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I rarely get down to the Knitting Factory these days — a strange and slightly sad condition, given that the scene that developed around this club in the ’80s was my foremost incentive to move to New York in the first place. (By the time I got here in 1993, said scene had already begun…
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Cellist Charles Curtis, a longtime New York fixture and La Monte Young associate now based in San Diego, is back in town this month in a big, big way, presenting a series of concerts under the collective rubric "Waking States." So far, the residency has included a performance of Young’s Just Charles and Cello in…
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Tonight, Christoph Eschenbach and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the local premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto at Carnegie Hall. I’ll not mince words: Hidgon is one of my absolute favorite young composers. (I almost wrote "up-and-coming," but her dance card, overstuffed with major commissions like this one, asserts that she’s already arrived.) She wrote her…
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Once again, I’ve learned the folly of typing for hours directly into my blog’s text window. Did you know that if you absentmindedly hold down the shift key in Windows for more than eight seconds, it changes your keyboard settings? And that it’s nearly impossible to change them back easily? What’s more, once the keyboard…
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When you’re sitting in a concert hall and someone nearby starts snoring, what do you do? More to the point, what can you do? I’m only asking because my enjoyment of Emanuel Ax’s excellent all-ballades recital at Carnegie Hall this afternoon was twice impeded by the sound of an elderly gentleman dozing off in the…
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America has yet to get to know the real Janine Jansen, and I’m not convinced that I helped as much as I’d meant to with the piece I wrote for this week’s TONY. (The article is here — free of charge, but you have to register.) In that story, I mainly dealt with the single…
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It took some serious wrangling, this being my usual Thursday-night dead zone, but I actually did manage to make it over to the Cutting Room tonight for the latest edition of Thru the Walls, ASCAP’s nightclub series showcasing composer-performers whose works occupy the interzone between "art music" and "pop culture." I’ve long wished to catch…
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Standing in a crowded lobby waiting for a concert to start earlier this evening, my right arm was gently nudged. I turned to see who had brushed past me, turned away — and then turned around again, just to be sure that it had really been Mikhail Baryshnikov. Yup. No matter how long I’ve been…
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Ideally, this is where I’d be sounding off about Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall last night… that is, before some fast-acting stomach bug put paid to that notion. Lieberson happily turned up; unhappily, I did not. A quick scan for feedback finds Alex Ross at a loss for…
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While I did threaten to freeze this blog and auction off screen shots if Rick Moody were to drop by, once it happened I decided against that course of action. However, this will in fact be my last post for a while, since I’m meeting up with my significant other in the Atlanta airport tomorrow…
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While JSU got there first, I will duly report — having been among those who repeated La Cieca’s initial scoop — that apparently, the "flying bed" in the Met’s current Roméo set sail once again last night, with Natalie Dessay aboard. Nor was the bed the only thing floating — the Associated Press reviewer was,…
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"My one claim to fame is that I once almost killed Michael Tippett…" – Man standing on the stairs after Act One of Lyric Opera’s The Midsummer Marriage on Saturday night. * "The opera is totally awful. [pause] Yeah, it’s a modern opera; I should have known it would be awful, like how any time…
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Hardly two weeks into rehearsals, tenor Hugh Smith either jumped or was bought eased out of Sir Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage at Lyric Opera of Chicago. A week later, director Sir Peter Hall — whose work in Houston Grand Opera’s world-premiere run of New Year, Tippett’s deeply weird yet utterly magical fifth and final…
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Marc Geelhoed (of Deceptively Simple, and my Time Out Chicago counterpart), in reponse to a blog entry by Daniel Felsenfeld (of Felsenmusick) wondering just who Marc is, took a moment today to answer Danny’s question. In the process, Marc gives a shout out to his partner, piano phenom Amy Dissanayake. Felsenfeld, meanwhile, posted with great…
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A wearying day climaxed in a loud, lights-cameras-action! media party in the office space to launch the newest TONY affair, an on-demand NYC cable TV channel devoted to translating our staff editors’ picks and pans to sound and vision on your tube — if you’re in NYC or NJ, anyway. Some predicted results: Theater critic…
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More voices have been added to the discussion of last night’s Roméo. Sieglinde (to whom, happy anniversary) had the harshest words initially, but softened somewhat overnight. JSU draws attention to the general nervousness of the evening, and hopes for improvement with Dessay’s arrival. Wellsungs Alex and Jonathan also had pointedly critical comments well worth reading.…
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One night after hearing Marcello Giordani in William Tell at the Met, I got a most unexpected treat. While I was definitely sorry that Natalie Dessay wasn’t up to the premiere of Roméo et Juliette at the Met tonight (and really do hope that my schedule allows me to hear one of her remaining performances),…
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Anyone who knows me soon also knows that when it comes to tenors, Marcello Giordani is my main man. Part of that probably has to do with formative bonding. I was way too young for my very first operatic experience, which was (I kid you not) Jon Vickers in a Houston Grand Opera Peter Grimes,…
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The technical perils of blogging are revealing themselves to this newbie only gradually. Which is to say I just spent more than two hours tallying impressions of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince in its Saturday afternoon premiere. One false click, and it all disappeared without a trace. No way I’m going to try reconstructing at…
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Three straight days overwhelmed by work and three straight nights deprived of live performances have threatened to make me a dull boy indeed; happily, I’m overcompensating this weekend. Saturday afternoon brings the New York premiere of Rachel Portman’s lovely all-ages charmer, The Little Prince, at City Opera. That evening’s Ligeti-palooza at Miller Theatre will at…
Night After Night 