Live Music
The Jacobs Masterworks Series comes to its conclusion this weekend at Symphony Hall. Music by the all-star American lineup is on the program. Samuel Barber, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein will all be …
A famous conductor once said, “A great orchestra is like an English lawn. It must be clipped and watered twice a day — and for a hundred years.” The San Diego Symphony has been clipped …
This little video of a woman singing Verdi is going viral. Viral for an opera video that is. Fausta Truffa, the soprano in this gem, does not yield many search results. I thought that perhaps …
People, myself included, are scared of modern opera. Modern opera tends to be an unhappy experience. It is bereft of humor and beauty. There's even a Facebook Group against modern opera. Jake Heggie’s Great Scott, …
Ravel’s Bolero is now free. The copyright has expired and organizations no longer need to pay royalties to a network of corrupt people who aren’t related to Ravel or his family. This is where copyright …
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari is a name we might not recognize. An upcoming release of his opera I gioielli della Madonna has him pinging on my esoteric radar. I gioielli della Madonna, The Jewels of the Madonna, …
The New York Philharmonic gave a concert at Symphony Hall on Wednesday night, May 4. It was loud. The concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society as a part of their Celebrity Orchestra …
The West Coast premiere of Jake Heggie’s opera Great Scott opens at San Diego Opera on Saturday, May 7, at 7 p.m. This is the second production of the show, which premiered at Dallas Opera. …
The august New York Philharmonic will be at Symphony Hall on Wednesday, May 4, at 8 p.m. This is the final concert of the year’s La Jolla Music Society Celebrity Orchestra Series. The New Yorkers …
"Unrelenting" and "unforgiving" are the words that come to mind at the conclusion of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. He never allows us to feel relief and the symphony ends not in “tragedy,” as it has …
Mahler Symphony No. 6 is a gargantuan piece of music and we have a chance to hear it at Symphony Hall this Friday and Saturday, April 29 and 30. There is no Sunday concert. However, …
The San Diego Symphony revealed its upcoming season via a concert event on Thursday, April 21. The orchestra played selections from the 2016-17 season and a few things were the same and a few things …
Madama Butterfly is one of the best productions San Diego Opera has presented in recent years. I might even say it's one of the top five best in the past 15 years. Madama Butterfly is …
Concerto — A Beethoven Journey is a new documentary exploring the piano concertos of Beethoven. The movie plays on Tuesday, April 26, at the Town Square Reading Theater in Clairemont and the Angelika Film Center …
So far we’ve been looking at what we could call the “standard repertoire” for the Playlist No. 5. Let’s add a female composer to the playlist. Emilie Mayer’s symphonies are fantastic mid-19th-century pieces of music. …