Benjamin Britten News

Music Box Theatre expands its Stage-to-Screen programming this winter, importing even more captured live stage performances from the UK than ever before. Additional programming includes a new collaboration with the UK's Royal Shakespeare Company kicking off December 7 and 18 with Richard II, starring Doctor Who's David Tennant, beamed from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

As part of the Britten 100 Celebrations Birmingham Royal Ballet will perform The Prince of Pagodas in 2014. Ahead of a London Coliseum season from Wednesday 26 until Saturday 29 March the ballet, choreographed by Birmingham Royal Ballet's award-winning director David Bintley, will be performed at The Lowry Salford Quays (30 Jan - 1 Feb), Birmingham Hippodrome (25 Feb - 1 March) and Plymouth's Theatre Royal (19 - 22 March).

The December broadcasts of The New York Philharmonic This Week - the weekly radio series of concerts and recordings by the New York Philharmonic, hosted by Alec Baldwin - begin with Bernard Labadie returning to the Philharmonic to conduct Mozart's Requiem; J.S. Bach's Cantata No. 51, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen!; and Handel's 'Let the Bright Seraphim' from Samson. The program's soloists will include soprano Miah Persson, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, tenor Fre?de?ric Antoun, bass Andrew Foster-Williams, and Associate Principal Trumpet Matthew Muckey, joined by the New York Choral Artists directed by Joseph Flummerfelt. The following week Music Director Alan Gilbert conducts the New York Premiere of The Marie- Jose?e Kravis Composer-in-Residence Christopher Rouse's Oboe Concerto featuring Principal Oboe Liang Wang, and Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra and Don Juan, both featuring Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow in the concertmaster solos.

Vancouver, BC ~ Effervescent, intoxicating, and just a little daft, Vancouver Opera's colourful production of Albert Herring bursts onto the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Stage in less than two weeks. Benjamin Britten's fast-paced, clever and hummable opera, directed by Glynis Leyshon, transports audiences to the 1950s in a riot of scrumptious costumes, devastating satire, and charming slapstick.

The busybodies of proper English village life are brilliantly skewered in Benjamin Britten's devastatingly satirical Albert Herring, onstage at Vancouver Opera for four performances only. Fast-paced, effervescent and musically clever, this sparkling 1950s-style company premiere is a scrumptious treat for Vancouver audiences.

Music Director Alan Gilbert will conduct the New York Philharmonic in a program of Mozart's three final symphonies - Nos. 39, 40, and 41, Jupiter - tonight, November 29, 2013, at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, November 30 at 8:00 p.m. Classical 105.9 FM WQXR in New York will broadcast the November 30 concert live at 8:00 p.m. as part of a month-long festival on the music and life of Mozart.

Throughout 2013, the centenary of British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) has been observed around the world by musicians and institutions of every kind. Music Director James Conlon, whose lifelong fascination with Britten is reflected in his personal three-year performance cycle of the composer's works in America and Europe, is the inspiration for LA Opera's Britten 100/LA: A Celebration, an extensive collaboration featuring performances, conferences and exhibitions presented by a host of organizations throughout the Southland. Britten's centenary year may be drawing to an end, but Britten 100/LA events will continue into early 2014.

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.

Tonight, November 24, 2013, VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert presents the Canadian Premiere of Benjamin Britten's GLORIANA. The work premiered in London at Covent Garden in 1953 and was written in celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch now in the 50th year of her reign.

In the New York Philharmonic's concerts this week celebrating the centennial of English composer, conductor, and pianist Benjamin Britten, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, tenors Dominic Armstrong, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Michael Slattery will replace Paul Appleby, who has withdrawn due to illness. On November 21-22, 2013, Michael Slattery will make his Philharmonic debut in Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, and tenor Dominic Armstrong will make his Philharmonic debut in Britten's Spring Symphony. The concert on November 23 will feature tenor Anthony Dean Griffey in both works, and he will sing the Serenade on November 26 on a program that also includes Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 39 and 41, Jupiter.

Today, Carnegie Hall announced that the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA), a program of Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, will make its debut at the Tanglewood music festival, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts, on Thursday, July 24, 2014 at 8:00 p.m. in Ozawa Hall.

The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) commemorates the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer, conductor and pianist Benjamin Britten with a celebratory concert today, Nov. 22.

Valencia College's East Campus performing arts students will close the year with an array of concerts between now and the first week of December. The cost gives music lovers even more reason to rejoice-admission is absolutely free.

Conductor James Conlon, Music Director of LA Opera, will lead a series of Britten performances across the Southland as part of the Britten 100/LA celebration, in commemoration of the 2013 Benjamin Britten centenary.

Events coming up in the next few weeks for the LA Opera include special celebrations tonight, November 22, Britten's 100th birthday.

TENET, one of New York's preeminent vocal ensembles combines forces with the highly acclaimed chamber ensembleThe Sebastians in a performance of ODES: A Celebration of St. Cecilia. Works to be performed include odes by Henry Purcell and a tribute to Benjamin Britten on his birthday during this anniversary year. TENET will perform his poignant and beloved Hymn to St. Ceciliafor unaccompanied choir in an intimate, one-voice-per-part scoring. The performance is part of TENET's fifth anniversary festivities and takes place at 7PM tonight, November 22, St. Cecilia's Day at St. Luke in the Fields (487 Hudson Street, New York).

Rare photographs of Benjamin Britten including family and personal snapshots from his boyhood and professional life, are included from today in a new display at the National Portrait Gallery, ahead of the composer's centenary this weekend.

The world of music is a vast place indeed, with room for what seems to be an endless mix of styles – everything from aboriginal drum melodies to esoteric computer scores. After about four decades of the musical avant-garde, in the late 1960s and early 1970s a style known as “minimalism” emerged in which the continuous repetition of simple musical elements (or one basic phrase) became the basis for a complete score. New names soon arrived on the scene, including Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams, among others. Also, a single overriding idea managed to prevail, at least for a time: it seems they all sought to escape from the spectacular, ultra-modern din (some say “noise”), reaching for a kinder, gentler manner of serious music.

Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the New York Philharmonic in a celebration of the centennial of English composer, conductor, and pianist Benjamin Britten. The program will include Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, featuring tenor Paul Appleby and Philharmonic Principal Horn Philip Myers, and Britten's Spring Symphony, with soprano Kate Royal (in her Philharmonic debut), mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (Philharmonic subscription debut), tenor Paul Appleby, New York Choral Artists directed by Joseph Flummerfelt, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus directed by Dianne Berkun-Menaker. The concerts, which include a performance on the composer's 100th birthday, November 22, will take place tonight, November 21, 2013, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, November 22 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, November 23 at 8:00 p.m.