Music
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Babe at the New York Philharmonic
Nigel Westlake's Score Performed Live
By: - Dec 18th, 2016Babe is a tale about an unprejudiced soul and one we should surely take to heart. Children can learn to sing Jingle Bells with LaLaLa. Will one of the youngsters who was lucky enough to see the film with the NY Phil, one day fall in love with the Saint Saens Symphony and say, That’s Babe’s song?
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Erik Satie, 150 Years Young
The Sheen Center Celebrates
By: - Dec 14th, 2016Satie is the Paul Klee of composers. The lines may be thin, but they pack weight and feeling. They seem to dance. Louis Durey of Les Six would write that Satie's unique clarity, his horror of hackneyed ways , his love of discovery and risk led to his gleaming contributions to music. According to John Cage, Satie helped break down the barrier between art and life.
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The Charleston Christmas Special
Yet Again Produced by Brad and Jennifer Moranz
By: - Dec 14th, 2016Brad and Jennifer Moranz want y'all to have a Holly Jolly Christmas and a Happy New Year. For the past 21 years their Charleston Christmas Special has provided Broadway-quality entertainment with the gusto of holiday happiness.
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In Transit on Broadway
Charming New A Capella NY Musical
By: - Dec 11th, 2016The refreshing new a capella musical, In Transit, evokes commuters not only on the move but in transition. There are poingant thumbnails of eager millenials reaching for the brass ring underground in the naked city.
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Mark Morris Cracks the Nut
Christmas Traditions Celebrated at BAM
By: - Dec 11th, 2016Mark Morris' The Hard Nut is a Christmas tradition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It is easy to see why. Morris is true to E.T. A. Hofman's story and also the Tchaikovsky score. Bringing smiles to the audience, punctuated by fear, delight and humor Morris's Nut is terrific.
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Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito
Bedroom Drama in the Coliseum at MMS Opera Theater
By: - Dec 09th, 2016Mozart's final opera was written in 18 days to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. While it is often said that the opera is political, the hearts and minds of top political figures are central. It is hard to be evil. It is easier to be good if you have honest people around you. Simple, deep words are embedded in some of the most gorgeous music ever written. The Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater gives Mozart his full due.
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MASS MoCA Announces Events
Ladie's Choice for Winter
By: - Dec 07th, 2016Sliding into the Holiday season followed by the dead of wintwr Mass MoCA is looking on the bright side. The North Adams based mega museum has posted a full schedule of enticing upcoming events. It's time to mark the calendar.
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Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812
Pastiche of War and Peace
By: - Dec 07th, 2016What started Off Broadway at Ars Nova, with three steps in between, has transferred to Broadway. Based on a 70 page slice of Tolstoy's War and Peace the explosively inovative Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 is the one to beat as best musical come awards season.
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Isaac Mizrahi Narrates Peter and the Wolf
John Heginbotham and Ensemble Signal Are Icing
By: - Dec 05th, 2016Of course the costumes are terrific. Isaac Mizrahi, narrator and imaginer of this production, is a top flight designer. Each animal and human has a few eyecatching details. Prokofiev is always fabulous. All the elements come together in the Guggenheim's Works and Process Christmas celebration.
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yMusic Arrives at Carnegie
Unusual Instrumental Mix Triumphs
By: - Dec 03rd, 2016If there is an argument for YouTube and the ever-expanding internet, it is made by this group of superb young musicians, classically-trained, impeccable artists who are open to anything.
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Boston Early Music Festival's Versailles
Pastiche Composed for Apartments of Louis XIV
By: - Dec 02nd, 2016Louis XIV was a great arts patron, but like most powerful men, he liked to be flattered. The two divertissements revived by the BEMF are sycophantic but charming to listen to and see. As usual, the BEMF forces excelled in a highly stylized production.
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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at Carnegie
Semyon Bychkov Takes Us Beyond Words
By: - Dec 02nd, 2016A twenty-five note chord indeed. But that’s how Detlov Glanert starts his composition Theatrum Bestiarum. The singing of a thousand birds, the howling of the storm, the lapping of waves and the crackling of the fire. We are in the midst of musical feeling at Carnegie Hall as Glanert crashes around us and Mahler follows. A thrilling evening of brass and drums.
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First Night Saratoga 2017
New Years Eve celebration of the Arts
By: - Dec 01st, 2016First Night is the most affordable, accessible, family-friendly, safe and exciting way to spend New Year's Eve in the region. On Saturday, December 31st join over 15,000 revelers as Saratoga Art’s presents one of the oldest and largest First Night celebrations in the country. Starting with the 5k roadrace at Skidmore College at 5:30pm, culminating with fireworks in Congress Park at midnight and packed full of live music, dance, comedy and magic in between, this event will be a highlight of your outgoing year.
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Ivan Fischer Conducts New York Philharmonic
Musical Chairs Play Beethoven and Dvorak
By: - Nov 27th, 2016Conductor Iván Fischer led the New York Philharmonic in a startling program, not because Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major or Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony in G Major are unfamiliar. Yet they sounded particularly new and fresh in this performance. Fischer characteristically releases phrases in a swell and dares to experiment with dynamic extremes, particularly in the Beethoven, where both the soloist and the orchestra often whisper.
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Boston Lyric Opera Does Turnage's Greek
Retelling of Oedipus Rex OK's Incest
By: - Nov 23rd, 2016Mark-Anthony Turnage created the kind of scandal the arts love when in 1988 he premiered his first opera "Greek." A punkish provocation, it set the hoary myth of Oedipus, he who killed his father and married his mother, in a declining Thatcherite Britain. In choosing it, the BLO, in a dynamic production, asks whether it is still relevant.
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Jonathan Dove's Flight at Juilliard
Operatic Enchantments Fly
By: - Nov 21st, 2016Jonathan Dove's Flight is given a near perfect mounting this fall at the Juilliard School. Juilliard's neighbor across the way could take a page on opera production from the young artists whose talent and sensibility bodes well for the future of the opera form.
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Tanglewood 2017
Expanded Role for Andris Nelsons Includes Sharing Film Night
By: - Nov 17th, 2016In his most significant commitment yet to Tanglewood, Andris Nelsons will lead both the opening and closing BSO concerts, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, and Beethoven Symphony No. 9; Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with Kristine Opolais; an opera gala with Ms. Opolais and Dmitri Hvorostovsky performing excerpts from Simon Boccanegra, La traviata, and Eugene Onegin; the world premiere of John Williams’s Markings with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; and the first-ever BSO and festival concert performance of the complete Das Rheingold, a tour de force milestone in the history of the festival.
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William Kentridge's Return of Ulysses
The Father of Opera Celebrated
By: - Nov 17th, 2016Claudio Monteverdi is considered the first major composer of an opera. The richness of his talent is on abundant display in William Kentridge’s direction of The Return of Ulysses.
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Eastman Philharmonia at Alice Tully Hall
Renée Fleming Sings Kevin Puts
By: - Nov 16th, 2016The Eastman Philharmonia under the brilliant Neil Varon, performed Maurice Ravel, Kevin Puts and Serge Prokofiev at Alice Tully Hall.
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Venetian Coronation at Lincoln Center
Gabriele Conducted By Paul McCreesh
By: - Nov 13th, 2016For a Venetian Coronation, the golden wood of Alice Tully Hall is lit around the stage by floor floodlights cast upwards. The 1595 Coronation ritual inducted Marino Grimani who would rule until his death in 1605. The Baroque style of the performance was delivered with clarity and beauty Challenges in playing period instruments with fewer vents and using the high larynx to produce tones of exquisite beauty were not apparent in the formal but easy movements of the groups.
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Thomas Ades and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
British Composer Begins Three Year Partnership with BSO
By: - Nov 11th, 2016Young (45 years old) hotshot Thomas Ades is a triple threat: composer, conductor and pianist. In his first outing with the BSO as artistic partner he showcased each of those skills. The results were mostly good. Among the highlights was the local premiere of his "Totentanz," a major work by any standard.
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Carnegie Hall's Invites Music in the Resnick Center
Developing Performers and Listeners Alike
By: - Nov 08th, 2016Carnegie Hall programs explore an individual's musicality. For those who are born with the musical gene, their basic instincts are led out into the beat and the song. For those who do not have the gene, music is brought inside and listeners made.
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Xian Zhang, Maestra of the New Jersey Symphony
Handel, Beethoven and Strauss at the Bergen PAC
By: - Nov 04th, 2016The New Jersey Symphony tours the state, winter, summer and fall. Starting her inaugural season as Music Director, Xian Zhang was welcomed enthusiastically by residents of Englewood.
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Bluebeard's Castle at the BSO
Hungarian Rarity a Perfect Halloween Opera
By: - Nov 03rd, 2016Bela Bartok is known for his folklore inspired spiky modernism, which he applied distinctively to orchestral and chamber works. "Bluebeard" is his only opera, and it is an awkward undramatic outlier in the repertory. Its lushly beautiful music, however, is a powerful reason why it is revived on occasion. The BSO under Charles Dutoit did it proud.
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Carnegie Celebrates Steve Reich's 80th Birthday
To Defy God or Not is the Big Question
By: - Nov 02nd, 2016The year long birthday celebration for Steve Reich, our country's foremost composer, continues. At Carnegie Hall, we heard a Quartet from 2013 and the world premier of Pulse with the International Contemporary Ensemble. The evening was capped by Three Tales, a collaboration between Reich and his wife, Beryl Korot, a video artist. While Reich appears to be fit as a fiddle, these tributes to his decades might better be annual for all the pleasure they offer.
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