Music
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Ben Harper and Trombone Shorty at Tanglewood
Two Distinct Musical Styles
By: - Sep 01st, 2019Special concerts do not happen too often in one's lifetime. Fortunately, the double bill of Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals paired with Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, fit the bill as one of the most exciting musical shows that I have witnessed.
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Squeezing in Tanglewood
Difford &Tilbroo, Forty Years Later
By: - Aug 31st, 2019Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are treated like royalty. They are often referred to as prolific composers like Lennon & McCartney. They have been working together for forty years-churning out hit after hit. Their genius was shared with a jubilent and dancing in the aisles audience at Tanglewood.
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Gladys Knight and The Spinners
Soulful Nostalgia at Tanglewood
By: - Aug 29th, 2019It was a soulful night of nostalgia at Tanglewood. The Spinners went on at 7 and cooked. We needed the heat on a cool wet night. In ever sense they warmed up the audience for Gladys Knight. There was a long intermission before she went on at ten of nine and by 10:25 after some 20 songs we made our way home.
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Ladies Night at Dell'Arte Opera Ensemble
Bond, Musgrave and Viardot Intrigue and Engage
By: - Aug 22nd, 2019Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, always venturesome, presented an evening in which three female composers were featured Franz Liszt had said that in Pauline Viardot the world had finally found a woman composer of genius. Her short opera Cendrillon was performed in full.
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The Thirteenth Child at Opera Santa Fe
By Poul Ruders with Libretto by Becky and David Starobin
By: - Aug 21st, 2019In an age of sweeping movement toward gender equity, Danish composer Poul Ruders has surprisingly drawn on a Grimm fairytale as a source for female heroics and female enabling. The result is a fable for adults – a taut and riveting opera, yet one that begs for more. Santa Fe Opera’s world premiere of The Thirteenth Child offers stunning production values that enhance the score and yield an engaging musical drama.
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The Pearl Fishers at Santa Fe Opera
Georges Bizet with Libretto by Eugène Carmon and Michel Carré
By: - Aug 20th, 2019Many operas have suffered a rocky road to recognition and appreciation, The Pearl Fishers, among them. Yet when one considers its virtues, it is hard to understand why. Santa Fe Opera presented a rare and much appreciated production.
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Jenufa by Leoš Janácek
Produced by Santa Fe Opera
By: - Aug 19th, 2019With the exception of a little light relief in the wedding preparation, Jenufa is tense and emotionally charged from beginning to end. Janácek endows his lead characters with complexity and with demanding vocals. In keeping with the tone of the action, much of the vocalization is harsh, yet particularly in the orchestra, appealing passages emerge. Overall, the score fulfills many demands with great success.
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Love, Noël: The Songs and Letters of Noël Coward
In NY at The Irish Repertory Theatre
By: - Aug 17th, 2019Alone and in duo, Ross and KT perform some two dozen Noel Coward songs, read a number of letters and first night theater opening telegrams (remember those days) both written by and received from his fans, famous friends, and yes, you might have guessed it, letters both to and from his mother.
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Dell Arte Opera's La Liberazione di Ruggiero
Brilliant Baroque Presentation of the First Opera by a Woman
By: - Aug 17th, 2019In their summer home at La Mama in New York, dell'Arte Opera is presenting the first opera composed by a woman, Francesca Caccini. The composer understands the power of women well. She also portrays the power of evil in women. An exciting performance by a stellar cast of young artists accompanied by a small ensemble featuring lutes was conducted by Charles Weaver.
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TIME:Spans Festival at DiMenna Center
Nikel with Tscherkassky's CinemaScope Trilogy
By: - Aug 17th, 2019TIME:SPANS is a Contemporary Music Festival presented by the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust at the DiMenna Center in New York. The Nikel Ensemble was featured in the first half of the Festival. Nothing daunts them. Wearing long extensions on their fingers, they kept the beat to Simon Løffler's music which accompanied a Peter Tscherkassky adaptation of The Entity, a classic psychological horror film.
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Fall Springs at Barrington Stage Company
Fracking a World Premiere Musical
By: - Aug 15th, 2019Juke box musicals with butkis for plots have become the norm. Kudos to Barrington Stage for its world premiere Fall Springs which actually has a compelling book. But fracking, the musical, oh my goodness! While it has entertaining moments this creation by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and Niko Tsakalakos is a whacky long shot. It's more than just a town that sinks in the sludge.
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Oliver Beer's Vessel Orchestra at the MET Breuer
Nico Muhly and John Zorn compose for the Vessels
By: - Aug 13th, 2019The Metropolitan Museum of Art has mounted its first sound-based installation. British artist Oliver Beer selected 32 vessels from the Museum's vast collection. They form a 32 note chromatic scale which can performed on an electronic keyboard. The exhibit was a feast for eyes and ears.
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Yang Liping's Under Seige at Mostly Mozart
Stunning Dance at the David Koch Theater
By: - Aug 11th, 2019Yang Liping has created a dance drama in such startling colors and designs that the audience is swept into the single Ancient Pipa melody of the same title. The tapping of swords, soldiers cries and horses whinnying and snorting are all suggested as the song portrays the end battle of the war for control of China in 205 B.C. The armies of the Chu and the Han face off in dance. Blood has never been so beautifully suggested, as a mass of red feathers fly through the air, some streaking the bodies of soldiers.
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National Black Theatre Festival
Audience as Congregation in Winston-Salem
By: - Aug 10th, 2019Thirty years ago the late Larry Leon Hamlin founded National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The biannual event, July 29 to August 3, featured 30 productions on stages in and around the city, They ranged from intensive dramas to entertaining musicals. A great part of the experience was being part of audiences that might better be described as congregations. People assemble from all over American for this unique celebration of African American history, theatre and culture.
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Moulin Rouge! The Musical on Broadway
Easy on the Eyes but a Mishmash
By: - Aug 10th, 2019While easy on the eyes Moulin Rouge! The Musical a pastiche of some 70 songs slogs along at two and a half hours. It is a mongrel cut and paste of other and better material. If you liked the movie than this one's for you.
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Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
August Wilson Play Produced by Multi Ethnic Theater
By: - Aug 10th, 2019Set in 1927 Chicago, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the only play in August Wilson’s great ten-play, ten-decade “Pittsburgh Cycle,” of the black experience in America that takes place outside his home town. Although the black bottom in the title refers to the flapper dance of the period, it seems intended as a double entendre with sexual innuendo. Both connotations are relevant to one of the important verbal clashes among the band members.
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Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma and Leonidas Kavados
Perform at Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall
By: - Aug 08th, 2019Three great musicians, one small music hall and an overflow lawn crowd made this special concert, a night to remember. Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavados and Yo-Yo Ma turned this marvelous summer night into magical music. It was an all Beethoven programp of three Piano trios.
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Orfeo & Euridice
At The Bridge Yard
By: - Aug 07th, 2019The spare nature of Orfeo & Euridice is well suited to a smaller opera company. Requiring only three principals, casting is simplified. This small entourage and extensive use of dance by nymphs also make it conducive to the barest of staging. Mikiko Uesugi’s set design of gauzy hanging sheets certainly qualifies.
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If I Were You.
Composed by Jake Heggie with Libretto by Gene Scheer
By: - Aug 07th, 2019If I Were You possesses a compelling score with drama to match. Full of symbols of soul transporters and apples and grieving elephants as well as contrasting venues from offices to bars, it stimulates the ears and eyes and holds the attention throughout
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International Contemporary Ensemble
The 12th Annual Journey of Sonic Landscapes
By: - Aug 06th, 2019You can count on every International Contemporary Ensemble concert to deliver surprise, shock and awe. Performers are always in tip-top shape. You might hear an instrument you’ve never heard before, like the Cimbalon or the Kamanchah at a Mostly Mozart concert at Merkin Hall. ICE is superb and daring.
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Train Meets The Goo Goo Dolls
Tanglewood Rocks
By: - Aug 06th, 2019A major billing with two headliners, Train and the Goo Goo Dolls, played to an enthusiastic audience of many generations, dominated by women at Tanglewood on Monday evening. Both bands played enthusiastic seventeen song set lists, before the encore. Cannons, fireworks and bouncing balloons helped keep the crowd active throughout the evening.
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Blck, Whyte, Gray at Mostly Mozart Festival
British Hip Hop Takes Us Deep into Dance
By: - Aug 03rd, 2019Blck, Whyte, Gray is performed at the Mostly Mozart Festival, a clear invitation for a wide swathe of ethnic groups to join the Festival audience, and also a pleasure and a revelation for regulars. Advance notice was served at the White Light Festival last fall, when Blck, Whyte, Gray was a smash hit of the Festival.
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International Contemporary Ensemble
12th Annual Appearance at Mostly Mozart
By: - Jul 27th, 2019The International Contemporary Ensemble started off its 12th annual Mostly Mozart season at the David Rubenstein Atrium in Lincoln Center. The first concert was free and attracted an overflow crowd. Bringing the audience up to date and beyond, Mostly Mozart has offered free concerts of contemporary music in an act of generosity. People appreciate the chance to listen to a new landscape of composers.
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Chrissie Hynde at MASS MoCA
Pretenders the Real Deal
By: - Jul 27th, 2019It was standing room only last night for the packed performance of Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders. On a perfect summer night, with just a touch of heat relief, they performed on stage in a large courtyard of MASS MoCA.
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Davone Tines in The Black Clown
Langston Hughes Inspires the Journey to Manhood
By: - Jul 25th, 2019Davone Tines was looking for a project to touch him deeply. His college classmate Michael Schacter suggested reading Langston Hughes' poems. The Black Clown hit him in the gut. Years ago Hughes had felt just as he did. Schachter and Tines collaborated on a moving and energetic musical monologue prompted by the poem. It is a wild theatrical success in its New York premiere.
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