Front Page
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Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii Orchestra
New CD of Imagine Meeting You Here
By: - Jan 31st, 2019Imagine Meeting You Here (Alister Spence Music, 2019) is the latest release by Alister Spence, a recognized leader in Australia’s new music directive and one of his country’s most original and distinctive jazz pianists and composers of orchestral pieces.
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SongStudio at Carnegie
Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala as Master Teachers
By: - Jan 29th, 2019Communication is the theme of SongStudio. Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Master classes with Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala provided assurances for the future of the song.
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Janis Joplin at Harvard Stadium
In 1970 Bad Luck Came in Threes
By: - Jan 27th, 2019In 1970 I was hired to cover jazz and rock for the daily Boston Herald Traveler. To my dismay soon I was writing obituaries. It started with Al Wilson (July 4, 1943 – September 3, 1970) of the blues band Canned Heat. Then Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970). Not long after Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). That was the class of 1970 with an average age of 27-28. A year later we lost Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971).
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Carnegie Hall Presents Song Studio
Renee Fleming Gives Us The Song
By: - Jan 27th, 2019Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Her SongStudio took place in the Resnick Education Wing of Carnegie Hall.
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American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford
Closed Since 1989 Now Up in Smoke
By: - Jan 27th, 2019In 1955 with funding from select patrons The American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut was launched. It was the third major Shakespeare festival conflated with the name Stratford, the home of the Bard. Initially there was less competition in the region for its season of summer and student oriented productions. Relying on a few with deep pockets the company failed to seek a broad base of support for its 1600 seat venue and lavish productions. When founding donors died in the 1970s decline set in with the company ceasing operations in 1989. The property was abandoned and decrepit when recently it went up in smoke.
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When We Were Young and Unafraid
Sarah Treem Produced by Custom Made Theatre
By: - Jan 25th, 2019Why do women make self-defeating decisions when virtually certain of the dark consequences? These are among the questions explored in Sarah Treem’s entertaining and sometimes surprising When We Were Young and Unafraid.
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Looped at the Desert Rose Playhouse
Judith Chapman as Tallulah Bankhead
By: - Jan 25th, 2019It’s pure Judith Chapman totally immersed and completely in command within the skin, body movement, quirks, and tics of Tallulah Bankhead that reaches out and grabs the audience turning them into acolytes of an actor who knows how to take the stage and perform her special magic.
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100 Years Bauhaus
Opening Ceremonies in Berlin
By: - Jan 26th, 2019Angelika Jansen was lucky enough to experience many aspects of the '100 jahre bauhaus' (100 Years of Bauhaus) celebrations, from January 16-24, as she writes in her following article. Architecture and culture in the 20th Century were greatly influenced by works and activities of many members of an 'institution' that only lasted 24 years - and the Bauhaus impact lives on.
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One County Film Company
South Florida Brothers' New Movie Business
By: - Jan 22nd, 2019Brothers Andrew and Tim Davis' appearance as siblings in True West inspired a film-making collaboration. Work is under way on a second feature film even while the first has experienced multiple showings. The Davis brothers have big plans for their One County Film Company.
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The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno
At Chicago's Theater Wit
By: - Jan 24th, 2019Playwright Will Eno seems to want us to sympathize with these four people but none of them are fully drawn characters.
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Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon
By TheatreWorks Silicon Valley
By: - Jan 22nd, 2019Dramas such as Frost/Nixon – modern history as theater – present challenges. Those who lived through whatever subject at hand may feel they remember the facts well enough that a rehash will offer little interest. Those who sense there will be a political tilt to the play that doesn’t conform with their own may resist attending. In the case of Frost/Nixon relatively little time is dedicated to the interviews that were on television as part of the public history.
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Maestro at the Duke Theater
Toscanini in All His Glory
By: - Jan 23rd, 2019Toscanini is the subject of Maestro, now playing at the Duke Theater in New York through February 6. Eve Wolf has staged Toscanini’s late life, mixing in live music that he often performed, now played by a quartet and pianist on stage. Director Donald T. Sanders has woven these elements together to provide the texture of Toscanini’s life.
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What We’re Up Against by Therese Rebeck
Revival of 2011 Play in Chicago
By: - Jan 21st, 2019Playwright Theresa Rebeck is a master of dialogue and never hesitates to portray the bad manners of her contemporaries. Her 2011 play, What We’re Up Against, just opened as the inaugural production of Compass Theatre, a new Chicago Equity company.
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Awake at the Barrow Group
K. Lorrel Manning's Delicious Look at America Today
By: - Jan 21st, 2019In Awake, K. Lorrel Manning has created a triumphant piece which shakes sensibilities, upturns stereotypes and makes us smile at the sheer conundrum of being human. This is an entertaining , smoothly written and directed script . Nine skits with fifteen players are like leaves in the book of everyday America's s social and political issues as they inhabit our lives.
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Julia Bullock at Metropolitan Museum of Art
A Gorgeous Voice for Justice
By: - Jan 21st, 2019Julia Bullock is a young soprano who is designing a career to her personal specifications. Peter Sellars was attracted to her voice and performance after a Julliard college appearance as the young Vixen in Leoš Janá?ek’s Cunning Little Vixen. He lured her to Teatro Real in Madrid to perform in Henry Purcell’s “The Indian Queen.” She has performed in his work in San Francisco, and this summer took on the role of Kitty in “Dr. Atomic” at the Santa Fe Opera. She is now Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Piper-Heidsieck Flows at Oscar Nominations
Lots Of Milestones
By: - Jan 22nd, 2019Each year, Piper-Heidsieck, the official Champagne of the Oscars, throws a party to celebrate the nominations. Attending the party is lots of fun. The highlight is always the Champagne.
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Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega
At City Lit Theater
By: - Jan 21st, 2019Lope de Vega is considered Spain’s second most important author, following only Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. De Vega is said to have written 500 plays, 3000 sonnets, seven novels and novellas.
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Sophisticaled Giant Dexter Gordon
Insightful Bio of Tenor Titan by Maxine Gordon
By: - Jan 15th, 2019Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) with Billy Ecskstine bandmates, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey, was an innovator of bop during the 1940s. There is evidence of his early playing on Dial and Savoy, three minute, 78 rpm recordings. Through addiction and incarceration his career languished in the 1950s. From 1962 to 1976 he lived primarily in Copenhagen. With his wife and manager Maxine, the author of a detailed biography, he staged a comback in 1976. That was capped by an Oscar nominated performance in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986).
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Debussy at the Metropolitan Opera
Nezet-Seguin Makes His Mark
By: - Jan 16th, 2019Claude Debussy only wrote one opera. Pélleas et Mélisande (based on a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck) succeeds by destroying many of the conventions of the genre to which it belongs. On Tuesday night, the Met unveiled its revival of Pélleas, another acid test for its new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and a younger generation of singers wandering through the hazy, maze-y woods of the mythical kingdom of Allemonde.
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Goodbye, Dolly!
Remembering Carol Channing at 97
By: - Jan 15th, 2019Broadway and cabaret star Carol Elaine Channing passed away today at the remarkable age of 97. She originated the iconic lead on the 1964 production of Jerry Herman's Hello,Dolly! It earned her a Tony award for which she was nominated three other times. She was still glamorous and forever young, but pushing 60, when I saw her in the late 1970s at Boston's jazz and cabaret club Lulu White's. That spectacular night evokes many fond memories.
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Maui-Wowie with Charles Laquidara
Former WBCN DJ Retired to Paradise
By: - Jan 12th, 2019From 1968 to 2000, first on WBCN and then for the last five years with WZLX, Charles Laquidara was one of the most beloved, outspoken, and controversial DJ’s during a golden era of counter culture in Boston. At his prime he was one of America's most influential, top rated DJ's. We dicussed his unique career during two lengthy calls to his home in Maui.
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Free Shakespeare In The Park
Romeo and Juliet by Florida Shakespeare Theater
By: - Jan 14th, 2019An uneven South Florida mounting of Romeo and Juliet needs more energy. The Bard's poetry mostly fails to land in Florida Shakespeare Theatre's production. Miami-area based troupe finds the humanity of the characters in Shakespeare's tragedy of star-crossed lovers.
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Ismael Reed's The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda
Rome Neal Directs Sold-Out Readings at the Nyorican Cafe
By: - Jan 08th, 2019Audience response to The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, a new entertaining, witty and historically incisive play was unusually enthusiastic. Ismael Reed's work was still in street clothes with scripts in hand. The actors, despite the trappings, delivered their lines with pathos and conviction, and Reed's vision shown through the bare-bones milieu.
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The Infinite Hotel at Irondale
New Music/Theater Captures Audiences
By: - Jan 12th, 2019Death hangs over the exuberant music/drama The Infinite Hotel. Jib sings of the pain of loss from beginning to end. Her music is lifeful, as is the music of Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley who gave new work to this production.
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Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust
À la recherche du temps perdu
By: - Jan 10th, 2019An older man decides he will read Marcel Proust’s iconic novel. As he reads all six volumes over the course of a year, he responds to Proust and reflects on his own life. And his audience may gain insights into their own too.That’s the sum total of an engaging solo production titled Charlie Johnson Reads All of Proust, now on stage at Chicago's Den Theatre
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