Around the U.S.

HOUSTON – As much a pep rally as a first night, the Houston Symphony Orchestra's 2021-22 season opener under music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada served up a stylish Beethoven Triple Concerto and a blazing Fifth Symphony.

DETROIT – Blue, composer Jeanine Tesori and librettist Tazewell Thompson's intimate and compelling music drama about a Black cop whose teenage son is shot dead by another cop, struggled against conditions in a 6,000-seat arena.

NEW YORK – On Site Opera boarded a 19th-century tall ship Aug. 28 for What Lies Beneath, an immersive music theater event weaving the slave trade and other vicissitudes of the high seas into a mournful and affecting program.

PHOENICIA, N.Y. – This woodsy hamlet has grown the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice into an energetic and engaging event that saw productions this summer of Mascagni's L'amico Fritz, Verdi's Rigoletto, and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

BREAKING NEWS - The creation of a diverse team under the collective aegis of The Industry, Sweet Land, invoking America's untold story, is the winner of the 2021 Music Critics Association of North America’s Best New Opera Award.

LENOX, Mass. – The Boston Symphony Orchestra's truncated Tanglewood season concluded with wonderful Brahms conducted by Herbert Blomstedt and a tour of John Williams' great film scores under the composer's baton.

PERSPECTIVE – Tines, who has burst onto the world's music stages, commands a range of more than three octaves, from low D to high E-flat. He says he is neither a bass nor a baritone: “It’s a broader conception of how to think about voice.”

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – After losing a season to Covid in 2020, the Glimmerglass Festival reopened outdoors as “Glimmerglass on the Grass.” Despite weather that swung from chilly rain to hot sun, there was much to celebrate.

SAN DIEGO – Cultural San Diego has a new attraction to compete with the beaches and the Zoo. It's the San Diego Symphony's snazzy and imposing downtown waterfront performance venue known locally as The Shell.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – The Grand Tetons Music Festival, beloved for its natural grandeur, draws a faithful band of musicians from all over the U.S. as well as Europe. Says one veteran player: "I see those mountains and breathe a sense of release."

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – The plinks and plunks of Frederic Rzewski’s Amoramaro, written for pianist Lisa Moore’s birthday before the composer died in June, paled in comparison with Philip Glass' fluid Mad Rush, also heard in Moore's recital.

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – The Berkshire Opera Festival production pulled no punches, like the work itself by composer Tom Cipullo, about a real-life Green Beret and nine-year POW who returns home from Vietnam to a life in ruins.

LENOX, Mass. – The Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood was reduced to three concerts this year, but composer-curator Thomas Adès still managed variety, programming thirteen works by twelve composers from seven countries.

SANTA FE, N.M. – John Corigliano's The Lord of Cries, which blends The Bacchae with Dracula, came to the stage in a stunning Santa Fe Opera season also notable for a potent Eugene Onegin: All told, a reminder of what we’ve been missing.

LOS ANGELES – The 93-year-old Thea Musgrave was on hand to wave to the crowd at the LA Phil's U.S. premiere of her Trumpet Concerto -- after British virtuoso Alison Balsom delivered a shining turn through the work with conductor Tianyi Lu.

SAN ANTONIO, Tex.– From a career firefighter’s dream to establish a professional chamber orchestra has emerged a vigorous youth training program based on Venezuela's El Sistema – and out of that a fully fledged chamber ensemble.

SAN FRANCISCO – Shut down since March 2020, the company raises its curtain on fall productions including a new Fidelio designed by Alexander V. Nichols, staged by Matthew Ozawa, and led by Eun Sun Kim in her debut as music director.

ST. LOUIS – A loopy gloss on Her Majesty's tea with Apollo 13 astronauts, a comic riff on families in pandemic funks, and a post-debate match twixt James Baldwin and William F. Buckley peppered a triple-bill joy at Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

PREVIEW – Few figures have exerted greater influence on modern music than conductor and composer Nadia Boulanger. Among a range of Eastern U.S. festival themes, the French milieu that shaped her, and her legacy, is Bard's focus.

CHARLESTON – Alisa Weilerstein got into the slow tango groove with Inon Barnatan in the premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Milonga at a Spoleto Festival USA rich in the contemporary delights. It's Nigel Redden's valedictory season at the helm.