This is the time of year when we ordinarily take a look back over the previous season and select the top concerts. We could do that, but 2021 was not an ordinary year for classical …

‘Tis the season for Christmas music. We all know the Christmas warhorses such as Georg Handel’s The Messiah, J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and Pytor Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Maybe some of us are also familiar with …

The San Diego Symphony has announced its winter-spring 2022 concert. The Symphony is offering 31 performances from January 15 through May 28. Presented as “Hear Us Here,” the season will give the San Diego Symphony …

I’ve been dabbling in opera tourism this fall and decided to go full-send with a trip to New York. I looked at the schedule for The Metropolitan Opera and saw that Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger …

Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker has been cleared from quarantine and is returning to The Civic Theater. Those familiar with The Nutcracker as it has been performed at The Civic in the past will recognize this production. …

The San Diego Symphony has released a report on the first two months of concerts at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. The numbers are impressive. In August, there were 15 paid events, which drew …

Alessandro Stradella is a name that might ring a bell with champions of early Baroque music. As for me, I knew he existed, but beyond a short Sinfonia from his Christmas Eve Cantata, I wasn’t …

Given the current circumstances, San Diego Opera is producing two mainstage opera productions this season. What is an opera fan to do with that? Two productions just aren’t enough to satiate some the most dedicated …

One of the major themes in Richard Wagner’s 1845 opera Tannhäuser is pilgrimage. With that in mind, I took a pilgrimage to LA Opera to see their current production of the show. (San Diego Opera …

Bernard Haitink had died. He was 92. He was the last of the great mid-20th Century conductors who came to worldwide prominence via the recording industry. Starting in 1961, Haitink was the first conductor of …

Mahler and Tchaikovsky are two of the most popular composers for modern audiences. Rarely are they scheduled together on the same concert, but on Saturday, October 17, that’s exactly what happened with the San Diego …

The September version of The San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival concluded with two spectacular concerts on Friday, September 17, and Saturday, September 18. At the final concert, Mainly Mozart CEO Nancy Laturno confirmed that the …

After attending just the first three concerts at the San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival, I concluded that it was, once again, a musical affair to remember. Mainly Mozart is onto something quite simple yet profound. …

My 50th birthday is approaching all too quickly, With that in mind, I feel as though I should take an inventory of how I got here. Recently, I met with a good friend and we …

Opera singer Ryan Speedo Green proved a very important point during his performance at The Rady Shell during the opening night concert on August 7. Mr. Green proved that opera, when done well, appeals to …

I came to San Diego in the fall of 1990. All through the decade, I took advantage of the chance to buy student tickets for the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Opera. However, …

On July 28, 2021, the classical music and opera worlds celebrated conductor Riccardo Muti’s 80th birthday. The next day, I found out that one of my opera heroes had died on the same day. Giuseppe …

The ideology of woke culture is one thing. Meditating every day and thereby developing the ability to effectively respond to life’s situations instead of merely reacting, is another. Meditation is the path to a consistently …

As we are in mid-July, summer should be in full swing. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five pieces of music that inhabit the tone of summer. There is one caveat here, …

The San Diego Opera has announced a season for 2021-2022. There’s some very good news here. Productions of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette and Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte headline the season, along with a concert by …

The Mainly Mozart Festival concluded on Saturday, June 19 with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. There were also concerts on Wednesday, June 16, and Friday, June 18. Each of those …

The San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival got off to a rambunctious start on Friday, June 11, 2021, at the San Diego Surf Soccer Club in Del Mar. The orchestra roster is as strong as ever. …

An insurmountable mountain of facts proves that we are living in the best period of known human history. Maybe things were better in pre-history when the aliens were here, but from infant mortality rates to …

The La Jolla Music Society (LJMS) has announced its SummerFest 2021, which will be held from Friday, July 30 - Friday, August 20, 2021, at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla. The …

The Mainly Mozart Festival is coming back into form on Friday, June 11. The incomparable Festival Orchestra is scheduled to perform five concerts at the Del Mar Surf Cup Sports Park June 11-19. The repertoire …

The opening of the Rady Shell at the Jacobs Park featuring performances on the Una Davis Family Stage is imminent. As one might surmise from all the titles surrounding the Shell project, the San Diego …

Each generation of young opera singers eventually becomes familiar with some of the great opera singers of the past. I’ve seen this happen, first hand, at least a dozen times. I must admit that I …

The San Diego Symphony continued their run of string serenade live streams on Friday, April 29. In February the symphony string section performed Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. In March is was Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings …

I want to talk a little bit about choir. I’ve been singing in choirs since the seventh grade. I was in a choir every year from junior high through college. During my first year in …

There are famous orchestras around the world. We’ve all heard of Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics. We know about the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw. The United States used to have a “big five” …

The internet was astir regarding an article in The Telegraph. The headline reads, “Musical notation branded 'colonialist' by Oxford professors hoping to 'decolonise' the curriculum.” Musical pundits picked up on this as “the woke” trying …

In its most recent online streaming concert, the San Diego Symphony showed off the string section in a concert entitled A Shimmer of Strings. This is the way I will now refer to all gatherings …

Since the 2021 Academy Awards come up later this month on April 25, let’s take a moment to consider some of the greatest movie music ever written. The acid test for great movie music is …

If there is one thing I’ve bemoaned about modern music, all modern music, it’s the lack of melody. From the concert hall to the opera stage to popular music, melody is on the decline. Within …

A few weeks ago we did the best second-best symphonies. This week we’re going to do the best second-best operas. For the sake of argument, a composer’s second-best opera is any opera that isn’t his …

I cast a jaundiced eye at music composed based on current events. We’ve had several compositions along such lines performed in San Diego. We’ve had compositions about climate change, receding glaciers. immigration, police shootings, and …

The San Diego Symphony streamed its second concert of the year on Friday, February 26. The concert presented three contrasting pieces of music. The first piece, by Carlos Simon, was entitled Elegy, A Cry from …

The last few days of unabated San Diego sunshine have me feeling particularly spring-ish even though we are technically in the dead of winter with spring still a month or so away. However, it did …

Lent came quickly this year. With no buildup to Carnival and Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, because of you know what, Ash Wednesday suddenly appeared. I thought we’d explore a few musical carnivals since the season didn’t …

I’ve had dozens of conversations that discussed the greatest symphonies of all time. I’ve read dozens of articles on the same topic. The usual suspects are all there, Beethoven’s Ninth, Mahler’s Ninth, Bruckner’s Eighth, Brahms' …

I wrote a little preview of the San Diego Symphony livestream entitled Wagner meets Mozart and mentioned that I didn’t quite understand how the concert hung together. After watching the livestream, I still don’t get …

Recently I realized I had some holes in my listening habits for one of my favorite composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams. I have listened to some of Vaughan Williams’s most popular pieces to death. These would …

San Diego Symphony and Music Director Rafael Payare have announced a special 2021 digital season that strives to inspire and connect with its audience while in-person performances cannot occur due to Covid. From January to …

At this point, Mainly Mozart has gone far beyond turning lemons into lemonade. They are now turning lemons into a sumptuous limoncello from the Amalfi Coast. In February and April, Mainly Mozart will be producing …

Since it’s a new year and many of us have resolutions, let’s consider some resolutions for some of opera’s most famous characters. Don Ottavio, from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, is the fiancé of Donna Anna whom …

Over the holidays, I had what I’ll call a spirited conversation regarding objective truth versus subjective truth. Since neither myself nor the other participants are professionals in the cognitive disciplines, the conversation lacked a certain …

Christmas always has a nip of melancholy in the eggnog for me these days. It could be because my children are growing older. It could be because I myself am growing older. For many of …

Opera, opera, opera. What are we to do with opera? Even those who love opera can’t agree on what it is, what it should be, or what it could be. I recently shared a meme …

There will be no Nutcracker this year, at least not a live version. The ballet has become such a part of the holiday season that it is difficult to believe that for most of its …

The La Jolla Symphony recently released a performance of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 from their performance vault. I gave it a listen and have concluded that it is a fine, fine, performance. For those who …