Music
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BEMF's Global Early Music Performers
Performers from Italy and France to Slovakia and Mexico
By: - Jul 03rd, 2017With its own produced concerts and 18 sponsored groups, the BEMF programs music from 9:30 a.m. to midnight, which only the most intrepid music lovers can attend. Your reporter made it to nine, including both operas, in seven days. With the theme of "carnival," there was a lot of outside-the-law music, including some salacious texts, to consider.
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Boz Scaggs at Tanglewood
Paired with Michael McDonald
By: - Jul 01st, 2017Last night rocker Boz Scaggs launched the 2017 popular artists series at Tanglewood. It was a soggy evening in Lenox with some hearty souls huddled under umbrellas on the lawn. The former lead singer of the Steve Miller Band performed a stunning and soulful set of old and new material including highlights with superhits "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle." Former Steely Dan pianist and vocalist, Michael McDonald, opened with a 90 minute set.
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Ragtime at Barrington Stage Company
Timely Revival of Issues Based Musical
By: - Jun 30th, 2017Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield has a reputation for mounting an annual blockbuster revival of a vintage musical. It also has an an agenda to present message plays that inspire and inform audiences. In the era of Trump Barrington is presenting Ragtime which seemingly conflates the mandates for entertainment and education. It results in a long evening top heavy with big ideas, multiple characters and confusing subplots.
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Wilco Headlines Solid Sound Festival
Fifth Mega Event Sold Out at MoCA
By: - Jun 30th, 2017Wilco headlined the fifth Solid Sound festival, a sell out, at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The band played for two evenings and Jeff tweedy returned on Sunday to play with his son, Spencer, and special friends of the band.
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Francisco Nunez and Young Concert Singers
Bringing La Systema to Carnegie Hall
By: - Jun 27th, 2017Building new audiences can be natural if you can get young people to sing, prepare them for concert performance and invite their families to attend. Francisco Nunes, the composer and conductor, does this with his Young People's Choir. They were joined by like groups from other cities to perform music created for them. The evening was a smash hit.
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Boston Early Music Festival in Venice
19th Biennial Festival's Two Operas and 18 Concerts
By: - Jun 25th, 2017The early music world comes to Boston every two years for the BEMF. This year its centerpiece opera was Andre Campra's "Le Carnaval de Venise," an opera-ballet, in its American premiere. It also reprised a hilarious pair of intermezzi, one of them the popular "La serva padrona," by Giovanni Pergolesi and Handel's Roman period oratorio "La Resurrezione." A good time was had by all.
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OperaRox Concludes NY Opera Fest
New Works at National Opera Center
By: - Jun 25th, 2017OperaRox, a passionate and persuasive group that is promoting new compositions for the human voice, presented the final program in the New York Opera Fest 2017. Clearly this is not the last word for opera.
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The BSO Season at Tanglewood
Promises to Deliver
By: - Jun 25th, 2017Whisper the name "Tanglewood" and you will tickle the conscience of the novice classical music-goer, and fire the memories of those who have walked its grassy paths and visited the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Located on a sprawling estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, this is the Cadillac of summer festivals, offering symphonies, chamber music and opera to a throng of devotees who make the pilgrimage again and again.
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On Site Opera Premiers Milhaud
Guilty Mother at The Garage
By: - Jun 23rd, 2017Kenneth Cole has created a huge space for events, gatherings, parties, and yes, operas. Located far west in Mid Manhattan, On Site Opera chose it for their American premier production of Darius Milhaud's The Guilty Mother.
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Wu Man and Shanghai Quartet
Make Music Not War at Park Avenue Armory
By: - Jun 22nd, 2017The Shanghai Quartet is an internationally acclaimed chamber group which bridges the sensibilities of East and West. Focusing in their program on folk music, you could close your eyes and sometimes imagine Ferde Grofé and Aaron Copland. Bach crops up as a reference.
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Million Dollar Quartet at BTG
A Fantastic Night of Epic Rock 'n' Roll
By: - Jun 21st, 2017Million Dollar Quartet is based on a true story of a rare event - the coming together in one studio of four rock 'n' roll legends: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Set on December 4, 1956, at Sun Records in Memphis, It was a night to remember for all rock n' roll fans!
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The Four Voices At Tanglewood
Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Indigo Girls
By: - Jun 21st, 2017Joan Baez led the Four Voices to a packed house at their final concert tour stop at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. The four women serenaded the audience for two plus hours on a beautiful spring evening.
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Alan Gilbert Leads Concerts in the Parks
Exits in Fireworks
By: - Jun 19th, 2017Alan Gilbert gave his final New York concerts as music director of the New York Philharmonic this week, leading the annual Concerts in the Parks series in four boroughs. Wednesday's concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park was blessed with magnificent weather: clear skies and 80 degrees. Perfect.
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A Night with Janis Joplin
On Stage in San Francisco
By: - Jun 18th, 2017The spirit of the boozing and boisterous rocker is vibrantly on stage at American Conservatory Theatre in An Evening with Janis Joplin. In an incarnation by Kacee Clanton the blues rock belter from Port Arthur, Texas is back where it all started during the flower power hippie era of sweet and wild San Francisco. The touring company of the Broadway musical is playing to packed houses.
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LoftOpera at the Muse in Brooklyn
Pergolesi's Beloved Stabat Mater
By: - Jun 18th, 2017LoftOpera is committed to bringing opera to new, young audiences in welcoming performances which can be greeted with joy by both the artists and the audience. Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, one of the world's most beloved musical settings of a 13th century Christian poem, was actualized in a Brooklyn warehouse. The audience was moved and entranced.
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The Four Voices at Tanglewood
Joan Baez Headlines Women Singers
By: - Jun 16th, 2017The end of a ten city tour is the great stage at Tanglewood. On June 17th, this tour of women's voices fills the air for the last night of their tour on the beautiful grounds in Lenox, Massachusetts.
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Angels in America Opera
Composer Péter Eötvös Creates a Work for the Ages
By: - Jun 15th, 2017Composer Péter Eötvös took a monumental American work, Angels in America, and abstracted its spirit as an opera for the ages. Hallucinatory and death-directed, the opera version mixes spoken and played note language to convey both the anguish and rage of the victims of AIDS.
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Friday Night Concert Series
Music in Bennington
By: - Jun 14th, 2017The Bennington Center for the Arts, in collaboration with Summer Sonatina International Piano Camp, will be offering a diverse and exciting five-week Friday night concert series from June 23rd to July 21.
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Alan Gilbert Exits in a Blaze of Glory
Departs New York Philharmonic
By: - Jun 11th, 2017When it comes to the exit of Alan Gilbert from the post of Music Director after only eight years, the New York Philharmonic has put on its bravest face. This week’s season-ending series of concerts, (promoted as “A Concert for Unity”) have featured starry opening acts for America’s oldest orchestra.
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Met Orchestra Concludes Carnegie Hall Season
How Many Ways Can You Make Songs
By: - Jun 08th, 2017It must be fun for the talented Met Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen to stretch its opera boundaries. From an early Mahler piece, once integrated into the First Symphony, to support of the dazzling Christian Tetzlaff and the quiet lullabies for children sung by Anna Sofie von Otter, the orchestra sang.
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Alan Gilbert's Valedictory Das Rheingold
Maestro Exits Over the Raindow
By: - Jun 07th, 2017The evening belonged to Mr. Gilbert, whose taut command of this orchestra over such a long and contiguous work reminded New Yorkers that his departure at the end of this season will be a terrible loss indeed.
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Gregg Kallor and the Attacca Quartet
Sheen Center Offers a Classical Music Series
By: - Jun 06th, 2017In the heart of Noho, the Sheen Center has become a hot venue for new music performed by consummate artists. Gregg Kallor premiered a Quintet honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Esa Pekka Salonen Conducts
By: - Jun 04th, 2017The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is perhaps the best orchestra now playing in New York. Because they have listened to singers for so long, they have a built in lyricism which it tops with superb musicianship. Under the baton of Esa Pekka Salonen and enhanced by the acoustics of Carnegie Hall, the orchestra made a big impact with Schumann and Mahler.
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Boston Early Music Festival June 11-18
Festival Theme is Carnival After Campra
By: - Jun 03rd, 2017Campra's "Le Carnaval de Venise" sets the theme, but the weeklong festival ranges far and wide, from Mexico to Germany to Rome, Florence as well as Venice. Pergolesi's "La serva padrona"will feature local favorite Amanda Forsythe, and the BEMF orchestra will play Handel's "La Resurrezione." Something for everyone - everyone who loves early music that is.
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Glory Denied on an Aircraft Carrier
Opera Upper West Presents Tom Cipullo's Opera
By: - Jun 03rd, 2017We are on the Hudson River on an aircraft carrier that was used in VIetnam. This is the setting of Tom CIpullo's wrenchingly beautiful opera, Glory Denied, which is performed below deck in the old bunk area by Opera Upper West. The setting almost matches the intensity of this opera.
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