Susan Hall
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Recent Articles:
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New Music Virtual Town Hall Front Page
Our Digital Present and Future Explored
By: - Apr 07th, 2020Many of us sense that coming out of lockdown we will find ourselves in a very different world. Ideas that have emerged from isolation suggest ways in which a wider group of people, worldwide, can connect. Music is a universal language. Organizations like the International Contemporary Ensemble have led the way into a musical future unimaginable before the most recent technology revolution. Gathered to discuss subjects like how to make an audience out of disparate listeners and platforms available for cooperation and sharing, many other organizations offered insights.
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La Mama Presents Pananadem Front Page
Philippino Act of Remembering Dramatized in Dance and Music
By: - Apr 01st, 2020Full of color and a driving beat, this special Philippine dance group presents Pananadem. The term means “remembering” in the language of the Meranao people (Philippines). It is a way of looking back across time, to gain inspiration and perspective from one’s ancestors.
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Mannes is Music Front Page
Luisa Muhr Presents Women Between Arts
By: - Mar 31st, 2020The richness of music programming at the Mannes School, now a division of The New School for Social Research, is clear day to day. Women Between Arts (WBA) is New York’s leading interdisciplinary women and non-binary artists series, created and curated by multi- and interdisciplinary artist Luisa Muhr. Programming revolves around the question: "How do we make new art?"
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Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra Streams Stravinsky Front Page
Multi Media Rhythmic Extravaganza Delights
By: - Mar 29th, 2020Stravinsky composed La History del Soldado, a multi media piece, in 1914. Using speech, mime and dance accompanied by a seven piece band, we hear ragtime, tango, and other modern musical idioms combined in a series of highly infectious instrumental movements. Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra performed the piece, with an updated libretto they commissioned. It is delightful to hear, even long distance.
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Music and the Virus Front Page
Pitching In
By: - Mar 25th, 2020Many organizations are offering wonderful streaming. Reports suggest that music with videos is doing better than sound only. Atlanta Opera, led by Tomer Zvulun, may be providing the most useful help.
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Grammy to Fantastic Mr. Fox by Tobias Picker Front Page
Best Opera Recording Conducted by Gil Rose
By: - Mar 19th, 2020The libretto by Donald Sturrock is based on a book by Roald Dahl. Three farmers, Bunce, Boggis and Bean want revenge on Mr. Fox for taking their chickens, their geese and their cider. They are frustrated by Mr. Fox’s clever tactics. Gil Rose brings the music and story to life in this masterful recording which won the 2020 Grammy for Best Opera Recording.
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White Blacks: The Saga of an American Family Front Page
Melanie Maria Goodreaux Writes and Directs
By: - Mar 31st, 2020We begin as the guests at a black debutante ball in New Orleans. White staircase, be-gowned young women, stiffly poised young-men stand on the threshold of their presentation to society. Step by step we see the painstaking bows and courtesies of a society steeped in the mores of color and class that are expressions of the history of that city.
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Anywhere by Theatre L'Introverte at HERE Front Page
An Ice Puppet Oedipus Melts Before Us
By: - Mar 16th, 2020The theater is pitch black. A mysterious figure wrapped in a robe writes on a screen in black ink which drips on the illuminated board. “I which have bled for so long are beginning to heal. Black tears no longer course down his cheeks, inspiring the horrific feeling in others that these are their own bloodied tears." These are Oedipus' words as interpreted by Henry Bauchau, author of "Oedipus on the Road," which inspired "Anywhere." This is an unusual portrait of Oedipus' harrowing final journey.
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A Puppet Universe Kosmos Invers at HERE Front Page
Kalan Sherrard Laucnhes an Electric Take
By: - Mar 15th, 2020Kosmos Inverse is the world below and the world way out there. We have a powerful feeling of infinity as we are being cast into a carnaval space. The central sphere resmbles a mop. Depending on the lights, it can be colored red and green and purple. Pigs, an elephant who strongly resembles Mo Willems’, two classic rubber dolls, and a busty woman bounce before us.
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Network for New Music in Philadelphia Front Page
Musical Ecologies at a Hidden Lake
By: - Mar 12th, 2020On a recent Sunday afternoon, Network for New Music (NNM), an adventuresome Philadelphia group, gathered at The Discovery Center at the Hidden Reservoir in Fairmont Park.. The long pathway to the building’s main entrance leads visitors to a striking view of the center’s reservoir, a pristine, 37-acre body of water that was closed to the public for nearly 50 years. The Center provided a concert hall for music related to ecology.
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Metropolis Ensemble Debuts at National Sawdust Front Page
Ricardo Romaneiro's Score for Fritz Lang's Metropolis
By: - Mar 11th, 2020Metropolis is a Grammy-nominated Ensemble founded by Andrew Cyr, who encourages artists to realize their bliss. The group was not named for the Fritz Lang film, but the temptation to take on this silent great must have been tantalizing. The live, electronic score by Ricardo Romaneiro was brilliant and brilliantly realized by the musicians. Cyr conducts.
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The Chelsea Symphony Celebrates Women Front Page
Sojourner Truth, two Horn Players, Mazzoli, Frank and Tower
By: - Mar 10th, 2020This evening, part of the Rise Up Year devoted to music that inspires and uplifts, two gentleman, a bass player and a violist, composed pieces celebrating women. Women composers, Missy Mazzoli, Gabriela Lena Frank and Joan Tower were performed with gusto.
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Dai Fujikura Featured at Miller Theatre Front Page
International Contemporary Ensemble Delves into Fujikura's Music
By: - Mar 06th, 2020Dai Fujikura lives in the quotidian and draws from it for the music he creates. We hear a portrait of his daughter in the first month of her life, a secret forest where all the sounds are beautiful, and memories of high school friends who were all wannabe guitarists.
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Marie Cuttoli at Barnes Foundation Front Page
The Modern Thread from Miro to Man Ray
By: - Mar 04th, 2020A new exhibit at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia features the collection of Marie Cuttoli, an entrepreneur who convinced many of the artists of her time to create designs for her the workshops, first in her own design studio in Paris and then for the tapestry weavers of of Aubusson, France.
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Aspect Chamber's Musical Enemies: Debussy and Chausson Front Page
Grace Park and Gilles Vonsattel Superb on Violin and Piano
By: - Mar 02nd, 2020Irina Knaster founded the Aspect Chamber Music series to provide an enriched communal atmosphere for the performance of music. Concertgoers are invited to come early and drink wine and chat before the concert and during the intermission. Knaster fills the halls at the Bohemian National Center and Columbia's Italian Academy, two beautiful settings. She featured Grace Park and Gilles Vonsattel performing Debussy and Chausson.
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Welser-Möst Conducts the New York Philharmonic Front Page
From the Domestic Life of Strauss to Widmann's Streets of Babylon
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Franz Welser-Möst leads what is arguably the best orchestra in the United States, the Cleveland. His mastery of Richard Strauss' music is well-known. He began the program with the US premiere of Babylon Suite by Jörg Widmann, composer in residence at Carnegie Hall this year.
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Donald E. Lacy's Colorstruck Front Page
Theater for the New City Mounts Premiere
By: - Mar 01st, 2020Colorstruck and its creators come to us from the San Francisco Bay area where they have been involved in radio, theater and film. They are also participants in community outreach in the arts. Lacy has crafted a one man show which straddles a gap where tears laughter and anger resolve. On an empty stage, Lacy emerges from darkness, a black man in black clothing. He speaks for 75 minutes, lighting up our hearts and minds.
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Lincoln Center Great Performers' Mahler Front Page
Surrounded by Concerts and Films
By: - Feb 26th, 2020Lincoln Center's Great Performers surrounded us with Gustav Mahler for five days. In addition to a concert by Ivan Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra, three films were offered.
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Ivan Fischer and Budapest Festival Orchestra Front Page
Great Performers' Mahler at Lincoln Center
By: - Feb 25th, 2020There is no doubt that Gustav Mahler paired the Kindertotenlieder, symphonic poems of Friedrich Rückert and his Symphony No. 5. Seldom are they programmed together. We were given an extraordinary performance of both works in David Geffen Hall. Iván Fischer conducted the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
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Lucas Hnath Gives Us Dana H. Theatre
Probing a Mother's Kidnapping
By: - Feb 25th, 2020Lucas Hnath has a gift for making the past present on stage. In a marvel of edited tape, brilliant acting and staging, the Vineyard Theatre is hosting his play, Dana H. We don't see Edgar Bergen manipulating Charlie. Yet we hear the tape voice of the real Dana as it is mouthed by Deidre O'Connell. Taking on the voice, O'Connell inhabits the character, soundless, but with more subtle and apt gestures than you can imagine. It is a stunning evening of theater.
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Princeton Atelier at National Sawdust Front Page
Humanizing Electronic Sound
By: - Feb 24th, 2020Introductory visual and audio moments originated in climate data released as sound in a work by Kyle Barnes. This prelude was “a sonificaton of data for voice, electronics and video.” Images played on the huge back wall, which often serves as a screen in this special venue. Gentle scales crested and fell, warming us up for an introduction by Elena Park, a curator of National Sawdust +.
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Momentary Opens in Bentonville, Arkansas Front Page
A Kraft Cheese Factory Transformed
By: - Feb 20th, 2020The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a jewel created by the architect Moshe Safdie near a natural spring called Crystal and a bridge construction which is built into the museum. It was conceived and financed by Alice Walton whose family created Walmart, a company headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. Now other members of the family have joined her in creating an exciting performance space in an old Kraft cheese factory in town.
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Roland Colton Brings Us a Piano Music eBook Front Page
Mentioned Music Available at a Click as You Read
By: - Feb 18th, 2020Forever Gentleman, by Roland Colton, has several novel twists. It tells the tale of Nathan Sinclair, an architect and sometimes concert pianist of first-rate talents in both disciplines. When we meet him, he has been introduced into a good woman who deeply attracts him. He vows to settle a debt to a loan broker. He has incurred the debt because a client has been unable to pay up. One thread in the story is a Dickensian tour of Victorian debtor courts and jails in 1869. Colton is able to lead us through this tortuous path with vigorous, clear writing.
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Medea by Simon Stone at BAM Front Page
Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale Deliver Riveting Performances
By: - Feb 17th, 2020BAM is mounting an elegant, moving, hip update of the Medea story, written after Euripides by Simon Stone. Starring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, the set is a made up of a rectangular screen onto which video images are projected. Often we see the actors in extreme close up. Their miced voices bring them even closer. The backdrop of the stage and two wings which bend in at about 40 degree angles are white. So too the stage floor. It calls attention to the stage action and to the emotional temper of Anna and Lucas, Claire, the new girlfriend, Elspeth the therapist, and Anna's and Lucas’ two children, Edgar, and Gus.
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National Sawdust Presents Against the Grain Opera Front Page
Intriguing Peek Into Artists-in-Residence Program
By: - Feb 16th, 2020National Sawdust, an artist led Brooklyn group, is a leading incubator of new music. One aspect of their work is an artists-in-residence program. Committed to assisting the creation of music that has impact, artists are encouraged to draw from personal experience and their interpretation of the world. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup explores the opioid crisis.
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