Music
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Boston Lyric Opera' s Clemency
No Mercy for James MacMillan's New Work
By: - Feb 07th, 2013In a seriously mistaken co-commision, Boston Lyric Opera, presents a parable about Abraham and Sarah by the Scottish composer James MacMillan that suggests that suicide killing is okay, if the victims are sinners.
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Ear Say: More CDs
The Haunted Windchimes and Bellowhead
By: - Feb 04th, 2013Two wild extremes each in their own way quite satisfying CDs comprise the pair we report on today. One hails from the mountains of Colorado and the other from the British Isles.
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The Steve Miller Band Tanglewood July 29
Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! August 29
By: - Feb 04th, 2013Steve Miller Band performs on July 29. The witty and fast-paced radio program Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! appears in the Shed on Thursday, August 29. Let the good times roll.
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Renee Fleming and Susan Graham Sing French Songs
Two Reigning Divas Reduce Symphony Hall To Their Personal Salon,
By: - Feb 04th, 2013In a program of French salon music, Renée Fleming and Susan Graham give the vocal recital a shot of adrenalin. Both Fleming and Graham are endowed with big warm voices, creamy or buttery or honeyed - whatever comparison you prefer. They sing together like a hand in a glove, their voices intertwining so that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
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A Brief History: A Great Collection of Dance Songs
Unabashed Shamanism by Composer Martin Case
By: - Feb 01st, 2013Martin Case employs the rhetoric of shamanism unabashedly. He often plays the role of trickster in his bait-and-switch style of composition, setting up a sense of expectation that he fulfills, time and again, with an apparent non-sequitur—answering a question, as it were, with another question. He has composed for companies and choreographers as varied as Boston Ballet, Prometheus Dance, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre,the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Samantha Cameron, Liz Bermann and Min Tzu Li.
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John Hodgman Leads Solid Sound Comics
Wilco's Mass MoCA Festival June 21-23
By: - Jan 30th, 2013Comedian, author, television personality and historian John Hodgman returns to Solid Sound 2013 to present another hand-picked line-up of comedic talent on Saturday, June 22. The Solid Sound Festival, brainchild of the Chicago-based musical innovators Wilco, returns to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams on June 21-23.
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Handel and Haydn Society's Purcell
A Weird but Entertaining Evening
By: - Jan 28th, 2013Purcell's "The Indian Queen" is merely the incidental music to a preposterous play by John Dryden, but it delivers a number of musical pleasures. Dryden’s play is based on total ignorance of the history of what later became Latin America. Pre-Columbian Mexico is at war with Peru, and Montezuma, historically the king of the Aztecs, is presented as the leader of the Peruvian forces who goes over to the Mexican side because his marriage proposal for the Peruvian princess he loves is rejected.
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Tanglewood Tickets on Sale January 27
Time to Mark the Summer Calendar
By: - Jan 25th, 2013his Sunday, January 27, is the first opportunity for the public to purchase tickets for the recently announced popular artist concerts at Tanglewood including a Melissa Etheridge performance (June 21); the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration featuring guitarist and vocalist Warren Haynes with the Boston Pops and conductor Keith Lockhart (June 22); a Jackson Browne concert, featuring special guest Sara Watkins (July 4); and an Ozawa Hall performance featuring jazz bassist/vocalist/composer Esperanza Spalding in her Tanglewood debut (August 4).
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BSO Does Hair-raising Verdi Requiem
A Requiem for the End of Time in Bicentennial Year
By: - Jan 21st, 2013Daniel Gatti led the enormous orchestra and chorus and four vocal soloists in Verdi's sole attempt at large-scale sacred music . Ferocious, uncompromising, Verdi’s Requiem is a Requiem for the End of the World. Maybe we can appreciate it now more than when it was written – we have witnessed several worlds end in our time and daily contemplate the imminent end of the planet.
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Crescendo Concerts February 2 and 3
Making It Up in Great Barrington
By: - Jan 21st, 2013More than simply a concert, “Making It Up†is an exploration of improvisation through a variety of musical genres, styles and time periods. More than simply a concert, “Making It Up†is an exploration of improvisation through a variety of musical genres, styles and time periods. The concerts will be held at the First Congregational Church, 251 Main St., Great Barrington, MA at 5 pm Saturday, February 2 and at Trinity Church, 484 Lime Rock Rd., Lakeville, at 4 pm Sunday, February 3.
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Two More Best CD's of 2012
Seinn and Kin Deserve Your Notice
By: - Jan 20th, 2013Once again we examine choices for best roots or traditional genre recorded and /or released in 2012. These two, certainly stretch the boundaries of the category and in quite diverse directions thematically and geographically. And let's hear it for and from Rosanne Cash. Take a listen.
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Melissa Ethridge at Tanglewood June 21
Pops Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration June 22
By: - Jan 16th, 2013Tanglewood is filling out its dance card with pop bookings. Singer-songwriter Melissa Etthridge will be featured in the Shed on June 22 with Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration the following night. Good times will be had by all.
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Newport Jazz Festival 2013
Wayne Shorter's Birthday Celebration
By: - Jan 15th, 2013One year away from celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival, George Wein, Producer and Chairman of the Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc., announces the program for the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival presented by Natixis Global Asset Management, which will be held in Newport, RI, August 2 - 4.
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Ear Say for 2012's CDs
A Nod to
By: - Jan 13th, 2013Now anyone who can claim to have listened critically to all of the output in a 12 month period is clearly blowing hot air because if they did they would have no time for sleeping, reading or for other pursuits to which the younger and nimbler are prone.
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Jackson Browne July 4th at Tanglewood
Esperanza Spalding August 4
By: - Jan 08th, 2013American singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, along with special guest Sara Watkins, returns to Tanglewood for the first time in 15 years, on Thursday, July 4, 2013, at 7 p.m. to perform in the Shed, with fireworks following the concert. Mr. Browne last performed at Tanglewood with Bonnie Raitt on August 24, 1998. He made his first Tanglewood appearance on July 31, 1973.
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Opera Orchestra of New York
Roberto Alagna as Andrea Chenier
By: - Jan 07th, 2013Concert performances of opera are a wonderful chance to concentrate on singers and the orchestra. Eve Queler, the founder of OONY, has always delivered with aplomb. She does in Andrea Chenier.
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The Good Lovelies CD
Live At The Revolution
By: - Jan 05th, 2013Live At Revolution is the best CD that The Good Lovelies have yet produced. It satisfies completely. If it does not win industry notice, nominations and awards I will be amazed.
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Met Opera General Manager Peter Gelb Tests Limits
100 Million Dollar Bond Offering by The Met
By: - Jan 03rd, 2013For the first time in its history, the beleaguered Metropolitan Opera, through Morgan Stanley, offered 100 million dollars worth of bonds for sale. Moody's Investors Service noted that the Met's advantages and disadvantages are the same: a dependency on board and patron support.
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David Hayes Conducts New York Choral Society
Carnegie Hall Debut with Higdon and Berlioz
By: - Dec 20th, 2012The New York Choral Society welcomed their new Music Director David Hayes with an unusual, apt and perfectly programmed evening. Herod’s aria was sung beautifully by Richard Bernstein, who humanizes the tyrant without erasing from your memory that he murdered his wife. A play written about the same time that the oratorio was composed also made Herod more complex and real.
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Christmas Blues CDs
Delta, Piedmont and Urban Derivatives.
By: - Dec 17th, 2012Here are a few suggestions for holiday gifting to the discerning blues lover in your life, or for your own wish list.
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The Chamber Music Society Giftwraps Bach
A Joyous Celebration
By: - Dec 17th, 2012Bach packaged his six concertos called “Brandenburg†when he sent them to the Duke of Margrave, and they are often treated as one. The Chamber Music Society presents them annually as a gift to their followers. And it is always a treat. No holiday wrapping is needed. In the warm, golden wood that hugs Alice Tully Hall, the performers are illuminated on the stage, where they weave their magic.
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One Step Closer to Carnegie Hall
Rising Artists Perform Chamber Music
By: - Dec 12th, 2012A wonderful clarinetist, Joseph Rosen, performs with a small chamber group every month or so during the season in New York. In addition to being a delightful musician himself, he invites guests on the cusp of their musical careers to join in. While you still have to practice, practice, practice to get to Carnegie, these days practice not enough. Winning competitions and getting good reviews help, but in the end it's a mix of all of the above and luck. To help find a nitch, trial runs in salons like Rosen's are an indispensable aid to young artists.
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Ravi Shankar at 92
While My Sitar Gently Weeps
By: - Dec 12th, 2012Ravi Shankar, the master of Indian sitar, reached a vast audience during the psychedelic era of the 1960s. His ragas proved to be the ultimate trip or head music for those exploring inner space. In reality his music, rooted in tradition, had nothing to do with drugs. But he used his popularity to leverage the message of world music particularly through an alliance with the Beatle, George Harrison. Eventually, he became reconciled with an estranged daughter, Grammy winner, Nora Jones.
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Solarference - Lips of Clay
One Possible Face of Future Folk Music
By: - Dec 09th, 2012Our contemporary pop music will be traditional music in the future. Lips of Clay by Solarference may well be one of the paving stones leading to even more startling forms.
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Inon Barnatan, Great Pianist, at Kaufmann Hall
The Premier Pianist of His Generation
By: - Dec 07th, 2012Inon Barnatan stands out among his contemporaries as a master of music. He takes imaginative leaps into music as it should be. No divo dramas to arrest the eye. He effortlessly makes you sit up to hear familiar music as though it were being introduced for the first time. He serves music first and foremost.
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