Steve Smith
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And so we’re back from a brilliant working vacation in Morocco. The trip began with a June 1 flight into Casablanca, where our little party — myself, Dr. LP, Anastasia Tsioulcas (of Billboard, Gramophone, Weekend America and Café Aman renown) and her husband Joshua Sherman, classical scribe Robert Hilferty and world music maven Peter Margasak…
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As Phil Freeman is my witness, I swear that I had every intention of blogging in great deal on the subject of the punishing-in-a-good-way death-metal extravaganza on Monday night at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill. The short version: Necrophagist really can play those insanely intricate heavy-metal bebop tunes live. The noises emitted from the…
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Yes, it’s been quiet around here this past week, for which I apologize. Firstly, I’ve been up to my neck in work; second, I’ve been making up for lost time with Dr. LP. And third, I’ve heard almost no live music since the Met Parsifal I covered just over a week ago. Instead, I’ve been…
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The Metropolitan Opera still has a few more performances to go before it puts Joseph Volpe’s final season to bed with a big, sloppy kiss, but this evening’s Parsifal was most likely the last time I’ll set foot in the house until Anthony Minghella’s fancy puppet show hits the stage in September. And I’m happy…
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Jeff Harrington of New Music reBlog is on vacation in France for a couple of weeks, but the addicts of the Analog Arts Ensemble have mounted an Emergency Reblog in order to prevent withdrawal symptoms. (We should all be blessed with such an impressive contingency plan.)
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Suppose, for a moment, that Axl Rose decided to put the past behind him. Say, for instance, he admitted that the band currently backing him — a very fine one — was not in truth the group with which he’d immediately and permanently cemented his reputation as one of hard rock’s most compelling frontmen. And…
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For Antonia — who I don’t know personally, but admire professionally nonetheless — the set list for the show Guns N’ Roses played at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Friday, May 12: Welcome to the JungleIt’s So EasyMr. BrownstoneBetter*Live and Let DieSweet Child O’ MineKnockin’ on Heaven’s DoorMadagascar*You Could Be MineThe Blues*Out Ta Get MeNovember…
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Ever since I started this blog last year, I’ve ended almost every post with a playlist. These have generated some delight, some curiosity, and the occasional question. The latest comes from reader Doug Gary, who asked in the comments field of last night’s post about Janine Jansen whether my playlists imply recommendation of the items…
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This is a photograph of violist Stephanie Griffin. She’s one of New York City’s finest, busiest new-music performers, as well as the musical director of Hi Art!, a laudable program that introduces very young children to contemporary art. I heard Griffin play with the Argento Chamber Ensemble on Sunday night at Miller Theatre during last…
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Remember when I posted about catching the lovely, talented young violinist Janine Jansen performing Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto with Neeme Järvi and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in Newark last December? Sure you do. (But if you don’t, the original post is here.) I bring this up tonight because I just found out that the…
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I was supposed to see Pelican and Mono Tuesday night, but I didn’t. I’ve been planning to catch the MET Chamber Ensemble celebration of Milton Babbitt’s 90th birthday on Wednesday night, but I probably won’t. And the rest of the week is most likely shot, too, including a second encounter with the tenor not yet…
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I looked again today at the exactly 1,399 words I devoted to the weekend’s IRCAM concerts at Miller Theatre, and was sorely disappointed by something I noticed. No, not my usual redundancy of adjectives — well, okay, maybe that, too. But mainly, I was alarmed to notice that I’d devoted very little space to praising…
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This past week, musical technicians from Paris’s Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique — better known simply as IRCAM — came to New York for a conference with composers, musicians and engineers at Columbia University. The sessions concluded with two concerts at Miller Theatre on Saturday and Sunday, both of which provided a nice overview…
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Differences of opinion among audience members with regard to any given musician’s performance on any given night are certainly far from uncommon, but I’ve been absolutely fascinated to follow the reactions to Renée Fleming’s opening-night rendition of the title role in Handel’s Rodelinda at the Metropolitan Opera. About that performance, here’s what I wrote in…
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There’s an awesome beauty in the music of Boston-born, California-based quintet Isis. It’s a beauty made to fight its way through adversity, and it’s all the more affecting for its contrast with the clangorous din that surrounds it. Moments of radiance emerge like shafts of rainbow light furtively pushing through pinholes in an overcast sky.…
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In my experience of this line of work, there are few things more difficult than writing about an evening of entirely new music. Sure, there’s plenty of research you can do in advance to prepare yourself for a first encounter. And it’s not like there’s no risk involved in weighing in on a standard repertoire…
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The Metropolitan Opera might well have taken on Handel’s Rodelinda in December 2004 as a star vehicle for Renée Fleming, one of a handful of singers who seems to enjoy that kind of pull here. But to its credit, it didn’t stint on the production, mounting an elaborate, imaginative staging by director Stephen Wadsworth that…
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A bit more than 50 years ago, the young, relatively unproven composer Carlisle Floyd drew upon his youth as the son of a minister in the American South to translate the apochryphal Bible tale of Susanna and the Elders into a 1950s rural setting. The opera, Floyd’s third, was tremendously well received; initially staged in…
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Months ago, I’d made plans to spend this past Tuesday night at the Metropolitan Opera, to hear Deborah Voigt opposite Marcello Giordani in Tosca. But in late March I attended a performance by the Arditti String Quartet at New York University, which included new pieces by the school’s graduate-student composers. (A report on that concert…
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Deep downtown in Manhattan, near a still-gaping wound crowned by a sad excess of open sky, is a magnificent glass enclosure attached to a complex whose name speaks not of Apollo, but of Mammon. This is the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, and ironically, it actually echoes rather frequently with the sounds of…
Night After Night 