Prototype Festival 2020: Iron and Coal
The Prototype Festival of new opera offers a mid-winter adrenalin booster for New York opera lovers.
The 2019 Richard Tucker Gala
Notes from a long time listener, first time attendee. In 35 years of NYC opera-going, this was my first time attending a concert that has become a highlight of the New York opera season.
Monterey Jazz Salutes The Year Of The Woman
MONTEREY, Calif. – The 61st Monterey Jazz Festival Sep. 21-23 was billed as a salute to “The Year Of The Woman” – and they weren’t kidding. Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and alto saxophonist Tia Fuller were designated as the artists-in-residence, singer Dianne Reeves was the 2018 Showcase Artist. The schedule was loaded.
Unreleased Coltrane CDs Stir Up The Jazz World – Again
Everyone in jazzland seems to be weighing in on the release this week of Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album, a previously-unknown 1963...
Fanciful ‘Turandot’ Takes The Stage At Lyric Opera Of Chicago
A China-that-never-was opened on the stage of Lyric Opera of Chicago, complete with a giant eye-popping dragon, which hovered with considerable menace in Puccini’s “Turandot.”
Muti/Chicago Play it Safe with All-Brahms at Disney Hall
The CSO remains a phenomenal instrument – they never miss – yet the most phenomenal features about these performances were the little things.
More on the 60th Monterey Jazz Festival
MONTEREY, Calif: The stresses of the bebop life took so many valuable lives prematurely, but Jimmy Heath survived it all. Sunday afternoon in the...
Monterey Jazz Festival celebrates its 60th edition
MONTEREY, Calif.: Defying the odds, even in a field as precarious as jazz, the Monterey Jazz Festival has been going strong since 1958 – and...
Three Jazz Veterans Score on CD
For every widely-celebrated jazz musician, there may be hundreds of often equally-gifted players who never received their due whether by bad luck or by...
It’s A Hit!
SANTA FE, NM: How often do you go into a concert hall or an opera house where a world premiere is happening and know...
John Adams on Record – Part Two
Here is Part Two of my updated, expanded, 70th birthday discographical survey of John Adams’s music, parts of which were originally published in the...
John Adams On Record – Part One
My most vivid memory of John Adams was way back near the beginning of his career, in 1983 in then-Avery Fisher Hall. His Grand...
A Paris Opera 2017-18 Season to Enchant
“Laissez-vous porter”--let yourself be carried away--is the motto of the Paris Opera’s 2017-18 season, and the upcoming program provides plenty of delights to get...
Rattle and the Berlin: One More Time
“First, we’ll take Manhattan. Then we’ll take Berlin.” – Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) These words were ringing through my head the week before Thanksgiving as the Berlin...
A Steve Reich Recordings Survey As He Turns 80.
Steve Reich, the onetime outsider turned venerated new music master, turns 80 today – and to commemorate this milestone, here is the latest version of...
MTT Revisits Das Lied Von Der Erde – This Time With A Mezzo
SAN FRANCISCO — Das Lied Von Erde, Mahler’s gigantic unnumbered symphony disguised as a song cycle, played a big role in the emotional and...
The Chairman Turns 100
While making the rounds of local garage sales over the past weekend, I spotted a box packed with 30 Frank Sinatra CDs spanning nearly...
Pull Up A Chair at the Valley Performing Arts Center
Frequent concertgoers are used to enduring the usual welcome from some anonymous public-address announcer, followed by a plea to turn off our cellphones. Yet...
Peter Schickele and the Armadillo Quartet – 25 Years Together
Monday night, the Shatto Chapel within the massive First Congregational Church near Wilshire Blvd. was the latest site of a casually delightful, long-running Los...
Euryanthe at Oper Frankfurt: Brilliant Staging Redeems an Awkward Scenario
Euryanthe, Carl Maria von Weber’s final opera, premiered in 1823, is full of glorious music sabotaged by a barely coherent libretto. This grand romantic...
