Live Music
Two concerts into the Mainly Mozart Festival and all is well. The second concert on Thursday, June 15, was a mixed bag for moi. This was the third time I’ve been to a Mainly Mozart …
What is an intermezzo? There are several famous musical intermezzi such as those found in Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci but there is also an entire opera entitled Intermezzo by Richard Strauss. What gives? In the …
Taoism, with its principles of effortless action, naturalness, humility, simplicity, spontaneity, compassion, and frugality, was a perfect fit for the evening. Which evening? The opening evening of The 2017 Mainly Mozart Festival on Saturday, June …
Perhaps I’m overstating my case but I feel as though the recent success of the Wonder Woman movie has been prophesied here in this humble column. For not a few years I’ve been adding my …
Scatology is currently a most distasteful subject but that was not always the case. There are examples of scatalogical humor dating back to Aristophanes’s The Birds in the ancient Greek theatre. This type of humor …
Saturday, May 27 was the second of three final concerts at the San Diego Symphony. These concerts conclude the Jacobs Masterworks Series and Maestro Jahja Ling’s tenure as music director of the orchestra. The concert …
Round about this time of year I begin to feel like a musical Paul Revere. Instead of riding from town to town shouting, “The redcoats are coming! The redcoats are coming!” I begin posting from …
Well, I guess the May 20th concert by the San Diego Symphony was the best one I’ve heard them perform. Yes. I’m going to go with that. Charles Dutoit conducted the living fire out of …
Every concert is a conversation between the performers and the audience regarding a particular composer. This conversation isn’t quite fair, because the audience always has the last word. The audience’s response is the final verdict …
I recalled that graphic art and commercial art or logo design attempts to create a visual representation of an idea or a concept. This is why commercial art or corporate sculptures most often feel as …
There is a practice in classical music which I find to be somewhat disingenuous. That practice is overtly politicized concertizing. As I've written in the past, almost every great opera has a political edge but …
Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 has always been a riddle to my ears. The maniacal quality of the woodwinds in the first movement has barred my way to this music in the past. Imagine our old …
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is going down at the San Diego Symphony starting Friday, May 5th, 8:00 p.m, plus performances Saturday night (8:00) and Sunday afternoon (2:00). This is a biggie. How does one …
Well, well, well. It looks as though an orchestra is making a serious effort to fling itself into the not so new century. The Philharmonia Orchestra of New York — which calls itself PONY — …
The value of a solid production is somewhat undervalued by the experienced opera aficionado. If you’re around opera long enough then you will have a handful of peak experiences by which you judge every other …