In Leadership Turmoil, Oregon Bach Festival Showcases Its Vitality
MOUNT ANGEL, Ore. – Though dogged by a seven-year interlude without an artistic director, the 54-year-old festival reveled once again in joyful performances of the music of Bach and a generous display of audience enthusiasm.
‘Beethoven Effect,’ Still Felt Across Generations, Sparks A Chamber Fest
PORTLAND, Ore. – The great composer's enduring influence is being explored in works by a wide range of his musical descendants, with concerts across the city through July 28, all part of the Chamber Music Northwest 2024 Summer Festival.
As Vocalists Sink Teeth, Words And Genres Get Pushed, Pulled, Chewed
KATONAH, N.Y. – At the Caramoor Festival, the ensemble Roomful of Teeth offered a genre-ignoring, playfully provocative program with titles like Psychedelics, On Stochastic Wave Behavior, and "GaNaDaRaMaBaSa AJaChaKaTaPaHa."
Bach Festival, Newly Adventurous, Turns Its Spotlight On Monteverdi
CHARLOTTE – The Charlotte Bach Festival not only went conductor-less for its nine-day run, but also capped this year's spurt of offbeat programming by turning away from the traditional grand Bach finale in favor of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610.
Plucky Chamber Festival Stays The Course Even If The Chamber Is Hot
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – The Halcyon Music Festival, founded here by Heng-Jin Park in 2014, narrowly weathered the pandemic, but the intimate event has found a base of chamber-music buffs who have braved both Covid and high heat sans relief.
96-Hour Opera Project Serves Up Premiere Plus A Creative Competition
ATLANTA – In Atlanta Opera's annual festival, composers and librettists vie with 10-minute scenes staged before judges and a live audience. The winning team gets a premiere; this year's event began with a work by the 2022 winners.
In Mashup, Monteverdi Collides With Modern Opera On A Turntable
LOS ANGELES – The latest gambit from opera director Yuval Sharon juxtaposes Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea with George Lewis’ new opera The Comet, based on an Afro-futurist short story by W.E.B. Du Bois. To a degree, it works.
In Return To Music Fest, Uchida Brought Mix Of Vision And Sublime Art
OJAI, Calif. – After a 20-year absence, the Japanese-born British pianist-conductor Mitsuko Uchida, 75, returned to the Ojai Music Festival as director and performer, playing three Mozart concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
New ‘Dr. Caligari’ Score Applies A Jazzy Patina To Silent Horror Classic
NEW YORK – Composer Jeff Beal has created new music for the 1920 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The fresh musical overlay had its U.S. premiere screening at Carnegie Hall played live by a pick-up group of top-notch jazz musicians.
Art, Life, Mayhem, Art: Opera About Massacre Blurs Lines Of Imitation
SAN FRANCISCO – Innocence, the last of Kaija Saariaho’s five operas, grapples with the soul-wrenching crisis of mass shootings. It is an amazing, at times harrowing, theatrical and musical experience at the San Francisco Opera.
Percussion Concerto Keeps Soloist Hopping Amid A Sonorous Array
CHICAGO – Procession, by Chicago Symphony composer in residence Jessie Montgomery, proved to be high musical theater and a 20-minute athletic event for CSO principal Cynthia Yeh at the premiere led by Manfred Honeck.
Opera Taps Into Terror Of A Child’s World Spun By Forced Immigration
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Layale Chaker’s Ruinous Gods, an experimental chamber opera that premiered at Spoleto Festival USA, follows a traumatized girl through fearful dreams and into the underworld as hope struggles with despair.
Revisiting A Watershed: Glass’ ‘12 Parts’ Given 50-Year Concert Revival
NEW YORK – Philip Glass’ epic Music in Twelve Parts marked his transition from his earlier, more austere (if hypnotically compelling for devotees) minimalism into a far wider range of expression. A Town Hall concert recalled the 1974 premiere.
From Bach To Spirituals, Water Theme Flows In Multimedia Immersion
NEW YORK – Shall We Gather at the River, a world premiere directed by Peter Sellars, combined three Bach cantatas and five African American spirituals bound by the element of water and its association with cleansing, thirst, relief, and peril.
An Emergency Maestro Retrieves Met’s ‘Orfeo’ From Opera Underworld
NEW YORK – When British conductor Christian Curnyn, a Baroque specialist, dropped out "due to illness," J. David Jackson stepped in to dispatch Gluck's opera starring Anthony Roth Costanzo (pictured) and Ying Fang as Orfeo and Euridice.
Extending The Embrace Of Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’ By Attuning To The Deaf
LOS ANGELES – Reprising a 2022 venture, Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic offered a concert version of the opera with double casting: singers mirrored by silent actors who convey text and musical emotion through sign and gesture.
Chinese-American Kid Chases U.S. Army Life: Devastation As Opera
NEW YORK – In An American Soldier, a world-premiere opera by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang, Private Danny Chen's path is charted from youthful eagerness to a sergeant's ruthless bullying and Danny's suicide.
‘Juniper Tree,’ Terrifying (In Terrific Way), Brings Grimm Fable To Opera
ORLANDO – Sumptuous costumes and makeup and oversized puppets took center stage in the Opera Orlando production of this dark fairy tale of infanticide, cannibalism, and reincarnation with a score jointly by Philip Glass and Robert Moran.
Amid The Chaos Of War, Music As Documentary Observes The Homeless
NEW YORK – The underreported displacement of 100,000 Artsakh-Armenians and the basic need to protect family are central in Mary Kouyoumdjian's Homeless, a fusion of photos, oral history, and music premiered by the New York Philharmonic.
Countertenor’s Recital ‘Don’t Look Back’ Looks Well Beyond The Box
NEW YORK – When Anthony Roth Costanzo devises a program, you never know what will happen. His recital at the Morgan Library and Museum drew on scores held there, to which he added narration and effective visual elements.
