Jesse Blumberg News

On Thursday, November 16, 2017 at 7:30pm, preceded by a 7:00pm Composer/Poet chat, Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) presents the Brooklyn premiere and grand finale performance of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume II with expanded casting at National Sawdust. The project, which premiered in Manhattan and Queens earlier this year in honor of 5BMF's 10th anniversary season, features 20 new commissions inspired by New York City places, people and poetry from twenty composers, and includes solo songs, duets and ensemble works scored for various combinations of voice, piano and cello. The Five Borough Songbook, Volume II received its Staten Island premiere on September 16 at Trinity Lutheran Church and its Bronx premiere on September 17 at the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture.

It's Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1828 and the city's world-renowned anatomy schools are suffering from a cadaver shortage. Enter two immoral and highly industrious men--William Burke and William Hare--who pick up the slack by murdering disenfranchised citizens and selling their corpses to one of these schools, Dr. Knox's Academy. Perfect story for a chamber opera, eh? Well, yes, actually, says composer Julian Grant (even if it's opening a bit late for Halloween).

Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) presents the Rolston String Quartet winner of the 2016 Banff International String Quartet Competition and current Quartet-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music on Thursday, October 13 at 7:30 p.m. at South Oxford Space in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The quartet performs Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18, No. 3, Debussy's String Quartet No. 10, and Schumann's String Quartet Op. 41, No. 3.

Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) presents the Staten Island, Bronx, and Brooklyn premieres of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume II, completing the Songbook's journey across all five boroughs of New York City, which began during 5BMF's tenth anniversary season.

Del Sol Quartet (Benjamin Kreith and Rick Shinozaki, violins; Charlton Lee, viola; Kathryn Bates, cello) celebrates its 25th anniversary with the Whole Sol Festival, November 16-18, 2017, at the Atrium Theater in the San Francisco War Memorial Veterans Building.

Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) announces programming for its 2017-2018 season, continuing its mission of bringing affordable, world-class performances of traditional and contemporary chamber music to all five boroughs of New York City.

Mirror Visions Ensemble (MVE) announces its 2017-2018 season, which brings the group to Hudson, Quebec; Jamaica Plain and Salem, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Fullerton, California; Morristown, New Jersey; and New York City. Now in its 26th season, MVE was founded from a desire to explore the relationship between music and text, initially through the creation of 'mirror visions' - settings of the same text to music by different composers.

Sono Luminus announces the August 25, 2017 worldwide release of Dark Queen Mantra, a new recording from Del Sol String Quartet featuring new music by Terry Riley and Stefano Scodanibbio.

Opera Atelier's 16-17 season continues with Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Medea at the Elgin Theatre, Apr. 22-29, 2017. Following its Toronto run, Medea will tour to the Royal Opera House at the Palace of Versailles, marking the first time that Charpentier's masterpiece has played in the Royal Opera House. The production stars soprano Peggy Kriha Dye and Canadian tenor Colin Ainsworth, the powerhouse partnership that gained international acclaim in Opera Atelier's Armide.

Boston Lyric Opera's Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director Esther Nelson announced today an eclectic 2017/18 Season designed to please die-hard opera fans as well as newcomers to the art form.  Each of the Company's productions will be presented on a different area stage, starting October 13-22, 2017 with a new production of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca featuring the American debut of award-winning rising global star Elena Stikhina in the title role. The World Premiere of The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare (a.k.a. Burke & Hare) by composer Julian Grant and librettist Mark Campbell follows November 8-12, 2017.  From March 16-25, 2018, BLO presents Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's pivotal early-20th century work The Threepenny Opera.  BLO closes its Season in May with Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, paired with his Arias and Barcarolles, to mark the Lawrence, Mass.-born composer's centennial.

Known for staging 'the ultimate in intimate productions' (The New York Times), On Site Opera (OSO) presents a trio of exciting new site-specific opera productions in 2017, beginning May 11-13 with Mozart's rarely-performed early opera The Secret Gardener (La finta giardiniera) at the West Side Community Garden.

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), celebrating its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, presents St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach on February 9, 2017 at 7pm at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (57th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019).

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), celebrating its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, presents St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach on February 9, 2017 at 7pm at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (57th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019).  The production will be conducted by MasterVoices' Artistic Director Ted Sperling and will feature the MasterVoices chorus, Michael Slattery, Jesse Blumberg, Adam Lau, Jennifer Zetlan, Tamara Mumford, Ben Bliss,and Daniel Okulitch,with New York Baroque Incorporated.

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), celebrating its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, presents St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach on February 9, 2017 at 7pm at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (57th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019).

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), celebrating its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, presents St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach on February 9, 2017 at 7pm at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (57th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019).

An ensemble of artists committed to exploring the rarely heard music of Louis Durey present six of his unpublished manuscripts, including four North American premieres, today, February 4 at 4:00 p.m. at La Maison Francaise at New York University as a prelude to a recording to be released this May by New Focus Records.

MasterVoices (formerly The Collegiate Chorale), celebrating its 75th anniversary during the 2016-2017 season, presents St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach on February 9, 2017 at 7pm at Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (57th Street and 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10019).  The production will be conducted by MasterVoices' Artistic Director Ted Sperling and will feature the MasterVoices chorus, Michael Slattery, Jesse Blumberg, Adam Lau, Jennifer Zetlan, Tamara Mumford, Ben Bliss,and Daniel Okulitch,with New York Baroque Incorporated.

An ensemble of artists committed to exploring the rarely heard music of Louis Durey present six of his unpublished manuscripts, including four North American premieres, on Saturday, February 4 at 4:00 p.m. at La Maison Francaise at New York University as a prelude to a recording to be released this May by New Focus Records.

On May 7, 2017, at 3:00PM, the Greenwich Village Orchestra, led by Music Director and Conductor Barbara Yahr, will close its 30th anniversary season at Washington Irving Campus Auditorium (at 17th St. and Irving Place) with a pops concert, Broadway Downtown, featuring performances by guest artists and Broadway stars Grasan Kingsberry (The Color Purple, Motown The Musical, Nice Work if You Can Get It, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Aida) and Betsy Struxness (Hamilton, Matilda, Memphis, Wicked).

What's new in opera? Everything you can imagine--and much that you couldn't conceive of--all in the space of a few days in New York.