Benjamin Britten News

Ballet Conservatory dancers from the Franklin School for the Performing Arts (FSPA) will perform Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra with the Metrowest Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director Peter L. Cokkinias. The collaborative performance is part of the Hopkinton-based Orchestra's "Artists in Bloom" Family Concert, to be presented on Sunday, March 9 at 3 p.m. at the Joseph P. Keefe Technical School Auditorium, 750 Winter Street, in Framingham. The program also features Aaron Copland's Outdoor Overture and Maurice Ravel's Tzigane, with 16-year-old violin soloist Elizabeth Kim, winner of the Orchestra's annual Young Artist Competition.

For DIRECTOR'S CHOICE, the fourth program of Pacific Northwest Ballet's 2013-2014 season, Artistic Director Peter Boal selects from his roster of acquisitions and increases them by one: The captivating mixed-bill program will feature a much-anticipated world premiere by Alejandro Cerrudo, resident choreographer of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. The program also reprises audience favorites TAKE FIVE…More or Less, Broadway-darling Susan Stroman's sunny slice of jazz-infused Dave Brubeck fun; and Susan Marshall's distinctive aerial duet, Kiss. Rounding out the lineup is Molissa Fenley's State of Darkness, a tour-de-force solo performance set to Stravinsky's riot-inducing The Rite of Spring. DIRECTOR'S CHOICE runs for seven performances only, March 14 through 23 at Seattle Center's Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. Tickets start at just $28 and may be purchased by calling the PNB Box Office at 206.441.2424, online at PNB.org, or in person at the PNB Box Office, 301 Mercer Street.

The winners of the 43rd annual George London Foundation Awards Competition for young American and Canadian opera singers were announced at the conclusion of the competition's final round this evening, which took place in a front of a capacity audience at Gilder Lehrman Hall at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Conductor James Conlon, Music Director of LA Opera, concludes his three-year commemoration of the centenary of composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and brings the Britten 100/LA celebration to a close in Los Angeles with LA Opera's production of Billy Budd, which opens today, February 22 and continues through March 16, 2014.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

THE CHOIR of Canterbury Cathedral join Richard Alston Dance Company for a world premiere at The Marlowe Theatre next month.

Conductor James Conlon, Music Director of LA Opera, concludes his three-year commemoration of the centenary of composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and brings the Britten 100/LA celebration to a close in Los Angeles with LA Opera's production of Billy Budd, which opens on February 22 and continues through March 16, 2014. For more information about this production, please visit www.LAOpera.org.