The Grant Park Music Festival, which takes place in Millennium Park with Chicago’s dramatic skyline as a backdrop, runs eight weeks instead of the usual ten this year, and music director Carlos Kalmar has put the same emphasis on new and adventuresome works as he has in recent years. Among the highlights is the debut […]
July 29-Aug. 17: Full festival details. Acclaimed bass-baritone and Glimmerglass artistic adviser Eric Owens has a high profile, performing the enlarged role of Sarastro in what is described as a “storytelling” version of The Magic Flute (July 29 and Aug. 2, 7, 12, 15, and 17). The Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., normally performs in […]
July 30: Full details. The Caramoor summer festival — which is currently underway on an 80-acre estate in Katonah, N.Y., in northern Westchester County — is giving the New York premiere of composer Nico Muhly’s Shrink, featuring The Knights and Finnish “one-of-a-kind” violinist Pekka Kuusisto. It's the only chance to hear the work in the […]
With a short run from Aug. 5-13, the Glimmerglass Opera offers the world premiere of The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, with mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves in the title role. The new play by Sandra Seaton with music by Carlos Simon celebrates the founding of the groundbreaking National Negro Opera Company in 1941. The Glimmerglass Opera […]
July 26-Aug. 19: Full details Headlining this summer’s 37th installment of the Sun Valley Music Festival is the Aug. 7 world premiere of Jessie Montgomery's Five Freedom Songs, based on traditional African American spirituals, to be sung by soprano Julia Bullock.
Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin brings the Philadelphia Orchestra to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for a four-day residency. And on opening night, he'll be at the piano also, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12. It's a flamboyant calling card that the young Mozart wrote shortly after arriving in Vienna. Also highlighting the evening is the […]
La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, a longstanding festival in the seaside hills of San Diego, offers its first chamber opera venture: Marc Neikrug’s A Song by Mahler, which follows a celebrated concert singer (mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson-Caro, above) as she develops early onset Alzheimer’s and, with the help of her pianist husband, uses music and singing […]
Few figures have exerted greater influence on the classical music of the 20th and 21st centuries than conductor and composer Nadia Boulanger, one of the greatest pedagogues in music history. Just consider some of the famous American composers who studied with her: Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Douglas Moore, Quincy Jones and Thea Musgrave. […]
Known for its adventurous programming, the Santa Fe Opera presents its 17th world premiere this summer – Lord of the Cries, a work by John Corigliano, composer of The Ghosts of Versailles (1991), and librettist Mark Adamo, with the final performance offered live and via drive-stream Aug. 17. The event is simulcast onto two LED […]
