Music
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Satyagraha by Glass Live in HD
Clark Art Institute Nov. 19
By: - Nov 11th, 2011Philip Glass’s twentieth-century masterpiece Satyagraha comes to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on Saturday, November 19 at 1:00 pm, live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera. Don’t miss this “profound and beautiful work of theater†(Washington Post). Glass is widely regarded as among the foremost living composers.
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Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters in World Premiere
A Moving Performance by the Gotham Opera
By: - Nov 10th, 2011Some say critics are waiting to take Muhly down a peg or two, but his new opera doesn't even give them a chance. It is wonderful. The world premier of Nico Muhly’s eagerly anticipated chamber opera, Dark Sisters, was held at the Gerald Lynch Theater in New York last night.
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Angela Gheorghiu Triumphs at Carnegie
The Opera Orchestra of NY's Adriana Lecouveur
By: - Nov 09th, 2011A highly anticipated evening delivered the goods. With a stellar cast, the OONY put on the best opera performance in New York this year. Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, whose improbable and confusing plot is often noted, has beautiful music that more than makes up for over-threading the plot needle. Cilea rivaled his contemporary Puccini as a master of melody. His orchestration is subtle and yet full of drama.
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Boston Lyric Updates Macbeth
Production Set in a Timeless Nowhere/ Everywhere
By: - Nov 07th, 2011This "Macbeth" is visually and dramatically commanding, but the soloists, with one exception, are not stellar. Blessed with the work's two great numbers, Lady Macbeth dominates the action, but in his single aria the exiled Macduff steals the show.
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Opera Notes: Siegfried at the Met in HD
Jay Hunter Morris Steps in to Triumph
By: - Nov 02nd, 2011Everyone in haute opera was whispering, "Why is Morris, the cover, singing this role?" Morris answers, "I can do it and I will." And the good news is that he delivers. Siegfried will be screened Live in HD on Saturday at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington and the Beacon in Pittsfield.
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The Budapest Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Andras Schiff Delivers a Schubert Piano Concerto
By: - Oct 31st, 2011Europeans clearly have an edge in presenting music anyone can love, because they understand it, and do not hold back in performance. We have the beautiful sound of Carnegie and the new Disney, Fisher and Helzberg Halls whose sound is designed by Yasuhisa Toyota. Now they can begin to figure out how to bring an audience in.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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