Music
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In Durance Vital - Part IV
Notable Music From Musical Notables
By: - Oct 28th, 2011Once again I have a batch of some new and some almost new goodies by real oldies almost all of whom are still putting out music worth listening to. I address these descriptions mostly to those of you who survived the ‘60s and the decades that followed, but if you were not around then, here is recent music by some of the best who may have made daily life for your parents and grandparents if not joyous, a bit more bearable.
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Opera Boston's Beatrice et Benedict by Berlioz
A Scintillating Production Restores Faith
By: - Oct 28th, 2011Beautiful sets and costumes and a young and vibrant cast who sang Berlioz's enchanting music with real verve combine to create a real hit. Beatrice et Benedict, an opera-comique with spoken dialogue as well as sung arias, ensembles and choruses, was Berlioz’s last work, and you get the feeling that he was tired of the battles he had waged as a young man against the establishment to create a new, modern and identifiably French music.
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Live from the Metropolitan Opera, Don Giovanni in HD
Arrives in the Berkshires October 29
By: - Oct 26th, 2011Find it at Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, the Clark in Williamstown.
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Angela Meade's Glorious Anna Bolena at the Met Opera
Comparisons to Joan Sutherland
By: - Oct 25th, 2011Meade make her mark in the Berkshires singing excerpts from Norma and I Lombardi last summer. If you hear her, you will never forget her. A big, glorious voice full of all the complex detail the style requires.
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Faust from the Royal Opera House, London
Opera in Cinema Expands its Horizons
By: - Oct 25th, 2011The Morgan Library in New York, and the Berkshire Museum, showed a performance of Gounod's Faust straight from Covent Garden and featuring a stellar cast. We are going to have a banquet of operas to choose from, and filming decisions made in this production felt a lot more like opera than the Metropolitan's HDs.
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The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Fabio Luisi Conducts a Harbison World Premier
By: - Oct 17th, 2011Fabio Luisi conducted the Met Orchestra as the new Principal Conductor. Luisi and the Orchestra are on the same page, seeming to enjoy each other and make wonderful music. Let's hope that he is made Artistic Director soon. The post has been vacant for too long.
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The Good Lovelies Concert in Hardwick
Captivates Audience At Eagle Hill Cultural Center
By: - Oct 17th, 2011Sometimes, The Right Act Meets The Right Audience And It's Love At First Song. While standing O’s have become commonplace, the two that bracketed their encores seemed far more spontaneous and more enthusiastic than usual and most of the audience was clearly reluctant to let them go.
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Grace Kelly and Phil Woods at the Colonial
7th Annual Pittsfield City Jazz Festival
By: - Oct 16th, 2011It was five years ago to the day when the prodigy alto player Grace Kelly first performed with alto master Phil Woods on stage at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. As a part of the 7th Annual Pittsfield City Jazz Festival the performance was recorded for future release on CD. The evening just blew our socks off.
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B.U.'s Fringe Festival Friend of One-Act Opera
Two Offerings This Season, One Old, One New
By: - Oct 16th, 2011B.U.’s Fringe Festival undoubtedly considered it a coup to produce “Three Decembers†and get Heggie to come and give master classes. But if it wants to retain its claim to being a true Fringe Festival it should strive to look for work, vintage and new, that offers more challenges to both audiences and students.
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Gotham Opera and Nico Muhly at Le Poisson Rouge
An Exciting Evening of Song
By: - Oct 15th, 2011While naturally-occurring sounds of the kitchen sometimes accompany singers, Le Poisson Rouge is surely the venue of the future. Intimate venues where performance of classical music is up close and personal draw packed houses. The three dinosaurs at Lincoln Center will probably have to go.
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Adriana Lecouvreur from Convent Garden in HD
Direct to the Berkshires on October 23
By: - Oct 12th, 2011The HD broadcast field expands to include wonderful opera productions from around the world. Adriana Lecouvreur from Convent Garden will be a treat with Angela Gherghiu, banned at the Met, and Jonas Kaufman.
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David Mallet's Inch By Inch, Row By Row
Continues To Sow at Eagle Hill Cultural Center
By: - Oct 12th, 2011In concert at Hardwick’s Eagle Hill Cultural Center, the audience welcomed him warmly and offered up two standing and extended ovations at the end.
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Gergiev Conducts The Mariinsky at Carnegie Hall
A Spellbinding Performance of Tchaikovsky
By: - Oct 11th, 2011Valery Gergiev is one of the busiest conductors in the world. Last spring, he was booked in Moscow one day and at the Met in New York the next. He didn't quite make it to the second assignment, sad for us in the US. But here he is at Carnegie, thrilling a Sunday afternoon audience.
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Tobias Picker Honored at Columbia University
The Miller Theater Presents a Compelling Composer Portrait
By: - Oct 07th, 2011Tobias Picker collaborates with performers. Ursula Oppens, who has been his muse and articulator for decades,was on stage to talk to the charming and witty composer. Sometimes called 'conservative' because his music is easy on the ear, challenging and beautiful are better adjectives for this important American composer.
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Placido Domingo on a Tear
Attacks Washington Post Critic
By: - Oct 04th, 2011We have noted in the past that Domingo is a wonderful singer who deserves to sing forever. But, as a conductor, the great Metropolitan Orchestra and the Met's singers deserve better. Now he fights back.
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Maria Muldaur At The Bull Run In Shirley
Weaving New and Old
By: - Oct 02nd, 2011Sometimes leading the beat, sometimes following, her voice gliding up and down the scales, stroking, stretching, bending and twisting the notes. For close to two hours, Maria Muldaur without a break performed blues, gospel, r&b, funk and folk.
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Alan Gilbert Triumphs with the New York Philharmonic
Stephanie Blythe Sings a Gorgeous World Premiere by John Corigliano
By: - Oct 01st, 2011A dark and elegiac tone pervaded Avery Fisher Hall last night but the sheer beauty of the music performed, and the moving music Alan Gilbert drew from the orchestra and Stephanie Blythe riveted and stunned the audience.
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Anna Bolena at the Metropolitan Opera
Live in HD on October 15
By: - Sep 28th, 2011Don't worry about the glitches and problem pitches in the Met's new production by David McVicar. HD transmission covers a multitude of sins.
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I Feel So Good
The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy
By: - Sep 14th, 2011Bob Riesman tracks the life of William Lee Conley Broonzy through murky early years to his death in 1958.For devotees of the Blues, the evaluations of this book voiced in the foreword by genre sage, Peter Guralnick, and echoed in an appreciation by blues performer, Peter Townshend, voice my thoughts about this biography of Big Bill Broonzy, his life and his contributions to an iconic musical form.
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Manahan Conducts Mahler at Baryshnikov Arts Center
Jennifer Johnson Cano and Paul Groves Shine
By: - Sep 10th, 2011With 9/11 looming in the background, Mahler's gorgeous tribute to the joys of life and also its perils was a perfect prelude to commemorations. Maestro Manahan conducted the Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York. It is the 100th anniversary of the premier of the song symphony.
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Gunther Schuller and Jimmy Cobb on Miles Davis
Birth of the Cool and Kind of Blue
By: - Sep 09th, 2011In 1949 Gunther Schuller played horn as a part of the Miles Davis nonet in sessions originally released as 78 rpm singles. Several years later in the early days of LPs the singles were reissued as the album Birth of the Cool. Jimmy Cobb was the drummer of the classic Davis album, a continuing best seller, Kind of Blue. During a session with critic and historian, Bob Blumenthal, during the Tanglewood Jazz Festival they recalled those now historic recordings.
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Cavalli Comes to Le Poisson Rouge
Opera Omnia Presents a Ribald Myth
By: - Sep 08th, 2011Under the same constraints that the original production had, Wesley Chinn re-iamgined this opera, the I Love Lucy of its time, with great singers and a charming staging.
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Tanglewood Jazz Festival Two
Sing the Truth, Mingus/ Schuller, Cobb
By: - Sep 07th, 2011The Sunday afternoon program featured the Jazz Masters, drummer Jimmy Cobb fronting Coast to Coast All Stars. Followed by The Mingus Orchestra conducted by Gunther Schuller. The evening program Sing the Truth featured Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves, and Lizz Wright. With that the season ended for Tanglewood in the Berkshires. Such sweet music.
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Tanglewood Jazz Festival 2011 One
Cachao Tribute Judy Carmichael Blythe Danner
By: - Sep 05th, 2011The annual Tanglewood Jazz Festival was a three day slam dunk. There was a superbly balanced program that introduced emerging artists as well as performances by jazz masters. A nice addition this year featured scull sessions with jazz critic and historian Bob Blumenthal. It was everything you would hope for in a great jazz festival. This is part one of our coverage.
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Porgy Gets His Bess at ART
Gershwin's Opera Is Moving Musical Theater
By: - Sep 03rd, 2011Fears that ART's Diane Paulus would trash George Gershwin's folk-opera "Porgy and Bess" prove unfounded in vibrant production. Opera or musical theater? Who cares.
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