Steve Smith
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Can someone explain to me just what went wrong between the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Christoph Eschenbach? Late on Friday afternoon, I received a press release announcing that Eschenbach’s tenure will end at the close of the 2007-08 season, after only three years on the job. I can’t say that I’m surprised, given…
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Jon Gibson and Miriam Seidel’s Violet Fire at the Brooklyn Academy of MusicThe New York Times, October 20, 2006
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Congratulations to the New York Mets for a thrill ride of a season. Sure, it didn’t end up the way we all hoped. Even so, it was one hell of an adventure right up to the very end…well, okay, maybe not Carlos Beltran’s final at-bat. But everything before that was a genuine treat. We appreciate…
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Riffing on Alex Ross’s oft-cited "Night of 10 New Music Concerts" post from last February (as Bruce Hodges did a little more than a week ago in a post titled "My head hurts"), poring over the concert offerings for Saturday, October 28 is enough to make me want to be in at least four places…
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Maxim Vengerov, Alisa Weilerstein and Lilya Zilberstein at Carnegie HallThe New York Times, October 16, 2006 Playlist: Ethel – Light (Cantaloupe) John King – Allsteel; ‘Round Sunrise; Lightning Slide – Ethel (Tzadik) Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 – Helena Juntunen, Katarina Karnéus, Daniel Norman, Neal Davies; Minnesota Orchestra and Chorale/Osmo Vänskä (Bis) Antonio…
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The only reason I’ve never linked to my Time Out New York colleague Hank Shteamer’s blog until now is because it shares a not-for-the-workplace name with his excellent math-metal band. My excuse — and I think it’s a valid one, if perhaps slightly highfalutin’ — is that I don’t want anything to interfere with my…
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No, I haven’t been resting on any laurels; in fact, I’ve been plenty busy over the last stretch of nights. I actually got halfway through blogging one particular evening’s activities, only to have Time Warner Cable peter out on me. (Happily, I was able to save what I’d written.) But at this distance from most…
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The Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie HallThe New York Times, October 9, 2006
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This afternoon, I received a most unexpected phone call from a friendly representative of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), who called to tell me that I’d won this year’s Deems Taylor Internet Award for my nocturnal ruminations here at Night After Night. According to the organization’s website, "The ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award…
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Per the newly bi-metropolitan and everly-AbFab opera blog Wellsung, I note that Chalkenteros — an operaphile well known for his enthusiastic and perceptive commentary at Parterre Box and, of course, Wellsung — has finally kicked up his own NYC-centric opera blog, Marginalia. And in so noting, I’ve also discovered that he and I have a…
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In a fiesty, crabby profile that appears in today’s issue of The New York Sun, aggrieved stage director Jonathan Miller says of the Anthony Minghella Madama Butterfly currently onstage at the Metropolitan Opera, "It was like receiving a maple syrup enema." That’s not the worst Dr. Miller has to say in the piece, but it’s…
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Just in from the third night of ErstQuake 3, a four-night festival of electroacoustic improvisation mounted by two of the genre’s most noteworthy labels, Erstwhile and Quakebasket, at Tonic. It’s a sign of the changes in my professional life that I didn’t clear the calendar in order to attend every night of this series, as…
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A fascinating discovery this afternoon, via Anne-Carolyn: Mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham has a blog, Singin’rin. It’s not at all new, but I’d never come upon it before. Shaham is currently appearing in Carmen at New York City Opera through October 22 (the dishy photo at left shows her singing the role in Montreal, June 2005). And…
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Warning: What follows these first few paragraphs is quite possibly the most self-indulgent concert review I have ever written, and you are more than welcome to skip it. The reason it’s here is because today, I received a copy of a newly released Derek Bailey CD, To Play: The Blemish Sessions, just out on David…
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Posting about Monday night’s circus maximus at the Metropolitan Opera at this point seems so…redundant? Pointless? Self-indulgent? I mean, really, it’s a sign of Peter Gelb’s initial success that the first reports were hitting the wires and the web while the primary cast members were taking their second curtain calls out on the Grand Tier…
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Boz Burrell would probably be appalled to hear it, but ever since I learned of the former King Crimson and Bad Company bass player’s death earlier this afternoon, the song that’s been stuck in my head is "Islands," the title track from King Crimson’s fourth studio album. Issued in 1971, it’s hardly the band’s best…
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I never had a chance to sound off about last week’s Celtic Frost reunion tour stop at B.B. King’s on Thursday night…and wasn’t sure how much I ought to say, anyway, given that thanks to a miscommunication, I only caught roughly the last half of the show. Thankfully, pretty much everything I might have wanted…
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Ensemble XX. Jahrhundert at the Austrian Cultural ForumThe New York Times, September 20, 2006
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Dr. L.P. admires her newly bedazzled digit, Sunday, Sept. 17 in Richmond, VA. (Ring designed and created by Adel Chefridi.)
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I held out for as long as I could. The riches now available on YouTube are truly, truly staggering, as absolutely everyone knows…which means that I never felt compelled to embed a video on this blog, because anyone can go to the site and dig up all manner of unimaginable treasures. I resisted posting, for…
Night After Night 