Live Music
An old man sitting behind me said, "Gil Shaham is good" to the lady accompanying him. God help me to stop being that guy. If we ever go to a concert together and I try …
Sometimes we’ve gotta eat our veggies after we have dessert. I’ve never tried it, but it’s basically what happened during the last half of the San Diego Symphony concert on Saturday night. The first half …
Stephanie Blythe is bringing her one-woman show about Kate Smith, "We'll Meet Again: The Songs of Kate Smith," to the Balboa Theater on Thursday, December 11 at 7 p.m. Blythe was here last April to …
I resisted Spotify for years. Years, I tell you. I found their classical music to be spotty at best. I would search for Tannhauser and Placido Domingo and get all kinds of crazy unrelated items …
A book just came out on November 28 which thinks it’s going to expose Venezuela’s El Sistema as a tyrannical and corrupt petty kingdom. The author published an article about his findings in The Guardian. …
It’s December, which means the Messiah and pals are upon us again. Who are the pals of the Messiah? Bach and Vivaldi for sure. Sometimes Vaughan Williams gets invited to play, along with Puccini, but …
It dawned on me that avant garde music, so to speak, is about 100 years old if we count the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as the starting point. It also dawned on …
“It’s kind of like a road trip, you’ve gotta at least try.” I was trying to be jocular during intermission on Saturday night but the gentleman I was trying to engage with my humor stared …
Let’s talk a little more about Mahler. His Seventh Symphony is this weekend at San Diego Symphony and I was able to speak to non other than Maestro Ling about Mahler’s “problem child”. We spoke …
The price of fine music could be going up even more for the San Diego Symphony with the departure of conductor Jahja Ling. The Indonesian-born Ling said on Thursday, November 20, that he will be …
There are how many versions of the Cinderella story? There’s Disney (of course), Rossini, Prokofiev, the 1984-85 Villanova Wildcats, and Massenet. I’m sure I missed a few, but Massenet is the one I want to …
Someone tell please tell me that they don't like Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. You might say you don't like it, but you'd be lying through your teeth. Everyone loves that song even if …
Sometimes my tradition of not reading the program until after a concert backfires on me. I don’t read the program because I want to experience the music for itself and oftentimes the program notes get …
We’ve heard the phrase, “Go big or go home.” If we look at the La Jolla Symphony’s upcoming season, those folks are never going home. The season contains Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and …
Suor Angelica is not among Puccini’s most popular operas. On Sunday night, about 400 or so of us were wondering why, because it was fantastic. The performance was at St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in …