Music
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Boston Rock Archivist David Bieber
Collection of 600,000 Objects
By: - Mar 07th, 2019The vast archive of some 600,000 objects was a primary source for the Bill Lichtenstein film WBCN: The American Revolution. When in college David Bieber became a campus correspondent for Billboard Magazine. In graduate school at Boston University he wrote a thesis on the impact of WBCN and the growing counterculture media on changing the mainstream of Top 40 radio and the straight press. He became music director of WBUR and went on to work for WBCN and the Boston Phoenix. He provides an insightful overview of an era of social and poltical change for the vast college/ youth market in Boston.
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Al Perry Talks About WBCN
Former Station Manager
By: - Mar 05th, 2019While many during the Golden Age of WBCN had their heads in the clouds former station manager, Al Perry, had his feet on the ground. Somebody had to stay straight and pay the bills. He is a talking head in Bill Lichtenstein's documentary film WBCN: The American Revolution.
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Christie and Les Arts Florissants at BAM
Jean-Philipppe Rameau Delights
By: - Mar 04th, 2019William Christie and his Arts Florissant created two dance/opera entertainments by Jean-Philippe Rameau at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. As usual, this group sells out in New York and it is easy to see why. Christie conducts with poise and precision. He enlists a first rate ensemble of musicians to perform period music. To this is added stylized dance and gorgeous operatic voices. In the second one act dance/opera, La Naissance d'Osiris, we saw and heard a divertissement of dances, the gavotte, sarabande and minuet among them.
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WBCN and the American Revolution
Bill Lichtenstein Discusses His Documentary Film
By: - Mar 03rd, 2019On March 7 the documentary film WBCN and the American Revolution will have a sneak preview at the DC Film Festival. On March 9, 12 and 13 there will be screenings at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose. A world premiere is being planned for Boston in April. The day after wrapping the film Bill Lichtenstein discussed the project which started in 2006. The story of WBCN is set against events from the launch of the radical FM station in 1968 to developments surrounding the resignation of Richard Nixon seven years later.
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Falstaff at the Met
Verdi's Final Work
By: - Feb 28th, 2019"It's not going to be my favorite Verdi opera." This, from an attendee on the 1 train riding away from Lincoln Center after the Metropolitan Opera's Wednesday night performance of Falstaff, efficiently sums up the attitude of audiences toward the composer's final opera--and his only successful attempt at writing comedy. Falstaff is a masterwork, but one held in high regard not for its considerable qualities but for its place as Verdi's last musical utterance. On Wednesday night under the baton of Robert Carnes, the opera received a performance that just might change that gentleman's opinion.
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Wadada Leo Smith’s latest CD
Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs
By: - Feb 24th, 2019On his highly acclaimed and awarded release, America’s National Park (2017, Cuneiform Records), Leo Smith won DownBeat Magazine’s Best Album of the Year, 2017. It also earned DB’s Annual Critics Poll in 2017 for best artist and trumpeter.
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BMP's Next Generation at National Sawdust
Composers Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran
By: - Feb 21st, 2019National Sawdust, a leading venue for new music, mounted the work of two finalists in the BMP Next Generation Competition, Michael Lanci and Emma O'Halloran. Last March, their compositions were selected from a field of ten, winnowed down from 75 applications.
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Brian Coleman’s Buy Me Boston
A Picture Book of Local Ads and Flyers
By: - Feb 20th, 2019Brian Coleman has published several successful books on hip-hop. The latest of which is a picture book “Buy Me Boston: Local Ads and Flyers, 1960s – 1980s, Volume 1.” It is compiled from thousands of scans of pages of vintage publications.
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Violet the Musical in San Francisco
Book and Lyrics by Brian Crawley and Music by Jeanine Tesori
By: - Feb 20th, 2019The year is 1964. Violet, a young woman with suitcase in hand, is about to board a Greyhound bus to leave her hometown of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Her destination – Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bay Area Musicals offers a lively and well-staged representation of a journey that changes its central figure in unexpected ways.
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Victoria Bond at the Cutting Edge
Barnes, Glass, and Enchants
By: - Feb 19th, 2019The program at Cutting Edge Concerts at Symphony Space opened with a delightful bird romp by Maria Newman. Hal Ott on the flute, Scott Hosfeld on viola and the composer on the violin created pictures of four different birds. Olivier Messiaen recorded birds in their native habitats, focusing on their identifying songs. Newman widens the frame to include pictures of the birds' movements and suggests purpose, like the melancholy watchfulness of a snowy owl and the ravenous detection of prey for the falcon.
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Salonen Conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra
Strauss and Bartok Featured
By: - Feb 19th, 2019In recent seasons, Esa-Pekka Salonen has shifted his emphasis from conducting to his first love, composition. However, Friday’s matinee program at the Philadelphia Orchestra at Verizon Hall featured none of Salonen’s own catalogue. Rather, the composer led a program consisting of workers by Béla Bartók and Richard Strauss, two very different composers who are each in their own way, touchstones of the twentieth century.
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I Due Foscari by Verdi
Produced by West Bay Opera
By: - Feb 18th, 2019Like much early Verdi, I Due Foscari lacks the memorable arias and ensembles that appear on compilation recordings. However, it may be that we just haven’t heard these enough to become familiar with them.
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Moby Dick a Whale of an Opera
At Opera San José
By: - Feb 12th, 2019Although Moby-Dick adheres to the continuous melody mode, many striking set pieces punctuate the score. Much beauty also derives from the orchestral interludes which reflect smooth seas as well as storm with equal competence. But the most striking pieces are the many rousing choruses.
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Opera Philadelphia's A Midsummer Night's Dream
Acclaimed Robert Carsen Production Makes US Debut
By: - Feb 12th, 2019Opera Philadelphia has mounted a delightful production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The company reminds us, as it does so often, that opera can be highly entertaining and occasionally hilariously funny. Created by Robert Carsen thirty years ago in Aix-en-Provence, the stage is full of royal blues and lime forest greens until all is resolved in white. A new moon hangs in the sky.
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Honky Tonk Laundry by Roger Bean
At Coyote StageWorks of Palm Springs
By: - Feb 11th, 2019Coyote StageWorks of Palm Springs delivers an early Valentine to fans and lovers of Country Music with a country-western comedy romp and hoot called “Honky Tonk Laundry”, written and directed by prolific playwright Roger Bean. It all comes out in the wash.
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Barbara Hannigan Conducts Juilliard Orchestra
A Soprano at the Helm
By: - Feb 09th, 2019Barbara Hannigan, one of the world’s leading sopranos, conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in a thrilling performance of Strauss, Haydn, Debussy, Sibelius and Bartok. The orchestra responded with music-making worthy of concert halls across the globe.
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Stones Busted Enroute to Boston Garden
What Really Happened That Night
By: - Feb 07th, 2019During a 1972 tour the Stones connecting from Toronto got diverted to Warwick, Rhode Island. Waiting for a limo to Boston Garden Keith clocked a photographer who got too close. Cops busted him as well as Mick who chimed in. After hours of delay Mayor Kevin White told 14,000 fans that the Stones were busted but "I got them out." That's not really true. The Stones went on stage at 1 AM for one of the great concerts in Boston rock history. Decades later attorney Martin Kaplan relates what really happened that night.
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Crypt Sessions' Quartet for the End of Time
Messiaen's Revelation
By: - Feb 05th, 2019Andrew Ousley’s remarkable concert cocktail evenings at The Crypt presented Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. This most famous of Messiaen’s works had a moving performance in a setting that resonated with crystal liturgy.
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La Boheme at Komische Oper Berlin
Opera by Giacomo Puccini
By: - Feb 05th, 2019When it comes to culture, Berlin is always worth a trip. And a great trip it was, to experience the opening night of Barrie Kosky's interpretation of La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini, on Sunday, January 27 at the Komische Oper (Comic Opera) in Berlin.
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Music Producer John Sdoucos
Remembering Remains, Hallucinations, Springsteen, and JT
By: - Feb 05th, 2019As a junior at Boston University, John Sdoucous, worked with George Wein promoting the Newport Jazz Festival launched in 1954. By 1968 he was booking Summerthing for the City of Boston. He got Janis Joplin on stage at Harvard Stadium in 1969 and launched Concerts on the Common in 1970. He continues to book concerts and festivals all over America. For Sdoucos it all started in Boston.
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Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii Orchestra
New CD of Imagine Meeting You Here
By: - Jan 31st, 2019Imagine Meeting You Here (Alister Spence Music, 2019) is the latest release by Alister Spence, a recognized leader in Australia’s new music directive and one of his country’s most original and distinctive jazz pianists and composers of orchestral pieces.
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Meister Debuts at the Metropolitan Opera
Don Giovanni Gets a Special Spin
By: - Jan 30th, 2019The conductor Cornelius Meister is a fast-rising star in Europe. Having just finished a lengthy run at the helm of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he is now the music director o the State Opera and the State Orchestra in the German city of Stuttgart. On January 30, Mr. Meister will make his debut at the Met. His task: conducting one of Mozart's finest and darkest operas: the deliciously twisted Don Giovanni. This week, Superconductor found time to sit down with the maestro to talk all things dramma giocoso.
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SongStudio at Carnegie
Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala as Master Teachers
By: - Jan 29th, 2019Communication is the theme of SongStudio. Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Master classes with Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala provided assurances for the future of the song.
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Carnegie Hall Presents Song Studio
Renee Fleming Gives Us The Song
By: - Jan 27th, 2019Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Her SongStudio took place in the Resnick Education Wing of Carnegie Hall.
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Janis Joplin at Harvard Stadium
In 1970 Bad Luck Came in Threes
By: - Jan 27th, 2019In 1970 I was hired to cover jazz and rock for the daily Boston Herald Traveler. To my dismay soon I was writing obituaries. It started with Al Wilson (July 4, 1943 – September 3, 1970) of the blues band Canned Heat. Then Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970). Not long after Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). That was the class of 1970 with an average age of 27-28. A year later we lost Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971).
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