Music
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EarSay: Catching up on the CD Backlog
Old Town School of Folk, Kirsty McGee, Karine Polwart and Maeve Gilchrist
By: - May 27th, 2013These cds have become embarrassments sitting on my “To be reviewed†shelf and staring at me with accusatory intensity. So, I made a pledge to devote myself over the next month or so of clearing up the backlog and every other installment will be dedicated to bring these gems, (and make no mistake these are gems not castaways) to your attention.
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Missy Mazzoli and the Gotham Opera
Le Poisson Rouge Showcases Opera and Other Music
By: - May 26th, 2013Neal Goren is the moving force behind Gotham Chamber Opera, eleven years old and mature beyond its years. Over and over again, in a variety of venues, Gotham brings us opera, intimate and at its best. Committed to bringing seldom performed opera to light, Goren also presents the cutting edge composers of our day. It was another brilliant evening at New York's arts cabaret Le Poisson Rouge
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Tanglewood Highlights Open Season
Schedule from June 21 to July 18
By: - May 23rd, 2013Tanglewood is front ending the 2013 season with popular music programming. It starts with Melissa Etheridge on June 21 and a weekend that also included Warren Haynes and the Pops preforming a tribute to Jerry Garcia. Then Joan Baez paired with the Indigo Girls. Terence Blanchard returns to Lenox on June 28 in a weekend that includes the perennial Garrison Keillor and Jackson Browne. The serious music begins July 5.
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EarSay: Iris Dement and Nora Jane Struthers
Iris Live at Bull Run and Nora Jane's New CD
By: - May 19th, 2013Although I did not know it was she or even know of her, I first heard the voice of Iris Dement while watching the final episode of Northern Exposure on July 26th, 1995.It was several years before I heard that voice again. In a live performance at Bull Run in Shirley I noted that while her vocal instrument has neither great range nor exceptional clarity, it does, however, embody a tapestry of tones that are conduits for a greater variety of passions and emotions than any other voice I know.
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Andris Nelsons New Music Director of the BSO
Appointment of Youthful Conductor Shocks Music World
By: - May 16th, 2013With the numerous cancellations of former Music Director, James Levine, his inevitable retirement and a two year interregum, the past few years have been a nightmare for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Just in his mid 30s the Latvian born Andris Nelsons has been appointed as Music Director of the BSO and Tanglewood.
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John Harbison's Opera The Great Gatsby
July 11 at Tanglewood
By: - May 16th, 2013After its last outing at the Met a dozen years ago, Harbison's grand opera seemed to be forgotten. Now, a trimmer, more fleet version brings the works virtues to the fore. The opera will be performed at Tanglewood on July 11.
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Giulio Cesare a Triumph at the Met Opera
Natalie Dessay in Top Form
By: - May 12th, 2013Handel took eight months to compose Giuilo Cesare, an unusually long time for him. Rinaldo was composed in two weeks. Harry Bicket, conducting with his hands, sometimes on a harpsichord which held his score, brought forward all the delights of this superb score.
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The Flying Dutchman at Boston Lyric Opera
Closes Season With American Premiere of 1841 Critical Edition
By: - May 07th, 2013The Boston Lyric Opera assembled a sterling company of singers adept at Wagnerian style while music director David Angus conducted a white-hot orchestra. Its presentation of Richard Wagner’s early work, “The Flying Dutchman,†his first mature success, to commemorate the bicentennial of the composer’s birth, was not only one of the largest productions in its history, but it was the U.S. premiere of a newly prepared critical edition of the work.
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Blind Boys of Alabama Visit Cape Cod
Wellfleet Congregational Church May 25
By: - May 07th, 2013The Blind Boys of Alabama are recognized worldwide as living legends of gospel music. Celebrated by The Grammy Awards and The National Endowment for the Arts with Lifetime Achievement Awards, inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, honored by performing for three presidents in the White House, and are winners of five Grammy Awards.
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Imagine Beethoven's Fifth As It Premiered
Interpretation: A Case for Broad Perspective
By: - May 04th, 2013How wonderful it would be to be able to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony exactly as it was heard at its premiere! Or would it? The classical violinist, conductor and author Gerald Elias discuses how great masterpieces evolve over time.
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Remembering Sir Colin Davis
Renowned Counductor was 85
By: - May 03rd, 2013As Principal Guest Conductor of the Boston Symphony from 1972 to 1984, Sir Colin Davis not only conducted the orchestra four or five weeks a year, he also led some of the orchestra’s great recording projects: the complete Sibelius symphonies (some say the best set ever recorded), and music by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Berlioz. He also was a leading interpreter of Handel, Haydn and Edward Elgar.
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Aaron Neville at MASS MoCA
Launches Summer Concerts on May 25,
By: - May 03rd, 2013Aaron Neville's recent release, My True Story, is a collection of classic doo-wop numbers. To create the album, Neville teamed up with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and the legendary Blue Note label producer, Don Was. Showcasing the old-school rhythm and blues that were the key influences throughout his career, Neville covers The Drifters, The Clovers, and Little Anthony and the Imperials. "Opportunities like this don't come 'round very often," says Richards. "I grew up with these songs, like Aaron did. It's such a pleasure to play with a voice like that."
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Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra
Performing a Great Work
By: - May 03rd, 2013The first time I performed the Concerto for Orchestra I was moonlighting on last stand of the second violins in the New Haven Symphony. The New Haven Symphony has a long and respectable history as a semi-professional orchestra with many fine musicians. The gig also enabled me to pick up a few bucks for my Yale tuition.
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A Particularly Cunning Vixen Arrives at Juilliard
Julia Bullock Makes Her Mark in the Title Role
By: - May 01st, 2013Conducting, Anne Manson displays a mastery of music and drama that should have a much broader audience. Julia Bullock, a young soprano phenom, won first prize in the Young Concert Artists Competition of 2012. Peter Sellars has taken note, and cast her in Purcell’s The Indian Queen at the Teatro Real in Madrid this fall.
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Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
34th Festival from June 28 to July 7.
By: - Apr 30th, 2013Featured artists in this year's Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, June 28 to July 7, includes Aretha Franklin, Wayne Shorter, Chucho Valdés, George Benson, Oliver Jones; the absolutely essential Wynton Marsalis, Joshua Redman, John Abercrombie, Ravi Coltrane, Bill Frisell Holly Cole and Boz Scaggs as well as many more.
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The Mount's Season Highlights
Sculpture, Theatre, Film, Music, Literature
By: - Apr 30th, 2013Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Tom Reiss, Shakespeare & Company, SculptureNow, BIFF and Lift E'vry Voice have something in common: they are all part of The Mount's 2013 summer season.
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Mahagonny at the Manhattan School of Music
Aaron Short and Rachelle Pike Whet Appetite for the Future
By: - Apr 29th, 2013An iconic broken down truck is sitting on stage, so we know three escaping criminals will soon build Mahagonny. Behind a hospital-like dividing curtain, a flophouse will later cast off silhouettes of sex acts. Mahagonny will be a new Sodom & Gomorrah, or maybe even New York in the Age of the Derivative.
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Ear Say: John Fullbright and Ewan McLennan
Amazing Things Are Happening in Our World.
By: - Apr 28th, 2013The two artists whose recordings I comment on below are interesting in their comparisons and their contrasts. Both cds garnered considerable praise and attention in 2012. Oklahoma’s John Fullbright and his release were nominated for a Grammy, and Ewan McLennan’s was one of those selected in the UK’s best of the year lists.
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Bach and His Predecessors: Choral Works
With TENET and Jolle Greenleaf
By: - Apr 25th, 2013Berkshire Bach Society brings NYC\'s preeminent vocal ensemble TENET to Great Barrington for its premiere Berkshire performance. “Bach and his Predecessors†offers a glimpse of the musically rich world from which Bach emerges. Several notebooks that Bach compiled in his youth attest to the hunger that he showed for learning from earlier composers.
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Richie Havens at 72
Remembering an Iconic Flower Child
By: - Apr 23rd, 2013Over the years we heard Richie Havens perform on many occasions. Including at 2009 concert at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield. He returned to the Berkshires and Mass MoCA in 2010. He is best remembered for opening the Woodstock Rock Festival in 1969 and later being included in the film and album of that event. It established a career that ended only recently because of deteriorating health. He is recalled as one of the great voices and unique stylists of his generation.
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B.U.'s Opera Institute Does Mozart
Final Work Combines Great Music with a Weak Story
By: - Apr 23rd, 2013Always broke, Mozart accepted a commission for an opera for the coronation of Leopold II that gave him only 18 days to write it. Although Mozart couldn't write a bad note if he tried, the results are not among his most enduring.
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Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative
Archive at Center for the Performing Arts Carmel, Indiana
By: - Apr 10th, 2013As Ambassador of the Great American Songbook Michael Feinstein is a dynamo and one man band. The Third Season of his PBS series, with three episodes is currently airing. Recently, we visited the fast growing archive he established at Performing Arts Center in Carmel, Indiana where he serves as artistic director. The state of the art facility opened in 2011 and has become a destination for the appreciation of standards.
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New England Conservatory Revives Rossini
La Gazzetta No Masterpiece But Lots of Fun
By: - Apr 10th, 2013Don Pomponio takes out a personal ad in the local rag to find a husband for his daughter Lisetta. Mistaken identities ensure confusion, which leads to hilarity. In the end two young lovers find their mates, but not before Quakers and Turks make their appearance.
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Eve Queler's Opera Orchestra of New York
Michael Fabiano, a World Class Tenor, in I Lombardi by Verdi
By: - Apr 09th, 2013Eve Queler introduced the Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall in 1972 with Verdi’s I Lombardi. Featured in the cast were Jose Carreras, Renata Scotto and Paul Plishka in a memorable performances. Queler has continued to offer wonderful productions of seldom heard operas featuring stars, up and coming stars, and newbies. Her contribution to the music world has been incalculable.
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Extraordinary BSO Conducted by Daniele Gatti
Carnegie Welcomes a Tribute to Richard Wagner
By: - Apr 07th, 2013Daniele Gatti arrived at Carnegie Hall with the Boston Symphony Orceshtra for their annual spring visit. Gatti had recently triumphed at the Metropolitan Opera conducting Parsifal in a consummate performance. Katrina Dalayman, the Met’s Kundry, reports that the group of mega stars gathered to sing were exceptionally collaborative, guided by Gatti, emailing back and forth. This group effort showed on the stage with the BSO.
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