The world premiere of “Breaking Through”, a musical with a book by Kirsten Guenther and music and lyrics by Cliff Downs and Katie Kahanovitz, is now on stage at The Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Playhouse Artistic Director Sheldon Epps.

The Mattress Factory, featuring site-specific installations created by artists in residence from around the world, was founded in 1977 by Artist Barbara Luderowski in a former Stearns & Foster mattress warehouse in Pittsburgh’s historic Central Northside.

Elias Hanna moved from Syria to America to further his education. Eventually, he was awarded a medical doctor degree and practiced during the Viet Nam war era. He never forgot the principles and values he grew up with, one being farming. This is the story of what evolved.

It took four years for former ICA curator Helen Molesworth and current one Ruth Erickson to organize 200 works by 100 artists as the landmark exhibition "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957." In a provocative catalogue essay, however, Molesworth states why she has come to no easy conclusions about what occurred in Appalachia during the formative years of the American avant-garde.

The End is the beginning of Beckett's most productive and distinctive phase and in this wonderful production by Gare St. Lazare, the mysteries of his final period begin to be revealed. Since the state of unknowing and almost non-being is revealed best in monologue, this novella told in the first person lends itself to the stage. Conor Lovett captures every nuance and all the humor as well.

“Happy Hour” centers around aging widower father Harry Townsend (Gavin Macleod) and his forty-year old son Alan (John Hawkinson) who come to grips with the vexing, but immutable, fact that aging is a human process that comes to most of us. The one longer lives, the tougher it becomes to accept it. A frequently asked question by people of a ‘certain age’ is ‘how did I get so old so quick?’

Regarding Boston Theatre it is broke and time to fix it. This fall as one shoe after another dropped the Boston Theatre Community seemed to collapse like a house of cards. In 2004 through a partnership between Druker Development, Boston Center for the Arts and the Huntington Theatre Company the multi-stage Calderwood Pavilion was created in the South End. Is it possible that Huntington can swing a similar development to save, renovate and expand its antiquated facility? That's just a part of dramatic changes for the city.

Paul Jacobs, head of the organ department at the Juilliard School, and a magnificent performer invited Christine Brewer, the huge-voiced soprano of great delicacy, to join him in concert. Their alliance is for the ages.

If you live in, visit or are near Manhattan, the Pays d'Oc IGP Wine Week takes place from November 2nd through November 8th. Quality wines made from international varieties exist from this sun swept Mediterranean outpost.

A Confederacy of Dunces was published in 1980 eleven years after John Kennedy Toole's suicide. Recently the creative team- adapter Jeffrey Hatcher, director David Esbjornson, and actor Nick Offerman- met with the media to discuss the production for Boston's Huntington Theatre Company. The comedy will run from November 11 through December 13.

William Christie's Les Arts Forissants performances in New York are eagerly anticipated. Theodora, a late oratorio of Handel, delivered in spades. Listeners got the music, the story, the orchestra and chorus and magnificent individual singers.

It was fierce competition at the Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint,Brooklyn, where the sixth annual sommelier slam competition took place. The contestants had to know wine theory, master wine pairings and then sell their pairings to the jurors.

In White America was first produced fifty years ago. Sadly, its insights have yet to be fully absorbed in America. This production, as much as it satisfies dramatically, also stimulates action.

ZERO, Countdown to the Future is a comprehensive exhibition, which highlights the works of the movement's founders, Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, and their close friend Gunther Uecker. It provides in depth understanding of ZERO that took away the limits of "what is art" and expanded what art can be in the 20th century.

While listeners do not always agree with Jaap van Zewden's take on the classics, everyone is thrilled to listen. Taking the music in long arcs, permitting interpretation by individual artists in the orchestra and accompanying soloists, van Zweden is a passionate and generous music-maker. The New York Philharmonic was alive with the sound of music.

Andrew White's careful adaptation of 1984, directed by Hallie Gordon, brings the story to life in the person of Winston (Adam Poss), who secretly hates Big Brother and the IngSoc party, misses chocolate and fears rats.

Having attended William Kentridge’s illustration of Schubert’s Winterriese cycle sung by Mathias Goerne, the first image projected for the video accompaniment of Solos for Violin by Bach came as a shock. A small baby, lying on his back, seems to be listening to the Bach, as Gil Shaham begins to play the first Sonata. A revelation followed.

America went to war in 1941, but not all of America. There were those who had to stay at home and man the war industries of building airplanes, ships and the weapons of war. “All My Sons”, nicely directed by ANW co-founder Geoff Elliott centers around the Keller family of a fictional Ohio city set in 1946.

Special exhibition explores the origins of the historic Goodman Theatre in Chicago. It's on view at the Newberry Library through December 31.

For the third evening of their triptych at Carnegie Hall, conductor Andris Nelsons presented the Russians at their bipolar best: dark battles and wild dances. Nelsons introduced himself at Tanglewood two years ago with a performance of the Symphonic Dances. He and the Boston Symphony exceeded themselves at Carnegie.

Karin Giusti's "Honorem: Three Seasons at Black Forest Farm" is an installation, grounded in photography dedicated in memory to her late fiancé, a 9/11 first responder. It is a poignant and solemn look into the humanity of first responders, and offers a private expression of grief and mourning in a public forum.

There are 75 works in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston exhibition Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer curated by Ronni Baer. Of the marquee artists there are two paintings by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and four by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669).

In 2014 Nelsons conducted Strauss' Salome at Carnegie. What a reprise Elektra is. Experience at Bayreuth may give the Maestro the ability to bring out the Wagner in Strauss, and then go far beyond to the condensed emotional pitch of Strauss and to his sheer beauty. Christine Goerke, fresh from her triumph in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, gave a performance for the ages.

Strauss's early operatic masterpiece follows its Greek model closely to reveal the neurosis at the heart of modern life. Andris Nelsons led a white-hot BSO performance of a lurid, fin-de-siecle masterpiece. The cast, led by Christine Goerke, Jane Henschel and Gun-Brit Barkmin, was stellar.

Saltwater as the theme, the city is the stage for the 14th. Istanbul Biennial. Thirty six venues welcome visitors free of charge to view works by international artists, who have found inspiration in the city's location, history, architecture, and culture.