Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
-
La Jolla Playhouse Presents the New Hamilton Front Page
3 Summers of Lincoln Soars
By: - Mar 24th, 20253 Summers of Lincoln is a captivating production blending historical and contemporary dance and music to explore the meetings between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass during the American Civil War. Set across three summers—1862, 1863, and 1864—the play dramatizes Lincoln's leadership struggle and Douglass’ unwavering commitment to abolition.
-
Cleveland Orchestra Offers Defiant Hope at Carnegie Front Page
Welser-Most Conducts Speaking Instruments
By: - Mar 21st, 2025Franz 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.
-
Last Call Sizzles at New World Stages Front Page
Bernstin and Von Karajan Wrestle at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna
By: - Mar 16th, 2025You'd never know that Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan skied together. Their meeting at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna did take place and is compellingly dramatized in a new play, Last Call.
-
Victoria Bond Presents the Jack Quartet Front Page
A Cutting Edge Anniversary Celebration
By: - Mar 15th, 2025Victoria 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.
-
Koln 75, the Movie, Premieres in Berlin Film
Keith Jarrett's Signature Evening and Engaging Film
By: - Mar 05th, 2025Keith 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?”
-
Dalia Stasveska Debuts at the Berlin Philharmonic Front Page
Human Impact on Nature Explored in Music
By: - Mar 01st, 2025Dahlia Stasevska, known for her commanding presence and elegant, balletic gestures, recently debuted with the Berlin Philharmonic. The response was enthusiastic. Her tenure as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, extended through 2027, reflects her growing prominence in the classical world.
-
Blue Moon in a Sunny Berlin Front Page
Kaplow, Linklater, and Hawke Team with Lorenz Hart
By: - Feb 25th, 2025For the screening of 240 films at its international berlinale, Berlin was sunny, sometimes crisply cold and at others, almost balmy. Perhaps because it is under the big sky, this city is a perfect place to see films in which the artists take their time, and let character and story emerge paced to the subject.
-
Marin Alsop Debuts with the Berlin Phil Front Page
Berin Philharmonie Explores Loss of Paradise in Music
By: - Feb 23rd, 2025Marin Alsop debuts with the Berlin Philharmonie in Berlin. Leading the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time, she chose a special, continent-spanning program. The world premiere of Day Night Day by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen refers to the songs of the Sami, the indigenous people of northern Finland and revolves around the northern lights and ice that covers and protects the local landscape. The BSO was a commissioner.
-
Berin Film Festival Begins Front Page
Potsdamer Platz is Command Central
By: - Feb 15th, 2025Potsdamer Platz is command central for the Berlin Film Festival. While Babelsberger Studios, the oldest large-scale studio in the world, is outside Berlin, Potsdamer Platz, is near the center of the city. It sits between the home of the Berlin Philharmonic and New National Gallery, the only building Mies Van der Rohe designed in Europe after he emigrated from the continent.
-
Berlin Film Festival 2025 Opens Front Page
Tilda Swinton Gets an Honorary Golden Bear Hug
By: - Feb 13th, 2025The Berlin Film Festival opens with an honorary Golden Bear Award for actress Tilda Swinton and a new film by Tom Tykwer,
-
Phil Kline Surprises with a Song Cycle Front Page
Meet the Ghost of Isabella Stewart Gardner
By: - Feb 12th, 2025On Sunday, February 23 at 1:30 p.m., the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum presents the world premiere of ghost story, a song cycle commissioned from composer/lyricist Phil Kline. It’s inspired by the life and times of Isabella Stewart Gardner.
-
Film at Lincoln Center Conjures Nosferatu Front Page
Films That Inspired Robert Eggers
By: - Feb 05th, 2025Where did Dracula, aka Count Orlok and Vlad the Impaler, a commanding figure of contemporary culture across the globe, come from? Film at Lincoln Center answers this question.
-
Conrad Tao Alights in Carnegie Hall Front Page
Premier Keyboard Artist Performs Debussy and His Own Works
By: - Jan 30th, 2025Conrad Tao takes our inner ear on new journeys in a program at Carnegie Hall on January 31. The first notes we’ll hear are often said to be Claude Debussy making fun of Carl Czerny. Czerny’s exercises are of course where most of us begin our piano journeys. Thumping away at scales, we don’t learn to appreciate the sounds that can emerge from the instrument. We don’t coax. We hammer. Tao will coax sound from piano keys and Lumatone hexagons.
-
Frederick Wiseman at Lincoln Center Front Page
An American Institution Celebrated
By: - Jan 19th, 2025Film at Lincoln Center is presenting “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution,” a retrospective featuring an extensive selection of films spanning decades of the filmmaker’s prolific career, all newly restored in 4K. Eleven of Wiseman’s films have been selected for the New York Film Festival since 1967. This series celebrates the long-standing relationship between FLC and this documentary filmmaker. The series will be presented from January 31 through March 5, 2025.
-
Igor Levit Performs at Carnegie Hall Front Page
Bach Brahms and Beethoven
By: - Jan 13th, 2025Igor Levit, a deeply thoughtful musician, gave voice to Bach, Brahms and Beethoven at Carnegie Hall. Each of these composers was represented by a seemingly uncharacteristic work that revealed unfamiliar approaches.
-
Percival Everett's James and Fury Front Page
Winner of the National Book Award 2024
By: - Jan 07th, 2025Percival Everett’s James won the National Book Award in 2024. It is a wonderful read, often humorous in its darkest corners. A deep examination of the origins of fury, in its last chapters we come to understand the results of escalating anger.
-
Prototype Festival to Begin New Year Front Page
New York's Most Adventuresome Program Music
By: - Dec 28th, 2024The Prototype Festival produced by Beth Morrison starts the avant-garde music world off from January 9 to 19. One work has been around the city in various forms for a while. Black Lodge dives into William Burroughs’ life. Queer, the film starring Daniel Craig, has brought Burroughs mainstream attention. The film with music by David T. Little, wrestles with movies as canned opera.
-
Luna Stage Presents Mrs. Stern Front Page
Exploring a Critical Moment for Hannah Arendt
By: - Dec 18th, 2024Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, a new play by Jenny Lyn Bader, takes place in a prison cell in Alexanderplatz, Berlin. Mrs. Stern is better known today as Hannah Arendt, her birth name.
-
Film at Lincoln Center Presents Siodmak Front Page
Great Filmmaker
By: - Dec 10th, 2024Film at Lincoln Center presents a Robert Siodmak retrospective from December 11 to December 19. Siodmak, according to his 98-year-old brother (with whom he worked),spent his entire life in film studios and on location. Robert made films in many different genres. Yet he is best known, and not well-enough known, for his contributions to the film noir form.
-
Dominique Morisseau Goes to Haiti Front Page
MacArthur Playwright Tackles New Territory
By: - Nov 29th, 2024Playwright Dominique Morisseau grew up in Detroit. Her trilogy based on life in the auto town is magnificent. She braves the tough subjects of our times. Her father was born in Haiti and she now eplores her Haitian roots in "Bad Kreyol" produced by the Signature Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club.
-
Berlin Philharmonic Rocks Carnegie Hall Front Page
Kirill Petrenko Brings Fresh Ear to Music
By: - Nov 20th, 2024The Berlin Philharmonic completed a three-day visit to Carnegie Hall in New York. The world’s greatest orchestra and its greatest conductor, Kirill Petrenko, did not disappoint. The programming combined an anniversary (the 200th birthday of Anton Bruckner), with fresh visits to favorites like Anton Dvorak’s 7th Symphony and a Violin Concerto by the film composer Erich Korngold.
-
David Lang's Little Match Girl Returns Front Page
Annual Holiday Event at the Crypt
By: - Nov 16th, 2024David Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning Passion opera The Little Match Girl will be performed in its original form with four artists both singing and playing instruments at the Crypt in New York.
-
Frederick Douglass Comes to Hudson Hall Front Page
Anthony Knight Jr. Combines Negro Spirituals with Douglass' Text
By: - Oct 25th, 2024Hudson Hall in the Hudson Hall Opera House will present No Cowards in Our Band, an intertwined stage piece that combines nine spirituals with the reciting of original text by Frederick Douglass. In this drama, an aging and contemplative Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). considers the social, economic, and political ramifications of slavery and the Civil War and their impact on the future of the United States.
-
Henze's Prince of Homburg in Frankfurt Front Page
Important Composer Gets a Perfect Production
By: - Oct 22nd, 2024Contemporary composers scramble for relevant subject matter. Opera companies overlook repertoire which is excellent and seldom staged. As the 100th anniversary of Hans Werner Hene's birth approaches in 2026, his work, produced in timeless fashion, offers fresh opportunities. Frankfurt Oper shows the way.
-
Primary Trust at La Jolla Playhouse Front Page
2024 Pulitzer Play by Eboni Smith
By: - Oct 07th, 2024The La Jolla Playhouse presented the West Coast premiere of playwright Eboni Smith’s Primary Trust, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Thirty-eight-year-old Kenneth, played by Caleb Eberhardt, lives in Cranberry, NY, a small town a short ride from Rochester. Kenneth’s small town consists of the usual bowling alley, a few banks, a church, and a smattering of small family-owned businesses. His single mom died when he was ten which led to a life growing up in foster homes
Next >>