Live Music
If we don't understand something of Japanese culture as it existed in the era of Madama Butterfly, then we are tempted to see the story as the West (Pinkerton) being the baddie and the East …
2Cellos, Tuesday night, April 12, was the greatest and worst concert I’ve ever been to. It tended toward the sublime and the ultra-cheese at the same time. 2Cellos is two young men from Croatia who …
Jason Alexander, known to all as George Costanza from TV’s Seinfeld, is a good old-fashioned song-and-dance man. He showed off his singing chops and dancing hoofs at Symphony Hall on Saturday night, April 9. The …
If I were pushed to make a declaration of my favorite opera of all time I would admit, with some sense of shame, that it is Madama Butterfly. The shame comes in because Butterfly is …
Information about Johanna Senfter is tough to find. She was born and died in Oppenheim, Germany. Her dates were November 27, 1879 to August 11, 1961. All I can find about her is a list …
Oh hum, just another fantastic concert at the San Diego Symphony. The lineup of Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff make for an accessible concert. These are all crowd-pleasing composers with a flair for the dramatic and …
Beethoven is now greater than Mozart? Yes, the people have spoken and this is the case. The U.K.’s Classic FM 2016 Hall of Fame list is out. Over 170,000 votes were cast and Beethoven has …
When discussing Gabriela Lena Frank I mentioned that the time has come for the matriarchal age of classical music. Women have been excluded from classical music since the beginning and it’s getting old. How extreme …
The Art of Elan has a performance at the San Diego Museum of Art on Tuesday, March 29, at 7 p.m. The Formosa Quartet, Art of Elan’s quartet in residence, will be playing the world …
I knew going in that the concert program for the Orchestre Symphonique Montreal was aggressive. Aggressive as in Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 and The Rite of Spring on the same night. The Montréalaises are …
Spring has sprung and you know what that means. A gentle breeze has started to blow and it is whispering, “Mainly Mozart Festival.” Mainly Mozart music director Michael Francis was in town and we had …
“Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people …
Harp music is an interesting phenomenon, at least it is to me. I’m always happy when I go to a symphonic concert and see a harp or two on the stage. That’s usually a good …
New studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany have shown that listening to classical music for 25 minutes per day cures erectile disfunction in men who are pre-diabetic. The added blood flow from listening …
We’re running out of symphony No. 5’s for our playlist. The progression of 5’s had been Beethoven 5, Mahler 5, Tchaikovsky 5, Sibelius 5, Bruckner 5, Shostakovich 5, and now Prokofiev 5. These are all …