Music
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British Rocker Alvin Lee Dead at 68
Inspired Birth of Gonzo Journalism
By: - Mar 07th, 2013A 1970 concert at Harvard Stadium by Ten Years After inspired the first published use of the word gonzo. We recall the birth of Gonzo Journalism on the occasion of the passing of British rock star Alvin Lee at 68.
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The Hit Men at Colonial March 21
Original Stars from Frankie Valli & The Four seasons
By: - Feb 27th, 2013Bringing beloved classics to life on the Colonial Stage, The Hit Men, featuring original stars from Frankie Valli & The Four seasons, perform live at The Colonial Theatre on March 21 at 7:30pm.
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Met Live in HD Features 10 Productions Next Season
James Levine Returns with Falstaff
By: - Feb 27th, 2013Met Music Director James Levine returns to the podium, leading a new production of Verdi’s Falstaff (December 14), directed by Robert Carsen, and the first Live in HD performance of Mozart’s Così fan tutte (April 26). The series opens on October 5 with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, starring Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecien, and Piotr Beczala in a new production conducted by Valery Gergiev and directed by Deborah Warner.
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The Philadelphia Orchestra at SPAC
Saratoga Performing Arts Center August 7 to 24
By: - Feb 25th, 2013The Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the preeminent orchestras in the world, will return to its summer stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center from August 7 – 24, to present an extraordinary season of classical and contemporary programs. Highlights of the season
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A Meistersinger for the Ages at Lyric Chicago
Johan Botha Shows His Stuff
By: - Feb 22nd, 2013David McVicar’s Meistersinger, produced originally at Glynebourne and shared by San Francisco and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, is a smashing presentation of this Wagner opera, often cited as one of the great works of world culture, and for good reason. In its humanity, wit, the wonderful orchestral sounds and its evocation of the longest day of the year in Nurnberg in the early 19th century Meistersinger is glorious.
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Green Valley Recreation Concert Series
Providing Arts To The Arizona Community
By: - Feb 20th, 2013In the last three years in which I have returned to reviewing performances I have seen a number of different nonprofit venues each different from any other. But this month, I confess, I came upon one whose origin I find stranger than most. It all started when I was working on my recent review of the latest Good Lovelies CD .
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A Great Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera
Rene Pape is Brilliant
By: - Feb 17th, 2013Wagner called his last opera Parsifal a stage consecrating festival play, not an opera at all. In this brilliant staging at the Metropolitan Opera, a joint effort with the Opera National de Lyon and Canadian Opera Company, just the right tone is struck for Parsifal’s quest. Francois Giraud clearly understands opera, the mission of a designer to put the music front and forward.
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The Solid Sound 2013 Update
Wilco at Mass MoCA June 21 to 23
By: - Feb 16th, 2013Joining the three-day Wilco celebration at Mass MoCA will be the acclaimed singer and songwriter Neko Case, indie-rock heroes Yo La Tengo, jazz adventurists Medeski, Martin and Wood, Duluth's low-fi darlings Low and a reunited Dream Syndicate whose Solid Sound performance will mark the full band's first North American concert in 25 years.
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Saratoga Chamber Music Festival
Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) August 4 to 20
By: - Feb 11th, 2013The Escher String Quartet – hailed by the Washington Post “as one of the top young quartets†in the world today will open the 2013 Season of the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival on Sunday, August 4 in the Spa Little Theatre.
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Andris Nelsons at the New York Philharmonic
On Wish List for Boston Symphony Orchestra
By: - Feb 08th, 2013Andris Nelsons, who helms the Birmingham Symphony in England, is everywhere these days. He can pick and choose his venues, but the big, tantalizing question is Boston. He conducted there last week and early this week and reports that the acoustics in Symphony Hall are superb. Members of the BSO do not hide their enthusiasm for this thoroughly musical young man.
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Boston Lyric Opera' s Clemency
No Mercy for James MacMillan's New Work
By: - Feb 07th, 2013In a seriously mistaken co-commision, Boston Lyric Opera, presents a parable about Abraham and Sarah by the Scottish composer James MacMillan that suggests that suicide killing is okay, if the victims are sinners.
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Ear Say: More CDs
The Haunted Windchimes and Bellowhead
By: - Feb 04th, 2013Two wild extremes each in their own way quite satisfying CDs comprise the pair we report on today. One hails from the mountains of Colorado and the other from the British Isles.
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The Steve Miller Band Tanglewood July 29
Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! August 29
By: - Feb 04th, 2013Steve Miller Band performs on July 29. The witty and fast-paced radio program Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! appears in the Shed on Thursday, August 29. Let the good times roll.
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Renee Fleming and Susan Graham Sing French Songs
Two Reigning Divas Reduce Symphony Hall To Their Personal Salon,
By: - Feb 04th, 2013In a program of French salon music, Renée Fleming and Susan Graham give the vocal recital a shot of adrenalin. Both Fleming and Graham are endowed with big warm voices, creamy or buttery or honeyed - whatever comparison you prefer. They sing together like a hand in a glove, their voices intertwining so that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
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A Brief History: A Great Collection of Dance Songs
Unabashed Shamanism by Composer Martin Case
By: - Feb 01st, 2013Martin Case employs the rhetoric of shamanism unabashedly. He often plays the role of trickster in his bait-and-switch style of composition, setting up a sense of expectation that he fulfills, time and again, with an apparent non-sequitur—answering a question, as it were, with another question. He has composed for companies and choreographers as varied as Boston Ballet, Prometheus Dance, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre,the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Samantha Cameron, Liz Bermann and Min Tzu Li.
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John Hodgman Leads Solid Sound Comics
Wilco's Mass MoCA Festival June 21-23
By: - Jan 30th, 2013Comedian, author, television personality and historian John Hodgman returns to Solid Sound 2013 to present another hand-picked line-up of comedic talent on Saturday, June 22. The Solid Sound Festival, brainchild of the Chicago-based musical innovators Wilco, returns to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams on June 21-23.
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Handel and Haydn Society's Purcell
A Weird but Entertaining Evening
By: - Jan 28th, 2013Purcell's "The Indian Queen" is merely the incidental music to a preposterous play by John Dryden, but it delivers a number of musical pleasures. Dryden’s play is based on total ignorance of the history of what later became Latin America. Pre-Columbian Mexico is at war with Peru, and Montezuma, historically the king of the Aztecs, is presented as the leader of the Peruvian forces who goes over to the Mexican side because his marriage proposal for the Peruvian princess he loves is rejected.
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Tanglewood Tickets on Sale January 27
Time to Mark the Summer Calendar
By: - Jan 25th, 2013his Sunday, January 27, is the first opportunity for the public to purchase tickets for the recently announced popular artist concerts at Tanglewood including a Melissa Etheridge performance (June 21); the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration featuring guitarist and vocalist Warren Haynes with the Boston Pops and conductor Keith Lockhart (June 22); a Jackson Browne concert, featuring special guest Sara Watkins (July 4); and an Ozawa Hall performance featuring jazz bassist/vocalist/composer Esperanza Spalding in her Tanglewood debut (August 4).
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BSO Does Hair-raising Verdi Requiem
A Requiem for the End of Time in Bicentennial Year
By: - Jan 21st, 2013Daniel Gatti led the enormous orchestra and chorus and four vocal soloists in Verdi's sole attempt at large-scale sacred music . Ferocious, uncompromising, Verdi’s Requiem is a Requiem for the End of the World. Maybe we can appreciate it now more than when it was written – we have witnessed several worlds end in our time and daily contemplate the imminent end of the planet.
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Crescendo Concerts February 2 and 3
Making It Up in Great Barrington
By: - Jan 21st, 2013More than simply a concert, “Making It Up†is an exploration of improvisation through a variety of musical genres, styles and time periods. More than simply a concert, “Making It Up†is an exploration of improvisation through a variety of musical genres, styles and time periods. The concerts will be held at the First Congregational Church, 251 Main St., Great Barrington, MA at 5 pm Saturday, February 2 and at Trinity Church, 484 Lime Rock Rd., Lakeville, at 4 pm Sunday, February 3.
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Two More Best CD's of 2012
Seinn and Kin Deserve Your Notice
By: - Jan 20th, 2013Once again we examine choices for best roots or traditional genre recorded and /or released in 2012. These two, certainly stretch the boundaries of the category and in quite diverse directions thematically and geographically. And let's hear it for and from Rosanne Cash. Take a listen.
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Melissa Ethridge at Tanglewood June 21
Pops Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration June 22
By: - Jan 16th, 2013Tanglewood is filling out its dance card with pop bookings. Singer-songwriter Melissa Etthridge will be featured in the Shed on June 22 with Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration the following night. Good times will be had by all.
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Newport Jazz Festival 2013
Wayne Shorter's Birthday Celebration
By: - Jan 15th, 2013One year away from celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein, Producer and Chairman of the Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc., announces the program for the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival presented by Natixis Global Asset Management, which will be held in Newport, RI, August 2 - 4.
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Ear Say for 2012's CDs
A Nod to
By: - Jan 13th, 2013Now anyone who can claim to have listened critically to all of the output in a 12 month period is clearly blowing hot air because if they did they would have no time for sleeping, reading or for other pursuits to which the younger and nimbler are prone.
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Jackson Browne July 4th at Tanglewood
Esperanza Spalding August 4
By: - Jan 08th, 2013American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, along with special guest Sara Watkins, returns to Tanglewood for the first time in 15 years, on Thursday, July 4, 2013, at 7 p.m. to perform in the Shed, with fireworks following the concert. Mr. Browne last performed at Tanglewood with Bonnie Raitt on August 24, 1998. He made his first Tanglewood appearance on July 31, 1973.
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