Music
A Tale of Two Operas
Agility, power, wit and heft at the Met In the classic cartoons, opera singers are fat and often wear horns. You will see that in real life, too. But opera singers, like other people, come in all shapes and sizes, and so do operas. In consecutive performances, the Met staged operas on opposite ends of...
Listening to People: How the Swiss keep jazz Intakt
With no background of blues, gospel or swing, what does “jazz” sound like? A two-week festival March 1–15 at The Stone of the Zurich-based musicians who record for the Swiss record label Intakt offers intriguing examples. Pianist Irene Schweizer will perform powerful, blocky improvisations. Pierre Favre, her frequent accompanist and one of Europe’s busiest drummers,...
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...
The Whitney Houston Dream: Broadway Lessons from a Pop Diva
Among Broadway’s young theater gypsies, Whitney Houston’s 1994 performance at the American Music Awards has been circulating as a unique theatrical tribute. Houston never appeared in a Broadway show, but her AMA medley of “I Loves You Porgy” and “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”—preserved in a 10-minute YouTube clip—connects to the current...
Through the Eye of the Camp: Parsing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Old Ideas’
Leonard Cohen bookends his new album Old Ideas with a song about mortality (“Going Home”) and a song about the divided culture (“Different Sides”). Throughout, Cohen refines the use of gospel-impulse female singers who added vitality to his own special, deep-toned gravity on the great 1992 The Future (remember the title track’s exhortations to “Repent!”)....
Rihanna’s True Confession: A Pop Star’s Music Video Rebellion
“Trust the tale, not the teller,” D.H. Lawrence’s essential dictum, applies to Rihanna’s recent music video “We Found Love.” Transparently autobiographical in its reference to the 2009 assault incident involving Rihanna and Chris Brown, “We Found Love” answers back to those tellers—in this case gossip-mongers and pundits—whose pontifications reduced Rihanna and Brown to domestic-abuse stereotypes....
Dancing With Myself
Solo videos go viral Too often, music videos exist solely to maximize a performer’s impact on consumer culture, a branding exercise. But there’s a small subgenre of solo dance performance videos—typified by the recent viral hits “Lonely Boy” and “Call Your Girlfriend”—that inverts consumerist logic, expressing instead the impact of popular culture upon the individual...
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...
It’s Clarinet Month
Williamson, McGill, Meyer and Shifrin blow up Say what you will about piano playing, conducting, violin playing and, especially, composing: This is a very good age for clarinet playing, even a great one. We have Alessandro Carbonare, Martin Fröst, Kari Kriikku and Julian Bliss, among others. Four of those others played in New York during...
Lone Wolf Compositions
Tim Berne presents ‘Snakeoil’ Tim Berne is the saxophonist as lone wolf—a rangy and determinedly individualistic composer/improviser who has for 30-plus years lived far from the jazz mainstream and skirted the edges of the avant-garde. He’s been a presence in aficionado venues in New York, North America and beyond, and has just embarked on an...
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...
Song of the Year
Saluting Stevie Nicks’ “Soldier’s Angel” Years from now, 2011 may be remembered as the year postfeminism produced poster girls for the status quo. Female-fronted hits such as the movie Bridesmaids and the TV show New Girl were hailed as breakthroughs, despite their unremarkable content. (Bridesmaids even showed up on some confused critics’ year-end best lists.)...
Best Album and Best Gallery Exhibition of 2011
‘Watch the Throne,’ Kanye West & Jay-Z; ‘Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou’ Call Larry Gagosian You belong in museums —Jay-Z, “That’s My B**ch” Jay-Z dreams of collapsing the class and race divisions reflected in high art and pop art hierarchies. Reverse the title of Kanye West & Jay-Z’s love song from their Watch the Throne...
Delivering Thrills
When the Vienna Philharmonic plays a New Year’s concert, the program is Viennesey—Strauss polkas and all that. When the New York Philharmonic plays a New Year’s concert, the program is New Yorky. At least it was this year. Their program on New Year’s Eve consisted of Gershwin and Bernstein. The former composer, of course, was...
Winter Wonderings
Jazzfest remains timely Jazz 2012 in New York City began as 2011 did: with a Winter Jazzfest proving that a couple thousand fans in their twenties and thirties will flock to The Village in January for staggered sets by some five dozen original and emergent ensembles for one low price in multiple venues. The excitement...
The Art of Noise: Dolly and Latifah reclaim glee
Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2003 debut film Camp, the underappreciated—yet secretly influential—pop music celebration set at a training school for young musical theater aspirants. This...
Prophecies to Dance to: How pop can get better
The suicide of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer on Sept. 18—three days before the first anniversary of the “It Gets Better” online campaign supporting bullied LGBT youth—should give our culture pause. It forces us to recognize that in this era of change, cruelty has at least kept pace with the spread of compassion. Even after Rodemeyer took...
You Wanted a Hit: Nile Rodgers gets literary
As pop musicians from Keith Richards to Prodigy have published their life stories in the last few years, the timing couldn’t be better for Le Freak, the recently released autobiography of bajillion-selling guitarist/producer Nile Rodgers. Considering that his career encompasses both a stint in the Apollo Theater’s house band and compositions that have inspired countless...
Seasonal Sensation
Mandekan Cubano Project Delivers The winter holidays’ emphasis on warmth and good will towards humankind means that musicians genuinely possessing those qualities bear the most desirable of gifts. As a New Yorker in constant search of musical substance, engagement and freshness, I’m thrilled that singer-songwriter-electric bassist Richard Bona debuts his Mandekan Cubano project at the...
Doctor Atomic II
Des McAnuff’s Faust at The Met It was with Gounod’s Faust that the Metropolitan Opera opened its doors in 1883, and the company has done many a staging since. The latest production is in the hands of Des McAnuff. A veteran director, he has had hits on Broadway—e.g., Jersey Boys—and leads the Shakespeare festival in...
