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  • Beckett Trilogy at White Light Festival

    Conor Lovett Compels as Molloy, Malone and The Unnamable

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 06th, 2017

    Judy Hagerty Lovett of Gare St. Lazare Ireland has worked for more than two decades to bring the novels of Samuel Beckett to the stage. They are magnificently delivered by Conor Lovett. The Beckett Trilogy, which includes Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, has its New York premiere in White Light Festival.

  • Psalms at the White Light Festival

    Touring New York Churches to Hear Music

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 05th, 2017

    The Psalms Experience presented by the White Light Festival of Lincoln Center includes nearly one thousand years of musical settings by 150 different composers. World renowned choirs collaborate to present songs from the Book of Psalms. Each concert has a unifying theme, such as suffering, power, and powerlessness.

  • National Chorale Celebrates 50th

    Everett McCorvey a Brilliant Leader

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 04th, 2017

    To listen to Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and then the raunchy, life-affirming Carmina Burana is heaven. Or hell, if you prefer it. Sometimes Carl Orff, the composer of Carmina Burana does both and it is these moments, like love joined in a soprano's stratasphere, that give particular pleasure.

  • The Exterminating Angel by Thomas Ades

    American Premier Has Gleaming Cast

    By: Paul J. Pelkonen - Nov 01st, 2017

    The creation of new works remains how the art of opera continues, against steep odds and media indifference, to grow and survive. This week, the Metropolitan Opera did their bit by opening Thomas Adès' latest opus: The Exterminating Angel.

  • Steven Osborne Performs Vingt Regards

    A Messiaen Marathon at White Light

    By: Susan Hall - Nov 01st, 2017

    The Stanley Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center is a special space. When it is darkened, lights twinkle in the windows and reflections go out into the night. Here Steven Osborne, a consummate pianist, performed Olivier Messiaen's iconic "Vingts Regards sur l'enfant." We swirled in mystery, yearning and the power of faith.

  • Conrad Tao, Charmaine Lee and Nate Wooley

    Brooklyn's Memorial Hall Hosts a Ceremony

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 31st, 2017

    Tao is everywhere. Tucked into the back of a stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, he had the nerve to portray the iconic Glenn Gould in David Lang’s opera ‘loser.’ He is in the bowels of a church for a Crypt Session, and now at Roulette, a venue created to honor Dada and chance music. He is a thrilling artist.

  • Comedies at Polonsky Shakespeare Center

    Marcello Magni and Joe Houben Teach Us Laughter

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 30th, 2017

    Marcel is being examined and interviewed by a clown evaluator (Houben) to see if he is able to continue his career. Juggling hats, the manipulation of hands and arms, are added to basic, biking, batting, swinging, and swimming. Marcel demonstrates that, if he is no fit as a fiddle, he is facile with his limbs and trunk. No question that he can make us laugh, and cry too.

  • Knives in Hens Magnificent in New York

    David Harrower's Newly Classic Play Riveting

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 29th, 2017

    Knives in Hens is an ineffably moving theatre piece, a three-hander which depicts the struggles of a putatively ignorant farm girl who lives in indeterminate space and time. Her movement toward growth is specified in her wish to name the world she sees about her.

  • Arnold Trachtman at Galatea Fine Arts

    More from a Concerned Artist

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 29th, 2017

    Since the late 1960s I have curated and written about the work of the Cambridge based, activist and artist, Arhold Trachtman. A few of us- scholars, curators and critics- share a convicition that he is on the short list of most significant Boston artists of his generation. Given the highly charged and passionate focus of the work it has been in general too hot to handle for mainstream museums and curators. He has a staunch champion in Marjorie Kaye, the emeritus founder of Galatea Gallery, who co cuated the current exhiition with the artist's daughter Maxima Baudissin.

  • Berlioz' Damnation of Faust at BSO

    A Dramatic Legend Rides High

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 29th, 2017

    Damnation of Faust turned out to be one of Berlioz' most popular compositions. It was the first work in which he wrote the libretto himself. Berlioz loved Virgil, Shakespeare, and Goethe above all. He could not entrust the words of these authors to anyone else. In Damnation, we have a great presentation of the Faust story. The Boston Symphony, Tanglewood chorus and thrilling soloists brought Berlioz safely to heaven and hell.

  • Our Town Revised in Miami Beach

    World Premiere of a Reborn Classic

    By: Aaron Krause - Oct 28th, 2017

    A new staging of Our Town emphasizes Miami's diversity. A mult-cultural, multi-racial cast speaks English, Spanish and Creole in new, different but faithful version of Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town. Talented cast ensures classic Wilder play remains touching, yet unsentimental

  • Dolores Claiborne by Tobias Picker

    New York City Opera Hits a Home Run, Again

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 27th, 2017

    New York City Opera's production of Tobias Picker's latest opera, Dolores Claiborne, honors the composer in a riveting theatrical presentation. Oliver Sacks explored the musical brain in his Musicophilia. The connection between the two hemispheres of the brain is enlarged demonstrably in talented musicians. So too a section of the hippocampus. Picker, who began composing at four, was studied by Sacks. Whether or not his brain reflects musicality because he started playing and composing early, or because he was born with this ability, remains to be answered. What is clear in Dolores Claiborne, as produced by NYCO, is how great his talent for opera is.

  • Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield Update

    Shows Through April

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 26th, 2017

    Upcoming events at the Colonial include, The Airplane Family & Friends with Live Dead ‘69 (10/27), $10 Music Garage: Subtleties (11/9), Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) Touring Company (11/11), $5 Comedy Garage: Rojo Perez (at the Garage in the Colonial Theatre lobby 11/16), Ain't Wastin' Time: A Berkshire Tribute to Gregg Allman with Rev Tor's Steal Your Peach Band & Friends (11/30) and A Christmas Carol (12/9 through 12/22).

  • The Agitators by Mat Smart a World Premiere

    The Story of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass in Rochester

    By: Herbert Simpson - Oct 26th, 2017

    The civil rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass had roots in Rochester which is mounting a world premiere about them by Mat Smart. This is the best dramatic treatment thus far to deal with their achievements and close relationship.

  • Cape Cod Museum of Art

    Promoting Regional Visual Arts Since 1980

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 24th, 2017

    During our visit to the Cape Cod Museum of Art we viewed several special exhibitions: Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History, extended through October 28, Discovering Cape Cod’s Museum Treasures, through November 26, and Judith Shahn Selections: A Tribute to Thomas Linxweiler through November 12. We met with Dr. Edith Tonelli who has been director for the past four years. She provided an overview of the museum and plans moving forward. We also learned why the museum and adjacent Cape Playhouse prove to have been uniquely moving experiences.

  • Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History

    Co Founder of Provincetown’s Ciro’s and Sal’s

    By: Charles Giuliano - Oct 23rd, 2017

    Now 92, the first generation Italian born artist, Salvatore Del Deo, settled in Provincetown in the post war 1940s. To pay for paint he did all the usual odd jobs. On summer he shippied out on a scallop boat. That experience richly informs a poignant triptych “Homage to the Patricia Marie” which was a part of his retrospective Salvatore Del Deo: A Storied History at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis. Famously he teamed up with another starving artist, Ciro Cozzi, to co found the legendary restaurant Ciro's and Sals. He later started his own Sal's Place.

  • Tarzan in Ft. Lauderdale

    High-Flying Musical Adaptation by Slow Burn Theatre Co.

    By: Aaron Krause - Oct 23rd, 2017

    Lighting-heavy production of Tarzan still benefits from 'less-is-more' approach. South Florida theater company show marked by strong acting, singing, acrobatics . Musical's themes are illuminated by the director.

  • A Tale of Two Cities in Pasadena

    Play Adapted by Mike Poulton.

    By: Jack Lyons - Oct 22nd, 2017

    “A Tale of Two Cities”, published in 1859, was one of the finest novels of its day and now, 200 years later it appears on the stage of Pasadena’s classic theatre company, A Noise Within, as a bold, new, dramatic production from the pen of journeyman writer and play adaptor Mike Poulton.

  • Shaw's Mrs. Warren’s Profession

    At Pasadena's A Noise Within

    By: Jack Lyons - Oct 22nd, 2017

    Pasadena’s A Noise Within theatre company, is staging a provocative and spirited comedy production of Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”, a witty play about the ‘world’s oldest profession’, or is it about something else that is masquerading for a more insidious subject matter discussion: the misogyny of men in a patriarchal society who harbor the fear of being exposed for their shortcomings.

  • Orchestra dell' Accademia Nationale at Carnegie

    Barbara Hannigan Sings Sciarrino

    By: Susan Hall - Oct 22nd, 2017

    Sir Antonio Pappano has made his mark at Royal Covent Garden over the past decade and a half. He is also the music director of the Orchestra dell' Accademia Nationale di Santa Cecilia (Rome). They return to Carnegie Hall after an almost half century absence. Pappano presented a work composer Salvatore Sciarrino wrote especially for the great and adventuresome soprano (and conductor) Barbara Hannigan. Mahler's Sixth Symphony followed.

  • L’Orchestre Symphonique at Carnegie

    The Idea of North

    By: Paul J. Pelkonen - Oct 21st, 2017

    L’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is one of the finest symphonic ensembles in North America. They are a stellar symphonic ensemble with a long history and a sound all their own, combining precise European string playing with the lusty, leather-lunged brass one associated with this continent.

  • Strange Ladies by Susan Sobeloff

    Central Works and plays at Berkeley City Club

    By: Victor Cordell - Oct 21st, 2017

    Strange Ladies greatest strength is its informativeness about the history of the movement, and additionally about the Occoquan Workhouse Prison, where public officials contrived to imprison and abuse some of the suffrage women.

  • Prince of Egypt World Premiere

    Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and Book by Philip LaZebnik

    By: Victor Cordell - Oct 21st, 2017

    This is a musical entertainment for the many, not a Sunday School lesson for the few.

  • Exploring Annapoilis Maryland

    Three Hundred Years of History

    By: Susan Cohn - Oct 21st, 2017

    The state of Maryland was named after Henrietta Maria of France, the queen consort of England, Scotland, and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I. Maryland is the only state in the United States whose judges wear red robes.

  • The Drowsy Chaperone in Boca Raton

    Send Up of 1920s Musicals in South Florida

    By: Aaron Krause - Oct 20th, 2017

    The Drowsy Chaperone offers good ole' escapist fare. Musical lovingly parodies shows from the Prohibition era. The Wick Theatre's production features high-octane, physical comedy and robust singing.

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