In Hollywood and DC, Spectacle Triumphs Over Substance
February can be a busy month for pop singers with the right connections as they jet from Super Bowl at month’s beginning to the Oscars at its end. In years when a Democratic President is inaugurated...
View ArticleThe Unbearable Lightness of Superbowl Music
A late-imperial malaise hung in the air over Glendale, Arizona on Super Bowl Sunday. It could not be chased away by all the bright artificial lights that shone down on the lip-syncing roster of...
View ArticleA fitting finale for L'opera Leopoldina
As a young girl, Leopoldina Figueiredo harboured dreams of becoming a soprano, but never expected them to materialize. Maestro Fr Camilo Xavier, the legendary conductor and composer, recognized that...
View ArticleThe Orpheus Chamber Singers' Christmas concert elegantly warms a chilly evening
For a number of reasons, scholars dispute assumptions that Jesus was born in December. And, given unpredictable North Texas weather, Christmas carols about "the bleak midwinter" can prompt chuckles...
View ArticleIn defence of pretentiousness
In an age that worships the ‘authentic’, it has become a slur for all seasons – the easy way to tear down the poseurs and announce you’re not one of them. But without it, life would be very dull indeed...
View ArticleThe Screwtape Letters brings C.S. Lewis' devils to the Courtyard Studio
The Screwtape Letters. Adapted and directed by Hailey McQueen from the book by C.S. Lewis. Clock and Spiel Productions. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre. Until December 23. Season sold out. It...
View ArticleThe Superbowl Halftime Show 2015 vs 2016
That time of year comes once again when the biggest names in music come together to produce a spectacular halftime show at the Super Bowl. From The Rolling Stones to Micheal Jackson and Stevie Wonder,...
View ArticleCan You Spell These 11 Words That Once Won The Scripps National Spelling Bee?
Are you watching the 2017 Scripps National Spelling Bee? If not, you can tune in live on Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS) ESPN 3 Thursday for the Finals. Part 1 begins at 10 a.m. ET, and Part 2 is slotted...
View ArticleThe time Muhammad Ali asked for Robert Schuller's autograph
He presides over what is perhaps the most controversial Protestant Church in America, the glittering, all-glass, $20-million Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, just off the Santa Ana Freeway, next door...
View ArticleRobert Schuller: the Gospel of Success from the superstar of televangelism
He presides over what is perhaps the most controversial Protestant Church in America, the glittering, all-glass, $20-million Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, just off the Santa Ana Freeway, next door...
View ArticleConcert review: Staatskapelle Dresden - dreamland of German Romanticism
Liszt, Wagner and Strauss Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden Concert Hall, Cultural Centre Reviewed: February 28 I emerged from this concert with Christian Thielemann conducting the...
View ArticleThe search for a family’s art treasures stolen by the Nazis
After school I would often play with friends in Prince’s Gardens in South Kensington. The west side, known as Prince’s Gate, consisted of expensive white villas all beautifully lit, especially come...
View ArticleBoulez in his own words
As the conductor and composer celebrates his 90th birthday, we look back at some of his most notorious pronouncements...
View ArticleA sonata in two movements
Bela Bartok. By David Cooper. Yale University Press; 436 pages; £25. To be published in America by Yale in June. ALONG with Franz Liszt, Bela Bartok, who died in 1945, is regarded as one of Hungary’s...
View ArticleBeautiful singing, in an imaginative program, from Orpheus Chamber Singers
You'll not hear choral singing buffed to a finer satin finish, nor phrases and harmonies more lovingly caressed, than Saturday night's offerings by the Orpheus Chamber Singers. And for this concert, at...
View ArticleFrench Bacchanale in Bordeaux
--William Bouguereau,The Bacchante For reasons no one seems able to explain, France of late has been deluged with graphic images of the bacchanal. In case you've forgotten the bacchanal is not merely a...
View ArticleLundi Gras in New Orleans with Proteus, Orpheus, and Nathan Fillian
Greek legends rolled the streets of New Orleans this evening. The Krewe of Proteus led the way. Proteus is New Orleans second oldest Mardi Gras Krewe, Founded in 1882, and it takes its name from the...
View ArticleTrinity Church Wall Street Releases The Snow Lay on the Ground – Festive...
(Source: 21c Media Group Inc) November 16, 2016 Two weeks ago, Trinity Church Wall Street released a holiday album on the Arsis Records label titled The Snow Lay on the Ground, comprising nine carol...
View ArticleMusica Nova Headlines Student Arts Festival (UTD - The University of Texas at...
(Source: UTD - The University of Texas at Dallas) Nov. 18, 2016 Dr. Robert Xavier Rodríguez, composer-conductor and professor of music at UT Dallas, will direct the Musica Nova classical ensemble in...
View ArticleStirring performances at the Old Mutual National Choir Festival regional...
(Source: Old Mutual Life Assurance Company (South Africa) Limited) The 18 Gauteng choirs competing for a chance to perform at the finals of the festival in December took to the stage and upped the...
View ArticleGENEVANS “MAGNIFY THE LORD” IN 79TH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS CONCERTS (Geneva College)
(Source: Geneva College) (BEAVER FALLS, PA) The Genevans, student choir of Geneva College, will present a program entitled 'My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord' in free community concerts Friday, December 2...
View ArticleMusica Nova Concert Kicks Off Spring Arts Festival
April 20, 2017 UT Dallas' student ensemble Musica Nova will present 'Four Centuries of French Music' to open this spring's student arts festival. At 8 p.m. Saturday in the Jonsson Performance Hall, the...
View ArticleMonterverdi's Orfeo: 'a brilliant and compelling fable to the inalienable...
Monteverdi might be surprised to find himself hailed as the inventor of the opera, and he disclaimed the role of revolutionary, but his Orfeo is a radical, innovative and extraordinary work...
View ArticleCambridge choirs to perform in Canberra
The Choir of Christ's College, Cambridge. Wesley Uniting Church, Forrest. Sunday, July 10 at 7pm and Monday, July 11 at 7pm. trybooking.com/LRET and at the door. The Choir of Trinity College,...
View ArticleTrinity Wall Street’s 2015-16 Offerings: From Byrd, Bach & Beethoven to...
(Source: 21c Media Group Inc) October 7, 2015 Hailed by the New Yorker as 'a mini-Lincoln Center for classical music downtown,'Trinity Wall Street continues to dominate the early and contemporary music...
View ArticlePittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Performs Final All-Beethoven Program in...
(Source: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra) PITTSBURGH - Revel in two of Beethoven's most notable and majestic works during the Pittsburgh Symphony's BNY Mellon Grand Classics: BeethovenFest: The Immortal...
View ArticleSFA music alumni to perform in 'An American Requiem' (Stephen F Austin State...
(Source: Stephen F Austin State University) SFA music alumni to perform in 'An American Requiem' May 3, 2016 - Robbie Goodrich NACOGDOCHES, Texas - Three alumni of the Stephen F. Austin State...
View Article100 Best Songs Of The 1980s
Whatever you thought of the fashion, the 80s fuelled some absolute bangers. Ah, the 80s. Whether you were donning your finest spandex and getting tiddly on Cinzano or putting on the leathers and...
View ArticleJonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: episode one recap – The Friends of English Magic
In the first episode of the adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s fantasy novel, we meet the Learned Society of York Magicians, explore Norrell’s library, and hear a warning about a Raven King...
View ArticleThe Mislaid Rights of Man: How We Forfeit Our Own Rights—and Those of Others
A not inconsiderable flaw of modern Western civilization is that it has never fully absorbed Article IV of France’s 1789 Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen, that we all have the same natural...
View ArticleDark Souls’s cultural heritage
It’s the trees; the twisted, whorled trees, their skeletal branches raking the belly of the looming sky. Those are Caspar David Friedrich trees, unmistakably corkscrewed and bent. They rise out of...
View ArticleTrinity Church Wall Street Releases Trevor Weston: Choral Works on Acis...
(Source: 21c Media Group Inc) October 21, 2016 This weekend, on Sunday, October 23, Trinity Church Wall Street makes its debut on the Acis Records label with Trevor Weston: Choral Works. This is the...
View ArticlePapal Pop and Circumstance
Entrusting the USA to its patroness, Mary Immaculate, then offering one final “God Bless America,” Pope Francis launched heavenward from Philadelphia on his Alitalia jet nearly two weeks ago. The...
View ArticleJohn Eliot Gardiner on how Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice reformed opera from the...
When Gluck took on the Orpheus myth, 18th-century opera was in a rut. Ahead of a new Covent Garden production, John Eliot Gardiner explains how the composer created a rich amalgam of text, music, dance...
View ArticleTrinity Church Wall Street’s 2016-17 Musical Offerings Include Curated Series...
(Source: 21c Media Group Inc) September 27, 2016 This season, Trinity Church Wall Street's music program continues to minister to New Yorkers through an unparalleled array of free, ambitious musical...
View ArticleMarch 26, 2015 - Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Solists &...
(Source: San Francisco Symphony) Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Solists & the Monteverdi Choir, April 27 March 26, 2015 Contact: Public Relations San Francisco Symphony (415)...
View ArticleProm Pop and the Rites of Adolescence
As the older of my two daughters went off to her senior prom last weekend, I couldn’t help but think back to a trip to the local mall to see Disney’s Prom made with her back in 2011 just on the other...
View ArticleMoney and the Mind
The Hard Problem, Tom Stoppard’s first new play in nearly a decade, was beamed from London’s Southbank arts complex into North America cinemas last weekend under the auspices of National Theatre Live....
View ArticleChiaroscuro Comes to America
While travel played an increasingly important role in musical life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the great age of chamber music—most musicians spent their lives, or long stretches of them,...
View ArticleThe Strains of Strife
Religious discord dominates the news: from Charlie Hebdo and the War on Terror, to intra-Islamic mayhem in the regions conquered by ISIS, to shootings of Muslims in North Carolina, and even to the...
View ArticleThe Gusts of Globalization
Last month the novelist, screenwriter, and CounterPunch contributor Clancy Sigal, whose most recent book is the vital , sent me the following vignette, a history lesson in the nearly unbreakable union...
View ArticleThe Bombing of Dresden, 70 Years Later
A BBC Breakfast interview with ninety-five-year-old Dresden firebombing survivor Victor Gregg aired last month in the UK on the 70th anniversary of the attacks. This ten-minute video should be required...
View ArticleGrappling With Hormones, Dark Desires and Social Violence
That the playwright, actor, cabaret performer, and satirist Frank Wedekind ran afoul of the authorities in Wilhelmine, Germany is hardly surprising. A sexual athlete who seems to have kept his...
View ArticleReviving Platti
My column last week on the firebombing of German cities appeared a few days before the seventieth anniversary of the British destruction of Wurzburg, a baroque gem dense with art and people and holding...
View ArticleOpera at the Mall
Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall allows you to stream live performances of that famed orchestra into the proverbial comfort of your own home. A year’s subscription runs about $175, certainly...
View ArticleRoadtripping With Nabokov
Driving to Boston from Ithaca to give a concert at the venerable early music festival there last week, I decided to listen to a book on tape rather than my usual fare of to accompany my path through...
View Article“I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me”
Summary Reader Advisory: This report contains graphic descriptions of traumatic experiences, often affecting children. Intersex people in the United States are subjected to medical practices that can...
View ArticleA church chronicle: St. George’s Cathedral turns 200 this year
A posse of policemen steps aside and the car swings into the cathedral that lends its name to the road on which it has stood for two centuries now. Past the queue snaking round the bend at the...
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