Music
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Aliens Arrive at Symphony Hall in Chicago
City on High Alert, but Children Entranced
By: - Feb 09th, 2014Aliens from Planet X landed in Chicago on the stage of Symphony Hall at approximately 11 am on Saturday, February 8th. Quickly word spread that a Martian cylinder had landed in Chicago. Orson Welles broadcast an earlier Martian arrival. While the city’s panicked citizens fled town through fat puffs of snowflakes falling over Michigan Drive, many young people embraced the two ETs on stage, who were unable to speak an earthly language, but gestured in a language of signs.
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Under Riccardo Muti
Musical Messages Delivered with Passionate Panache
By: - Feb 07th, 2014This evening introduced spaghetti-Western composer Ennio Morricone. Often nominated for an Academy Award, he finally won one for lifetime achievement. Clint Eastwood translated his acceptance speech live. Before Muti began to conduct Morricone’s tribute to 9/11, Maestro Muti pointed out that this music has a message. The piece begins with a poem by the South African Richard Moore Rive. Ora Jones beautifully articulated the rainbow of our world, where words are neither white nor black. “Where the rainbow ends, there’s going to be a place…where we can sing together, a sad song. “
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NEC Presents A Hard Rain's Gonnah Fall
February 18 at Boston's Jordan Hall
By: - Feb 04th, 2014Join New England Conservatory's Eden MacAdam-Somer and Contemporary Improvisation department students and faculty in a concert featuring original works and recompositions that offer a kaleidoscopic perspective on protest music and social change throughout history. The concert takes place on Tuesday, February 18 at 8 p.m. in NEC's Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA. It is free and open to the public.
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Remembering Folk Legend Pete Seeger
We're All Brothers And We're Only Passing Through
By: - Feb 02nd, 2014I have few if any idols in my pantheon, but if there is anyone that I admired enough to put there, Pete Seeger might well be the one.
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Ear Say: Closing Out 2013
This, Too Long Left Unsaid
By: - Feb 02nd, 20142013 got a bit complicated at its end and I find myself struggling to catch up with writing of those events, sorting out the ones on which I want to comment and deciding which deserve sharing.
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Wilco Returns to Mass MoCA in 2015
Will Skip This Summer
By: - Jan 24th, 2014The Solid Sound Festival of Wilco has been a shot in the arm for the Northern Berkshire County tourism and hospitality industry. They will return to North Adams in 2015 but not this summer. This will be fourth festival organized by the band for Mass MoCA.
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Tanglewood Tickets on Sale January 26
The Best Seats Go Fast
By: - Jan 24th, 2014Tickets to the 2014 Tanglewood season, priced from $10 to $121, go on sale, Sunday, January 26, at www.tanglewood.org, through SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200, and at the Symphony Hall Box Office (301 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA). The 2014 Tanglewood season, June 27-August 30, features more than 100 performances, including concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center (the BSO’s prestigious summer music academy); chamber music, recital, and concert opera presentations in Ozawa Hall; and a series of Popular Artist concerts.
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Sondheim's A Little Night Music
I Could Have Waltzed All Afternoon at Emmanuel Music
By: - Jan 22nd, 2014Emmanuel Music's semi-staged performance of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" demonstrated to me that the Broadway musical has its merits. I had expected that whatever the quality of the performance I would be writing a review mourning Emmanuel Music’s decline from pursuing high seriousness in music to reveling in kitsch. How could I have been so wrong for so long?
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Newport Jazz Festival 2014
Schedule for August 1 through 3
By: - Jan 22nd, 2014The Newport Jazz Festival is the most renowned of its kind. This is the lineup for the festival at Forth Adams State Park in Newport Rhode Island. Be there or be square.
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New England Conservatory Free Jazz Concert
Jordan Hall January 27
By: - Jan 20th, 2014Join NEC's celebrated jazz and contemporary improvisation faculty in concert on Monday, January 27 at NEC's Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston. Performing are world renowned artists including Anthony Coleman, Jerry Leake, Jorrit Dijkstra, Ben Schwendener with Marc Friedman and Kenwood Dennard, Tim Ray, Ralph Alessi, Amir Milstein with Henrique Eisenmann and Jason Davis and more
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Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers at 74
Bye, Bye, Love
By: - Jan 04th, 2014The first appearance of the Everly Brothers on the Ed Sullivan Show was 30 June 1957 and their last 28 February 1971. In a career as pioneers of rock 'n' roll they charted 27 Top 40 singles and 35 Top 100 singles. As Mom put it, like Elvis, they were "Cheap and Common." Which is precisely why we loved them.
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Peter Mattei Superb at Carnegie Hall
The Met Orchestra Struggles with the Return of Levine
By: - Dec 23rd, 2013All was not well at Carnegie Hall as James Levine conducted Mahler with Met Orchestra. Despite inconsistencies this afternoon was wonderful because Peter Mattei sang.
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Bizet's Carmen
Presented by Hubbard Hall Opera Theater
By: - Dec 22nd, 2013In early February the Hubbard Hall Opera Theater will take another of their succinct piano reductions of a classic opera on tour to the Dorset Playhouse and the University of Albany. What better way to spend a cold winter night or a cozy afternoon before the Superbowl?
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Terry Teachout’s Definitive Book on Duke Ellington
We Loved Him Madly
By: - Dec 21st, 2013Wall Street Journal theatre critic, Terry Teachout, wrote a superb jazz biography "Pops: A Life of Duke Ellington." That became the one man play with John Douglas Thompson "Satchmo at the Waldorf" which opens soon Off Broadway. Now Teachout has written an even better biography "Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington." He is in the process of transforming that material into a play.
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Taking the Holidays in Strad
On Performing with the Legendary 1718 Firebird Violin
By: - Dec 19th, 2013Musician and author Gerald Elias reports on an offer he could not refuse. "I got to perform on the 1718 “Firebird†Stradivarius, one of the greatest violins in the world. Ever." Now based in Utah he travels to Tanglewood each summer to play with his former BSO colleagues. He also writes mystery novels with classical music themes.
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Die Fledermaus Rollicks at Lyric Opera
Who Wins: The Butterfly or the Bat?
By: - Dec 17th, 2013Only the Bat knows. Loren-Meeker who has mounted showcase and studio productions at Houston Grand Opera, a Hoffman for the ages at the Danny Kaye in New York and has directed at smaller opera houses around America, hits her stride in the big-time in the Johan Strauss, Jr. operetta, the most popular operetta of all time.
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Boston Baroque's Messiah
Historically Informed Performance
By: - Dec 16th, 2013"Messiah" might be a Christmas cliche, but Martin Pearlman and his Boston Baroque keep it light and fleet. The chorus was superb, composed of individuals who could sing in unison, but who were also able to break out of the group with their individual voices. I don’t recall ever hearing a chorus with so many distinct individuals.
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Mahlerpalooza
When a Musical OD Lands You in Intensive Care
By: - Dec 03rd, 2013I’m writing this in the MRU of a local hospital. MRU stands for Mahler Recovery Unit. I’m here for the long haul – six weeks of Rossini overtures, early Haydn symphonies and Scott Joplin piano rags. Mahler addiction respects no boundaries – rich, poor, the highly educated or just plain working-class folks – the MRU has them all.
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Boston Baroque Pops the Cork
Concerts to Celebrate the New Year
By: - Dec 03rd, 2013Following its annual tradition, Boston Baroque will once again "pop the cork" in grand style on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day! This year's celebratory concerts feature a rousing all-Bach program with Brandenburg Concertos No. 3 & No. 4 and Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Coffee Cantata) BWV 211 along with champagne and chocolates at intermission.
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Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Operas
The BEMF Delighted Jordan Hall Audience
By: - Dec 03rd, 2013The BEMF has produced five semi-stage chamber operas since 2008 and this Thanksgiving weekend presented excerpts from all five.
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Nils Frahm at Le Poisson Rouge
Music Between Minimalist and Electronic Conglomerate.
By: - Dec 02nd, 2013The concert featuring the music of Nils Frahm was sold out at New York's Le Poisson Rouge. His combination of ambient modern classical falls somewhere between minimalist and electronic conglomerate.
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La Traviata at the Lyric Opera of Chicago
Marina Rebeka Stars in Fabulous Production
By: - Dec 02nd, 2013Under General Director Anthony Freud, the Lyric Opera is transforming opera for the 21st century. Coming seasons will be increasingly General Manager Anthony Freud’s own creations and should be fascinating to watch unfold.
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2014 Boston Pops Season
Fun Fun Fun From May 7 to June 14
By: - Dec 02nd, 2013The 2014 Boston Pops spring season will introduce audiences to debut appearances by Warren Haynes (5/13 & 14), Tony award-winning Billy Porter (5/20 &21), and conductor Sarah Hicks (5/23 & 24), as well as first-time collaborations with the New York-based jazz band sensation The Hot Sardines (5/28-30) and Cirque de la Symphonie (5/16 & 17),the wildly unique circus act that brings its aerial flyers, acrobats, dancers, and jugglers to orchestral stages throughout the country. Opening night features comic Jason Alexander.
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Lizzie Borden's Forty Whacks
Boston Lyric Opera Slated for Tanglewood
By: - Nov 25th, 2013Although its mid-century Freudianism is dated, "Lizzie Borden" still packs a wallop as a work of music-drama. The recent Boston Lyric Opera production was a preview for a performance at Tanglewood this summer.
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Instrumental Magic
String Madness and Accord
By: - Nov 25th, 2013I generally avoid reviewing cd’s that are void of singing, so it is with some trepidation that I approach these two releases, and would with even greater hesitation were it not that each of them delights, astounds and begs me to listen to them repeatedly and often.
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