Benjamin Britten News

Carnegie Hall presents lyric soprano Lucy Crowe in her New York recital debut on Wednesday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m. in Weill Recital Hall. Joined by pianist Anna Tilbrook, Ms. Crowe performs a wide variety of repertoire, with song cycles to include Alban Berg's Sieben fruhe Lieder and William Walton's A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table-six pieces celebrating the sights and sounds of London. Additional program highlights include a performance of Sibelius's vocally demanding tone poem, Luonnotar, Op. 70, inspired by the Kalevala, a 19th-century Finnish epic poem, and well-known lieder by Schubert. The British-born singer will also perform traditional selections from Folk Songs from the British Isles, including 'Sally Gardens,' and 'The Ash Grove,' arranged by Benjamin Britten, as well as songs by English composers Michael Head, Ivor Gurney, Thomas Dunhill, and Frank Bridge.

La MaMa, in association with Monk Parrots, presents the World Premiere of Bum Phillips All-American Opera, a new contemporary opera conceptualized and directed by Luke Leonard, composed and conducted by Peter Stopschinski, with a libretto by Kirk Lynn. Bum Phillips All-American Opera runs from March 12 - 30, 2014 in a limited engagement at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, located at 66 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue & the Bowery in New York City. Previews begin March 12 for a March 15 opening.

Anthony Warlow, Australia's leading star of musical theatre and one of the world's most renowned stage performers, returns home this June with Tony-Award winner Faith Prince for an exclusive concert event titled Direct From Broadway. The Australian tour will premiere at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival on June 10, before going on to Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Anthony Warlow, Australia's leading star of musical theatre, returns home this June with Tony-Award winner Faith Prince in an exclusive concert event titled Direct From Broadway. The Australian tour premieres at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival on June 10, then travels to Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

This month, Carnegie Hall presents the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in two performances led by esteemed conductor Bernard Haitink as part of the orchestra's annual visit to Carnegie Hall. The BSO's first program on tonight, February 11 at 8:00 p.m. features Mr. Haitink conducting Steven Stucky's arrangement of Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary and Brahms's Symphony No. 4 in E Minor. In addition, Murray Perahia joins the orchestra for Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54.

Due to the sudden death of guest vocalist Alexei Mochalov's wife, tonight's February 7 program of Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica at the Harris Theater has been changed. Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Concertino, Op. 42 and Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo, Op. 16 replaces the previously scheduled Antiformalist Rayok by Dmitri Shostakovich and Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10. With the addition of Concertino, Op. 42, audience members will have the extraordinary opportunity to hear two works featuring violinist Gidon Kremer. Kremer also leads Kremerata Baltica in Weinberg's Symphony No.10 for strings, Op.98, appearing onstage in three of the evening's four works.

New York's city-wide plans to celebrate the centenary of prolific UK composer Benjamin Britten will continue in 2014 when the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) stages the US première of Glyndebourne's critically acclaimed opera Billy Budd.

Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic on the ASIA / WINTER 2014 tour, February 6-19, 2014. The two-week tour - the Philharmonic's seventh international concert tour under Alan Gilbert's leadership - will feature ten concerts in three countries, with performances in Seoul, South Korea; Nagoya, Osaka, Tokyo, and Yokohama, Japan; and Taipei, Taiwan.

Recently honored as a recipient of the 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Escher String Quartet (featuring Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Aaron Boyd, violin; Pierre Lapointe, viola and Dane Johansen, cello) performs 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014 at the Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church in Mill Valley, Calif., a venue with superb acoustics for chamber music. The program will include Schumann: Quartet, a minor, op. 41 #1; Berg: Quartet, op. 3; Dvorak Quartet, C, Op. 61

Glyndebourne's critically acclaimed production of Billy Budd has won the Best Revival award in the whatsonstage.com Opera Poll 2013. The win comes two days before the production makes its international debut in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Due to the sudden death of guest vocalist Alexei Mochalov's wife, the Friday, February 7 program of Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica at the Harris Theater has been changed. Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Concertino, Op. 42 and Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo, Op. 16 replaces the previously scheduled Antiformalist Rayok by Dmitri Shostakovich and Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10. With the addition of Concertino, Op. 42, audience members will have the extraordinary opportunity to hear two works featuring violinist Gidon Kremer. Kremer also leads Kremerata Baltica in Weinberg's Symphony No.10 for strings, Op.98, appearing onstage in three of the evening's four works.

Atlantic Classical Orchestra Artistic Director and Conductor Stewart Robertson presents the second lecture in the 2014 'Behind the Baton' series held at the Indian River State College campuses in Stuart and Vero Beach this February 17 (Stuart) and February 19 (Vero Beach) from 9:30 - 11:30 am. The popular program offers a greater understanding and appreciation of classical music, complete with interesting pieces of music history, selected recordings, insight into highlighted composers, and lively discussion on musicians, instruments and orchestrating a performance.

Professional singers and musicians from LA Opera will collaborate with more than 400 members of the Los Angeles community to present the world premiere of Jonah and the Whale, a new opera for audiences of all ages by composer Jack Perla and librettist Velina Hasu Houston. Conducted by LA Opera Music Director James Conlon and directed by Eli Villanueva, the performances will take place at 7:00pm on both March 21 and 22 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, located at 555 West Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Audiences be warned: a dangerously attractive aristocrat will be in Vancouver when VO's Don Giovanni hits the Queen Elizabeth Theatre stage in just a few weeks. The serial seducer will captivate audiences for five passionate performances only, March 1 to 9, 2014. Based on the captivating figure of Don Juan, Mozart's treatment is comedic and tragic, complex, and a towering achievement of music and drama.

The five-time Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus—Lisa Bielawa, Artistic Director, and Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Music Director and Principal Conductor—are in demand as one of the Bay Area's top vocal ensembles with upcoming guest performances this spring with the San Francisco Symphony, award-winning visual arts organization Creativity Explored, Stephen Petronio Dance Company presented by San Francisco Performances and in Opera Parallèle's productions of Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tiresias and Weill's Mahagonny. In addition, the Girls Chorus will stage Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde, based on the biblical deluge story, with décor and set pieces by artists from Creativity Explored on Saturday, March 29. A complete list of Spring performances is listed below. For more information, visit www.sfgirlschorus.org .

Perhaps the greatest disservice ever done to English music was its dismissal by the modernist composer Elizabeth Lutyens as 'cowpat music'. That statement was a hangover of a common perception from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that, despite the country's power and reputation, it wasn't actually very good at producing interesting music. But World War One marked the beginning of a new explosion of creative energy, one that saw exciting modern composers pour into England's concert halls, reaching across the sea to America, even to Hollywood. 'This England' from Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra brings this England to Carnegie Hall.