Author Archive
Musical Images: North/South Consonance Finds Modernity
What Film Forum is to cinema, North/South Consonance is to modern classical music—an independent nonprofit bringing New York City deserving works overlooked by big-ticket distributors and mainstream media. North/South continued its 32 season of free concerts Feb. 19 with “Midwinter Sounds,” music for chamber orchestra by composers from Cuba, Italy, and the U.S., at Christ...
Merrily Miranda: Weak Sondheim Doesn’t Deserve Encore
The cost of mounting a live production, Broadway, operatic or otherwise, is so enormous that much glorious music goes unheard simply because it was written for a work that’s rarely produced. Of course you can buy recordings, but there’s nothing like the thrilling immediacy of a live performance. Anyone who’s spent the night on the...
Platinum Premiere
Jubilee concert honors Glass and Pärt Carnegie Hall hosted the best birthday party ever as the American Composers Orchestra presented the Philip Glass 75th Birthday Concert in the Isaac Stern Auditorium Jan. 31. Thousands of composers, musicians and music lovers broke into a roar when Glass was introduced, giving him no less than four curtain...
Flying Colors
Horne and Fleming Instruct A Master Class Better than watching a master do what she does best is watching a master teach what she does best. Twin master classes led by divas Marilyn Horne and Renée Fleming under Carnegie Hall’s “The Song Continues…” series illuminated the potential that is unleashed when knowledge is given with...
Heaven Sent Flamenca: Noche Flamenca’s profound singing/dancing
Thank God for Noche Flamenca. Or rather thank Martin Santangelo, Noche’s artistic director, and Soledad Barrio, the company’s leading lady, who have been conferring a yearly miracle on New York since 1998: an exceptional flamenco ensemble that blends traditional material with a contemporary gestalt and profound mastery of the form. The company’s six-day run at...
Don Giovanni Lives
Mozart live from La Scala For $25, low-heeled New Yorkers got to attend the opening night of La Scala’s 2011–12 season, with its new production of Don Giovanni (Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna, Peter Mattei as the Don, Bryn Terfel as Leporello, Daniel Barenboim conducting). Emerging Pictures, distributor of “alternative” (read “non-Hollywood”) content like opera,...
Familiarizing Great Music
The Philharmonic’s survival programs Out of apathy, fear or intransigence, we barricade ourselves from things we don’t know—people, places, music. Symphonic music is often thrust behind these barricades, so the New York Philharmonic has created an education department to help bring it out front where it belongs. Why does it belong out front? Director of...
Dance as Narrative (and More)
Jerome Robbins’ moving synthesis Jerome Robbins was fired halfway through shooting West Side Story, but he still won two Academy Awards for his work on the film—one for directing, which he shared with Robert Wise, and an honorary award “for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.” Robbins (like many others) thought...
Choirs Plus Ultra: Sacred harmonies draw cheers
Blue Heron and Ensemble Plus Ultra—two out-of-the-box choirs from out of town—met in New York City last week to present a concert of 16th-century music so rousing that it was met by a standing ovation; the stunning stained glass at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church rattled to cheers associated more with Don Giovanni than sacred...
