Music
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Tootsie On Broadway
Musical Adaptation Continues Through Jan. 5.
By: - Nov 19th, 2019Tootsie features a Tony-winning performance by actor Santino Fontana. The musical adaptation of the popular 1982 film continues through Jan. 5. The stage show is a big, splashy and funny musical comedy.
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Tristan and Isolde Act II at Lincoln Center
White Light Festival Features Goerke and Gould
By: - Nov 18th, 2019Inducing current audiences to listen to Wagner operas is difficult. Ninety minutes seems to perfect time slot for young people. Wagner's operas can last for six hours. Can they be cut? Probably not without violating their essence. Producing an Act in concert form makes sense. The White Light Festival presented a spectacular concert based on Act II of Tristan and Isolde.
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Michelle Wiley et Les Garcons
Evening of Eclipse Cabaret
By: - Nov 17th, 2019It was standing room only last night for a packed cabaret in the gallery of the Eclipse Mill in North Adams. The chanteuse, Michelle Wiley et les Garcons, (Opie O'Brian. Carl Oman and guest guitarist) regaled us with two long sets. The program conflated Edith Piaf with Irving Berlin. Dancing was encouraged.
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Ain't Too Proud
Jukebox Musical About The Temptations On Broadway
By: - Nov 16th, 2019Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations is playing in Broadway. This show, while a jukebox musical, does more than string a series of hits together. The dancing is electric and the singing is expressive.
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Joyce Di Donato Superb as Cleopatra
By: - Nov 16th, 2019Thrilling moments of the New York fall music season include the arrival of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. They do not disappoint. The first concert brought forward the superb brass section of the Orchestra in an unjustifiably overlooked early work by Georges Bizet, Roma. No one knows where the title came from.
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Don Juan
Westport Country Playhouse
By: - Nov 16th, 2019Westport Country Playhouse is giving us a delightful performance of a new adaptation of the Molière play written by Brendan Pelsue and wonderfully directed by David Kennedy.
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Mallon’s Fellow Travelers
Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Nov 15th, 2019Boston Lyric Opera has once again successfully adapted and tackled politically and socially topical subjects in “Fellow Travelers”, an opera by Gregory Spears with Libretto by Greg Pierce. It is based on the best-selling novel by Thomas Mallon.
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Ain’t Too Proud by Dominique Morisseau
Temptations on Broadway
By: - Nov 15th, 2019Ain’t Too Proud could not exist without high energy performances of the Temptations songs, and they are so authentic, you’d think you’re seeing the actual group. The mix of voices backed by an 18-piece orchestra along with Sergio Trujillo’s exciting choreography hit the mark.
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Verdi's Requiem with Tedor Currentzis at The Shed
New Views on a Great Work
By: - Nov 14th, 2019A hundred-member orchestra and an 80-member chorus from Perm Russia perform Verdi's Requiem at The Shed in Hudson Yards, New York. Direct from Salzburg where it received rapturous reviews this re-imagining has been eagerly awaited. For ten days prior to the performances on November 19-24, Jonas Mekas' filmed response to the music was screened. It was at first a shocking take, beautiful images of flower blossoms one after another. The Requiem is a work of sublime beauty. It also has Dylan Thomas's rage at death. Mekas shows this in black screens and sometimes winds raging through branches and dessicating leaves.
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American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Jamie Barton Featured in Ives' songs
By: - Nov 14th, 2019Jamie Barton showed up at Carnegie on the wings of her tweet, "Be there or be square." Nothing about her performance of some of her favorite songs by Charles Ives was square. She is a gorgeous performer who ventures always to the edge of experience.
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Manon Lescaut By Puccini
Produced by San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 11th, 2019Manon Lescaut holds some curious distinctions within the Puccini canon. Chronologically, the third of his nine full-length operas, the first two were failures. This was his only opera lauded at its conception by critics and audiences alike.
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Country Women Concert for Women’s Cancer
Rocked Boston's Hard Rock Cafe
By: - Nov 09th, 2019Taking the stage for a “blow-out” sold-out performance, both Massachusetts-area country singers Annie Brobst and her band and Samantha Rae with Whiskey-6 delivered an over-charged performance from the heart. Full throttle voices reminded the Hard Rock Café audience of the importance of funding research for women’s cancer.
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Victoria Bond's Opera Clara
A Child Prodigy Negotiates Career and Marriage
By: - Nov 09th, 2019Victoria Bond's Clara on the life of the pianist and composer who was married to Robert Schumann premiered at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden Germany last spring. The German Forum offered a concert version in New York. It is a superb exploration of this important musician.
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Pacini's Mary Tudor at Odyssey Opera
First-Rate Mounting of an Under-appreciated Gem
By: - Nov 06th, 2019Queen Mary I is infatuated with the Scottish adventurer Fenimoore, who is in love with Clothilde, who in turn loves Ernesto. Romance and political intrigue are treacherous bedfellows in this opera based on Victor Hugo’s play about Mary Tudor. A remarkable and largely forgotten opera, its expressive vocal characterization paints an unforgettable portrait of a Queen and the repercussions of her indulgence in an unwise love. Presented as a fully-staged production in Italian with English subtitles. Libretto by Leopoldo Tarantini.
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Wrong Man Off Broadway Musical
By 2015 Pop Songwriter of the Year Ross Golan
By: - Nov 06th, 2019Several years ago, 2015 Pop Songwriter of the Year Ross Golan, who has written for Ariana Grande, Maroon 5, Michael Bublé, and many more, developed a concept album called The Wrong Man. The project morphed into a one-man theatrical show that won Ovation Awards in Los Angeles. Now, a compelling, fully-formed, dark, rock opera appears Off Broadway.
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The Musician John Hiatt
A Nashville Artist
By: - Oct 29th, 2019I was invited to a 'pop-up' John Hiatt show the Noho section of Manhattan. It was a solo rooftop performance.
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Boston Country Singers Annie Brobst & Samantha Rae
Country Women for Women’s Cancer Benefit at Hard Rock Cafe
By: - Oct 28th, 2019Boston’s country singers Annie Brobst & Samantha Rae are behind the Country Women for Women’s Cancer Benefit at Hard Rock Café. The sold out event will occur on Saturday, November 2 at 8PM. The fundraiser will help the Susan F. Smith Center Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
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Boston Jazz Entrepreneur Fred Taylor at 90
What and Quit Show Biz!
By: - Oct 27th, 2019Jazz entrepreneur Fred Taylor has passed at 90. He never retired producing concerts and programming for the Cabot Theatre in Beverly. Not surprisingly his yet to be published autobiography, a collaboration with Richard Vacca, is titled What and Quit Show Business. Taylor booked Boston's Jazz Workshop/ Paul’s Mall from 1963 to 1978. From 1991 to 2017 he booked Scullers Jazz Club and produced the Tanglewood Jazz Festival from 2001 to 2007.
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Billy Elliot at Goodspeed
Boys of Ballet
By: - Oct 26th, 2019Some flaws exist in this production of Billy Elliot directed by Gabriel Barre and choreographed by Marc Kimelman. Barre has changed a few things from the original show and overall they work,
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Verdi's Nabucco
Produced by West Bay Opera
By: - Oct 22nd, 2019Nabucco evidences the Verdi sound and style associated with the masterpieces of his rich middle period. The music is melodious throughout, with demanding arias and complex ensembles, though none are among his more memorable. However, the overture, which includes many of the opera’s themes, captivates and is often performed on its own in concert halls.
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The Jack Quartet at a Crypt Session
John Luther Adams Communes
By: - Oct 21st, 2019In The Crypt, composer and performing artists collaborate. Selections of a talented impresario invite artists and audience to enter special moments together. Sounds reverberate from stone as candles cast warm light. Moments nourish the soul to spread and re-capture the precious environment for which composer John Luther Adams has always fought. Adams now focuses on the power of music to transform. In the bows and string of the Jack Quartet, it does.
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New England Conservatory
50th Anniversary of Jazz Department
By: - Oct 21st, 2019In recognition and celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Jazz Studies department and the Jazz Studies program, New England Conservatory is hosting Jazz50, a year-long series of concerts and events.
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Zorn, Hannigan, Jack Quartet, and Sae Hashimoto
Veterans Room at the Park Avenue Armory
By: - Oct 16th, 2019Super diva Barbara Hannigan and the Jack Quartet with Sae Hashimoto on vibraphone performed the music of John Zorn in the Veterans Room of the Park Avenue Armory. Hannigan had selected this room because she wanted the audience to have an intimate experience. We heard her daring and beautiful take on Zorn’s Jumalattaret, which was even more bold and beautiful than its US premiere in Ojai last June.
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Marriage of Figaro
At San Francisco Opera
By: - Oct 13th, 2019San Francisco Opera’s new production of Marriage of Figaro retains the time frame of the original (late 18th century) but moves the action from Spain to post-Revolutionary America. The shift in venue carries no significance for this opera.
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Jason Hardink at National Sawdust
Ives' Concord Sonata and World Premiere Jason Eckhardt
By: - Oct 10th, 2019Jason Hardink will perform at National Sawdust in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on October 20. This is an unusual concert celebrating the centennial anniversary of the premiere of Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata.
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