Music
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A Chorus Line
At Ivoryton Playhouse
By: - Aug 22nd, 2018A Chorus Line now at Ivoryton Playhouse through Sunday, Sept. 2 is a “singular sensation” as one of its most well-known songs says. The show has everything and this production has almost everything right.
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Hair at Berkshire Theatre Group
Celebrating 50th Anniversary
By: - Jul 08th, 2018If you plan to see Hair at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, as well you should, a few tokes of medical marijuana will help to set the mood. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. On opening night we spotted a granny with a crown of woven daisys.
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Music Man at Canada's Stratford Festival
Not Just Shakespeare in Ontario
By: - Jun 25th, 2018When the performance is as admirably enjoyable as this one is, even a “Music Man” without a commanding Music Man is worth making a real effort to see.
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Orphic Moments by Master Voices
Anthony Roth Costanzo and Matthew Aucoin Featured
By: - May 07th, 2018Anthony Roth Costanzo is a counter tenor opera aficionados come out to hear. His voice is unusually rich for this range. He is a physical actor of great skill. The Master Voices presentation of Orphic Moments implanted a dramatic cantata Matthew Aucoin wrote for Costanzo into the opera by Gluck.
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Carmen at Opera Philadelphia
New Production Sizzles at the Academy of Music
By: - Apr 30th, 2018Carmen has arrived in all her glory at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Heralded by digital billboard signs on the highways and byways around the city, and topping off the PECO Building in downtown Philadelphia, the news is being broadcast. The Academy has been packed. This new production by Opera Philadelphia and its partners in Seattle and Ireland, is smashing.
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Uchida at Carnegie Hall
Sheer Perfection at the Piano
By: - Mar 02nd, 2018Is it possible for an artist to be above criticism? That question is necessitated by this week's schedule st Carnegie Hall, which features not one but two recitals of Schubert piano sonatas by the astounding Mitsuko Uchida. On the concert hall as well as on disc, Uchida offers a highly personal approach to these works. At the first of these concerts on Monday night, she offered three of the sonatas.
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American Lyric Theater Alumni in Concert
Incubating Opera Through Mentorship
By: - Jan 15th, 2018The American Lyric Theater has an annual concert in which the work of their alumni is featured. This year's program included an opera by Patrick Soluri with libretto by Deborah Brevoort; a Christmas opera by Ricky Ian Gordon, libretto by Royce Vavrek; and a one act children's opera.
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Orchestra Now at Alice Tully Hall
In Search of Space
By: - Dec 19th, 2017The Orchestra Now is still a new presence on the classical music scene in New York but it is, on the surface, a pretty good idea. Conceived by Bard College president Leon Botstein, T?N (as they style themselves) is the renamed, re-packaged, re-marketed top-level student orchestra of that august educational institution. On Thursday night, the Bard students visited Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall to play an ambitious program under the baton of JoAnn Falletta.
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First Night Saratoga 2018
Light Up the Night
By: - Dec 14th, 2017As one of the oldest and largest celebrations of its kind in the country, First Night Saratoga is the most affordable, accessible, safe and exciting way to spend New Year's Eve in New York's capital region. With over 170 different performances from 6pm to midnight, this event is great for everyone from kids to couples who want a fun night out on the town!
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Hannigan and de Leeuw at Park Avenue Armory
Eric Satie's Death of Socrates Performed
By: - Nov 19th, 2017The lights in the corridor outside the Veterans Room in the Park Avenue Armory, dimmed to black and down the hallway proceeded the featured artist, Barbara Hannigan, bearing a candle.
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National Sawdust 5 Boroughs Music Fest
New York's Composers a Riot of Song
By: - Nov 17th, 2017In one fell swoop, Jesse Bloomberg, the artistic director for the 5 Boroughs Music Festival, brings together a sampling of composers who are tucked into the nooks and crannies of our city. Assigning them the subject of the city unleashes their spirited take on New York. Songs ranged from poetic evocation to the tiny drama about a struggling barista which was inspired by Monteverdi.
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Alyson Cambridge Sings at The Crypt
William Bolcom's Song Cycle on Sally Hemings
By: - Nov 16th, 2017Composer William Bolcom and librettist Sanda Seaton have drawn a complex and moving picture of Sally Heings in an 18 song cycle. Soprano Alyson Cambridge is Sally and her performances evokes the slave/mistress of Thomas Jefferson.
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Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera
James Morris' 1000th performance at the Met
By: - Oct 18th, 2017Turandot is Giacomo Puccini’s final, unfinished work. It is a a grand fantasy of legendary China as reimagined through the lens of Italian romanticism. It is a farm tale, the story of an ice-hearted princess and the fearless Prince who wins her hand. It is seen (wrongly) as the end point of the genre of Italian opera. It is also, along with La bohème, the last of the Metropolitan Opera’s giant Franco Zeffirelli productions, crowded extravaganzas that evoke the opulence of a bygone era. (In this case, we’re talking about the 1980s.)
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The BSO Season at Tanglewood
Promises to Deliver
By: - Jun 25th, 2017Whisper the name "Tanglewood" and you will tickle the conscience of the novice classical music-goer, and fire the memories of those who have walked its grassy paths and visited the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Located on a sprawling estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, this is the Cadillac of summer festivals, offering symphonies, chamber music and opera to a throng of devotees who make the pilgrimage again and again.
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Wu Man and Shanghai Quartet
Make Music Not War at Park Avenue Armory
By: - Jun 22nd, 2017The Shanghai Quartet is an internationally acclaimed chamber group which bridges the sensibilities of East and West. Focusing in their program on folk music, you could close your eyes and sometimes imagine Ferde Grofé and Aaron Copland. Bach crops up as a reference.
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Babel from the White Lights Festival
Cacaphony of Words, Dance and Music
By: - Oct 28th, 2016The impact of the Tower of Babel is immediately felt in the silence of the Rose Theater. Watching steel frames in the shapes of cubes and rectangles built up and toppled on stage, seeing people trapped by them and also liberated graphically, drives home our divided world and the need for human unification. These structures both divide and unite. There is hope.
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Mark Morris Dance at Mostly Mozart
Morris Paints Notes in Dance
By: - Aug 27th, 2016Mark Morris is billed as a musician, and has, in fact, been music director of the Ojai Festival. He is clearly a musicians’ musician and knows as much about music as most professionals. His main gig is choreography. He insists on using live ‘bands,’ in this case, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra. Morris channels Mozart's notes in surprising and apt movements.
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New York Theatre Workshop's Hadestown
To Hell and Highwater with Anaïs Mitchell
By: - Jul 02nd, 2016A brilliant new take on the Orpheus myth by Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was the basis of the first opera written in 1600. It has intrigued artists ever since, from Monteverdi to Christoph Willibald Gluck to Jacques Offenbach. Dramatists too have found the tale impossible to resist, Thomas Pynchon, Salmon Rushie and Tennessee William among them. This may be the first time the audience sits in purgatory.
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Elektra is Galvanic
Murder and Revenge without Intermission at the MET
By: - Apr 23rd, 2016A remarkable non-stop performance by Nina Stemme – who never leaves the stage in this 110-minute production – sets the tone for a magnificent interpretation of Strauss’ devastating opera.
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Alexandre Tharaud Performs Bach
A Crypt Session at the Church of the Intercession
By: - Apr 05th, 2016Alexandre Tharaud is more than a musician's musician. His heart-rending performance of the Bach Goldberg variations put him at the same pinnacle of pianists as the Bach work is for music afficiandos. In a concert series performed in an intimate acoustic marvel, the crypt of the Church of the Intercession in upper Manhattan, Tharaud delivered a mesmerizing take on this crown jewel of compositions.
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Paul Appleby, the Natural, at Carnegie
A Master of Language and Meaning
By: - Mar 17th, 2016Paul Appleby has rocketed to the top of the music world. This modest, charming man has a voice for the ages and communicates in many languages with an easy skill. At Zankel Hall in New York he sang about the infinite varieties of love as expressed by Schumann, Wolf, Berlioz and Villa Lobos. Matthew Aucoin's Merrill Songs were premiered. This irresistible master tenor speaks to the heart.
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Tanglewood Update, new popular artists added to venue
June will be rocking at Tanglewood.
By: - Mar 01st, 2016Tanglewood is appealing to all age categories with the addition of popular artists, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jackson Browne, Train and the B52's.
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Boston Symphony Shakespeare Festival
Three Concert Program Features Vocal Music, New Works
By: - Feb 17th, 2016Acknowledging the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the BSO programmed music by some of the greats based on his works. Music director Andris Nelsons brought his lively intelligence to the enterprise, in which a new work based on Ophelia's words by the Dane Hans Abrahamsen was the stand-out hit.
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The Cleveland Orchestra Graces Carnegie Hall
Mitsuko Uchida Plays and Leads
By: - Feb 15th, 2016Mitsuko Uchida plays and conducts Mozart with the Cleveland Symphony. Will she continue in a new career as a conductor? In Munich, the Bayerische State Opera is often conducted by Oksana Lyniv. Gemma New is at the New Jersey Symphony, and Mirga Gražinyt-Tyla is the new music director of the Birmingham Symphony. Women are coming to the podium.
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Son House
Prechin the Blues
By: - Feb 12th, 2016A man of God in his twenties Delta man Son House succumbed to the Devil's music. During the Folk Revival I saw him perform at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival.
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