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  • Don Giovanni

    Livermore Valley Opera's Fine Rendering of Mozart and da Ponte's Masterpiece

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 03rd, 2025

    In this great serio-comic fantasy, the famed lothario Don Giovanni "courts" three ladies in short order. He also slays the father of one, setting off a man hunt and revenge by the spirit of the deceased.

  • Koln 75, the Movie, Premieres in Berlin

    Keith Jarrett's Signature Evening and Engaging Film

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 05th, 2025

    Keith Jarrett’s performance in Cologne, Germany, in 1975 is widely regarded as one of the great solo concerts of all time. The new film Koln '75 about this iconic moment asks, “How did the concert come to be?”

  • The Pigeon Keeper

    Opera Parallele's World Premiere of a Timely Fable

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 08th, 2025

    During a time of drought and poor fish catch, a fisherman and his daughter save a young boy from the sea, but he is from a different land and does not speak their language. Clashes ensue over how to deal with this involuntary interloper. The touching and well-produced opera benefits from its relevance to our current times and from the large role played by the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

  • Happy Pleasant Valley: A Senior Sex Scandal Murder Mystery Musical

    Min Kahng Creates Another Lively Stage Piece for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 10th, 2025

    Korean-American June lives in an assisted living facility. She swears up a storm; has major sex urges; and unfortunately, two men have died in her bed. Granddaughter Jade is an influencer and vloger who insinuates herself into June's life for her own selfish purposes, but when June is accused of murder, they will work toward common purpose in this comedy musical.

  • Fly by Night

    Hillbarn's Charming Rendition of a Musical About Hope, Love, and Loss

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 11th, 2025

    Daphne leaves South Dakota for New York City along with sister Miriam. Set over a year leading up to the Northeast Blackout of 1965, one sister seeks stardom on Broadway and the other is happy as a diner waitress. Their aspirations, relationships, and random events are the basis for a thoughtful pop musical.

  • Nobody Loves You

    ACT's Sparkling Musical Send-up of Reality Dating Shows

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 14th, 2025

    Jeff is a PhD candidate in philosophy who ridicules reality shows. But chasing after his ex-girlfriend, he finds himself in the studio of such a show. Although he's candid about hating everything about them, the show runner anticipates good audience response if Jeff becomes a contestant. Like oil and water, they don't mix. But comedy ensues.

  • Victoria Bond Presents the Jack Quartet

    A Cutting Edge Anniversary Celebration

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 15th, 2025

    Victoria Bond, composer and conductor, presents what she calls cutting edge music. Cutting edge it is. Yet,  what Bond is able to do for this famously inaccessible music, is to bring it to the ear and give pleasure. At the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater in Symphony Space in New York, the Jack Quartet performed.

  • Pittsfield CityJazz Festival

    Highlighta Include Count Basie Orchestra at the Colonlal

    By: Ed Bride - Mar 18th, 2025

    Here is the lineup for the nineteenth Pittsfield CityJazz Festival, which runs from April 24 through May 4 in downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the cultural capital of the Berkshires.

  • Cleveland Orchestra Offers Defiant Hope at Carnegie

    Welser-Most Conducts Speaking Instruments

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 21st, 2025

    Franz Welser-Most, and the Cleveland Orchestra he will have directed longer than any other conductor, arrived at Carnegie Hall this week to bring us hope through music in these difficult times.

  • Kirill Petrenko DIscusses Being Jewish

    Petrenko Has Led the Berlin Philharmonic for Five Years

    By: Susan Hall - Mar 30th, 2025

    When Kirill Petrenko was elected by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra members to lead their orchestra five years ago, people were surprised. Becauase he is Russian by birth? No, because he is a Jew. Now the Berlin PHilharmonic publishes an interview with him on what it is like for him to be Jewish.

  • Grease

    Nostalgia and Hijinks by the Bucketful at Altarena Playhouse

    By: Victor Cordell - Mar 31st, 2025

    Danny Zuko and Sandy Dumbrowski didn't expect to see each other after their summer fling, but Sandy transfers into Danny's school, Rydell High. How can Danny still be cool with his Greaser friends, yet rekindle the sensitive relationship with Sandy? And how can Sandy befriend the Pink Ladies while poaching in their territory? A great soundtrack and a ton of humor tell the story.

  • Erin Morley Enchants at Park Avenue Armory

    Notes Bloom as Morley Sings of Flowers and Birds

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 13th, 2025

    Erin Morley sang hopefully of spring and blooms and birds at the Park Avenue Armory. Ms. Morley is clearly a voice for our times.

  • Zorro

    Origins of a Superhero at Opera San Jose

    By: Victor Cordell - Apr 21st, 2025

    Diego returns to his father's home in Los Angeles to find his former friend Moncada is now mayor and brutalizes mestizos (mixed bloods), a group that includes Diego's love, Ana Maria. In this origin story, Diego takes on the disguise Zorro and fights to improve the plight of the disadvantaged.

  • Peter Wolf Publishes Memoir

    Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses

    By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 23rd, 2025

    When not on tour, Peter Wolf and Magic Dick were my neighbors in the notorious Murder Building. Rent was cheap in the heart of Harvard Square. Wolf was a part of Ed Hood's literary salon which hosted Warhol's factory members and the Velvet Underground. With fellow students of the Museum School he fronted his first group The Hallucinations. He literally moonlighted as a DJ for the emerging WBCN-FM. After two years under the radar his second band J Geils signed with unfavorable terms to Atlantic Records. After several albums and little to show for it they signed with EMI. Their single "Centerfold" went to number one. Having finally made it the band mysteriously canned Wolf and folded after one more album. The well written book has anecdotes of his ventures with the rich and famous including marriage to Faye Dunaway.

  • Legendary Music Producer John Sdoucous

    Still Active Until Recent Demise at 90

    By: Charles Giuliano - Apr 23rd, 2025

    Music producer John Sdoucous was a force during the era of Boston’s Counterculture. Commissioned by Mayor Kevin White he curated the important series Boston On the Common. It brought major musicians to perform in the heart of the city. He also worked with George Wein and his Newport Festival. For many years he resided in Florida and Cape Co

  • Floyd Collins Echoes at Lincoln Center

    Fresh Faces Enliven the Cast

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 24th, 2025

    In 1925, a seemingly prescient family farmer became captivated by the idea of bringing a one-act Barnum and Bailey-style circus to the caves of Kentucky. Against this backdrop unfolds the story of Floyd Collins, whose entrapment in this famously fragile landscape—formed by the dissolution of limestone, collapsing sinkholes, sinking streams, and springs—captured national attention. His burial in the very Sand Cave he had chosen became a media sensation. Now it is a musical, Floyd Collins.

  • Don Giovanni Entrances in Philadelphia

    Opera Philadelphia Triumphs

    By: Susan Hall - Apr 29th, 2025

    Opera Philadelphia is presenting Mozart’s original version of Don Giovanni at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. It’s a lively, visually striking production designed to showcase both the richness of Mozart’s score and Da Ponte’s intricate libretto.

  • Handel in Hudson

    R.B. Schlather Captures Handel's Spirit with a Fresh View

    By: Susan Hall - May 02nd, 2025

    Hudson Hall in Hudson, New York, presents Handel’s Giulio Cesare as part of its ambitious celebration of the composer’s forty operas—each of which will eventually be staged here. It’s an exciting prospect.

  • Count Basie Band in Pittsfield

    Headlined Pittsfield CityJazz Festival

    By: Charles Giuliano - May 04th, 2025

    The annual Pittsfield Jazz Festival ended last night with the legendary Count Basie Band. Now some 90-years-old it has been led by Scotty Barnhart since 2013.

  • The Engish Concert at Carnegie Hall

    A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

    By: Susan Hall - May 07th, 2025

    The English Concert performed a semi-staged, off-book production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto at Carnegie Hall. This annual visit by one of the world’s premier Baroque ensembles is eagerly awaited — and this year did not disappoint.

  • Heartbeat Opera Shapeshifts Faust

    Gounod's Opera Updated

    By: Susan Hall - May 20th, 2025

    Heartbeat Opera is a crown jewel in New York’s opera diadem. Their productions make opera accessible and compelling to contemporary audiences by breathing new life into beloved classics. Faust, their current production running through May 25, is no exception—it’s a bold, inventive take that succeeds on many fronts.

  • Otello

    West Bay Conquers Notoriously Difficult Verdi Masterpiece

    By: Victor Cordell - May 26th, 2025

    Many opera aficionados argue that Arrigo Boito's libretto improves on the Shakespeare source material. Machinations by Iago, one of the best developed and vile villains in literature, wreak tragedy upon Otello and Desdemona in response to Iago's being passed over for a promotion. Verdi's music is both sublime and powerful.

  • Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) Spotlight Series

    Past, Present, and Future: What Is Music For

    By: BSO - May 28th, 2025

    BSO collaborator Yo-Yo Ma, encompasses four talks and four musical performances with an array of compelling scholars and performers (Aug. 2–12). The annual Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) Spotlight Series this year features: Ma and historian Heather Cox Richardson (Aug. 2), art critic Sebastian Smee and musicians Sam Amidon and Shahzad Ismaily (Aug. 9), and violinist Vijay Gupta, journalist Steve Lopez, and Juilliard’s Lesley Rosenthal (Aug. 23).

  • Angel's Share at the Greenwood Cemetery

    Cocktails, Comestibles & Callas

    By: Susan Hall - May 29th, 2025

    Impresario Andrew Ousley has opened up the world of classical music to a new generation—one often untutored and underexposed—by presenting it in some of the most unexpected venues: churches and cemeteries.

  • Barringtpn Stage Update

    Will Van Dyke, Jeff Talbott, and Derik Lee release “Squirrel in the Wind”

    By: BSC - May 30th, 2025

    Will Van Dyke, Jeff Talbott, and Derik Lee release “Squirrel in the Wind” on Joy Machine Records. The track is the first single of a two song EP fuzzy (Barrington Stage Company Sessions), featuring music and lyrics by Van Dyke & Talbott and performed by Cass Morgan and John Cariani.

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