DIGITAL REVIEW – In a 1954 cantata with text by Langston Hughes, composer Margaret Bonds mined many colors of the black experience. Why isn’t she better known, and what other treasures would we find if we bothered to look?
BOOK REVIEW – The North Carolina Symphony, based in Raleigh but roaming statewide, was known as the "Suitcase Symphony" for its touring ways. The nation's first state-supported symphony is finally getting its colorful story told.
BOOK REVIEW – Christopher Nupen's book is frequently insightful and illuminating, but it is more about Nupen the man and his life than about the breakthrough technology that made music films feasible and artistically meaningful.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Mark Fitz-Gerald has been unearthing and reconstructing lost or forgotten Shostakovich scores. It's surprising that his latest find, music for Vladimir Mayakovsky's comedy The Bedbug, isn't better known.
OTSU, Japan – While the COVID-19 virus wreaked havoc throughout the world, causing performances to be canceled everywhere, including Japan, a Wagnerian-size miracle saved the painstakingly readied capstone to a Ring cycle.
REPORT – March 12 was the day the music died, at least temporarily, as musical organizations across North America shut down to help contain the coronavirus pandemic. MCANA members sent in these regional reports.
KEY WEST, Fla. - Zuill Bailey was the charismatic, groovy soloist in Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's new concerto, which she dedicated to the cellist and South Florida Symphony Orchestra music director Sebrina María Alfonso.
NEW YORK – Harpsichordist Harry Bicket and the Diderot String Quartet descended into a Harlem crypt for a journey through Baroque Europe, performing music of Bach, Muffat and others under the aegis of Death of Classical.
NEW YORK ‒ Director François Girard's dark, Nordic vision could make a truly haunting Flying Dutchman, yet that's not what emerged on opening night, which felt like a rehearsal despite Evgeny Nikitin's nuanced portrayal.
LOS ANGELES – Opera at its best can be transformative. Avant-garde producer The Industry conjured magic in Sweet Land, twin cultural music-dramas that unfolded in the unprepossessing milieu of LA State Historic Park.
CHICAGO.-.John.Eliot.Gardiner and his style-conscious forces began.a.Beethoven.symphonies blitz with fleet spins through the classically retro Eighth and the transcendental Ninth. The latter made, all told, the more convincing impression.
NEW YORK – The group's 45th-anniversary festival explored what is Japanese about contemporary music from Japan. Seven composers provided firsthand evidence of how deeply their backgrounds are imprinted on their music.
