Froemke documentary Wagner's Dream.
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Patrick Watson at Mass MoCA June 30
Canadian Pop Icon
By: - May 01st, 2012Canadian icon Patrick Watson brings his unique blend of cabaret-pop and classically influenced indie rock to the Berkshires when he performs as part of MASS MoCA's Alt Cabaret series this summer on Saturday, June 30, at 8 PM. Raised in Quebec and now residing in Montreal, Watson comes to North Adams as part of Oh, Canada, MASS MoCA's year-long celebration of Canadian contemporary art.
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Sandrine Piau Pearly Toned, Lyrical Nocturnes
Boston’s Jordan Hall Celebrity Series With Susan Manoff
By: - Apr 30th, 2012Soprano Sandrine Piau, appeared with pianist Susan Manoff in the intimate setting of Jordan Hall, part of the Celebrity Series, last Saturday. Ms. Piau is an internationally acclaimed, baroque and lyric soprano who has performed in most of the concert festivals in Europe, as well as at Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn Academy of Music, both in New York. More at ease in the French repertoire than the German lieder, she nevertheless achieved a near perfect functional tonality and genuine success with Ms. Manoff’s sensitive and precise accompaniments.
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Handel and Haydn Society: Jubilant Coronations!
Soprano Teresa Wakim’s Triumphant Debut at Symphony Hall
By: - Apr 30th, 2012The Handel and Haydn Society concluded their season with a program of King and Queen’s Coronations Music from Handel’s “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, from Salomon†and “Coronation Anthem No. 1, Zadok the Priest,†Hayden’s “Symphony No. 85 La reine,†“Exsultate, Jubilate, K. 165†and “Mass in C Major, K. 317, Coronation†by Mozart. Maestro Harry Christophers received accolades for an exceptional season of direction and the silver-voiced soprano, Ms. Teresa Wakim, enjoyed a triumphant debut.
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Juilliard Presents Don Giovanni
Stephen Wadsworth at the Helm
By: - Apr 29th, 2012The opera of all operas Don Giovanni is among other things the perfect vehicle to display up and coming talent. Stephen Wadsworth, a man of many hats who directed this production as the head of the Opera Studies department at the Juilliard School of Music.
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A Conversation With Herb Gart – Part II
Back and Forth Twixt Philadelphia and NYC
By: - Apr 28th, 2012This continues the conversation started in Part I. Folk recordings are still a minor component of the recording industry, but that is on the verge of change as more established companies in the music industry begin to view it for its profit potential.
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John Corigliano's Ghost of Versailles
Manhattan School of Music Brings the Ghosts to Life
By: - Apr 27th, 2012An opera mounted too seldom is everything you could want in the Manhattan School's production. This subversive opera pricks our understanding of history, of stories and of opera itself. Early on, the audience knowingly laughed when it was suggested on stage that opera was boring. There was nothing boring about the proceedings in uptown Manhattan.
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For The Love of the Music : The Club 47 Folk Revival
A film by Todd Kwait & Rob Stegman
By: - Apr 25th, 2012For The Love of the Music attempts to tell the story of the legendary Harvard Square coffeehouse and folk performance venue, Club 47, and its eventual successor, Club Passim over a ten plus year period from 1958 to 1968.
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