Stephanie Berger News

Revered pianist/composer Fred Hersch reemerged from the pandemic with one of his most ambitious and acclaimed projects to date: Breath By Breath, his first album ever pairing jazz rhythm section with string quartet. The album found Hersch's trio featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jochen Rueckert joined by the Crosby Street String Quartet, a new ensemble formed especially for the recording. DownBeat called the album, 'An amazingly satisfying listening experience,' while WBGO hailed it simply as, “Exquisite.”

I couldn’t help thinking of a new science fiction-comedy series on Amazon during the local premiere of UPLOAD, the opera by Michel van der Aa at the Park Avenue Armory on Tuesday. Both had the same name. Both explore a near future where technology controls everything, including the afterlife, as a person can choose to “upload” its consciousness to continue living digitally. Both pose questions, though in different ways, about humanity, technology, consumerism, and so on.

 The Tony Awards Administration Committee met yesterday to confirm the eligibility status of 12 Broadway productions for the 2021-2022 season.  This was the first time the Tony Awards Administration Committee met to decide the eligibility for the 75th Annual Tony Awards. The Tony Awards are presented by The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing.

Dorrance Dance notes on their website that “tap dance is a subversive form.” The radical delight, playfulness, and palpable trust between the members of the Dorrance Dance company feels beautifully subversive in another holiday season of covid anxiety, distancing, and skepticism. What better time, then, for Dorrance Dance to share tap dancing with the next generation and celebrate its legacy of resilience and joy in the face of adversity.

BroadwayWorld has a first look at Afterwardsness—a new commission by dancer, director, and choreographer Bill T. Jones—now on stage through  May 26, 2021. Commissioned by the Armory as part of its Social Distance Hall season, the work was originally slated to premiere at the Armory on March 24 but was rescheduled when members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company tested positive for COVID-19 during rigorous safety protocols that Park Avenue Armory requires for all performers, crew, and staff before they arrive on site.  

Park Avenue Armory has announced the 100 Years | 100 Women Conversation Series in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a continuation of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment's ratification granting some women the right to vote.

David Byrne is no stranger to creating theatre, quirky immersive experiences, or ushering people to the dance floor. So perhaps it's fitting that he's acting as a Pied Piper for a return to all three in SOCIAL! The Social Distance Dance Club at Park Avenue Armory.

On August 18, marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Park Avenue Armory and lead partner National Black Theatre, together with nine other New York City cultural institutions, unveiled the next phase of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative.

On August 18, marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Park Avenue Armory and lead partner National Black Theatre, together with nine other New York City cultural institutions, will unveil the next phase of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative.

Someone once asked me, long ago, “Don't you ever get Baroque-d out?” The answer then--when instrumental music was more widely available than vocal--was a firm “no.” Today, when there's the music of Handel and his contemporaries everywhere, the answer remains the same, particularly when it's in the right hands, like Joyce DiDonato (JDD) in AGRIPPINA on disk and recently at the Met. There are also some less familiar--but very much worthy--names, like countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski on his Erato CD, “Facce d'Amore,” and mezzo Ann Hallenberg, at Carnegie's Zankel Hall last week with the Venice Baroque Orchestra.

At its fourth annual a?oeCulture in a Changing Americaa?? symposium on Saturday, Park Avenue Armory, together with lead partner National Black Theatre and nine additional   New York City-based cultural institutions, announced the lead group of artists they commissioned as part of the 100 Years | 100 Women initiative. In addition to the Armory and National Black Theatre, the commissioning institutions are : Apollo Theater; The Julliard School; La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company; The Laundromat Project; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of the Moving Image; National Sawdust; New York University (Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts; Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity and Strategic Innovation; and Institute of African American Affairs & Center for Black Visual Culture); and Urban Bush Women.

With great success, Juilliard's Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, including a notable alumna, Felicia Moore, as Susan B. Anthony, along with members of the New York Philharmonic under Daniela Candillari performed Louisa Proske's production of the Gertrude Stein-Virgil Thomson opera THE MOTHER OF US ALL. It took place in the Engelhardt Court of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as part of the MetLiveArts series.

I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of an evening, most are domestic, a few are foreign. In any case, as the new decade begins, I recall that these are the vocal highlights that made my heart beat a little faster and made me look forward to the year ahead.

Born in 1901, Austro-Hungarian playwright and novelist ?-dön von Horváth spent the latter of his 36 years warning against the growing threat of European fascist regimes before being fatally struck by a falling tree branch.

The late, great jazz artist Nora York is being celebrated by the release of a posthumous cd titled SWOON and the NORA YORK TRIBUTE CONCERT at Joe's Pub. Learn about York and more in this interview with her collaborator, Emmy award winner Jamie Lawrence.

Even the most jaded New York playgoers who may start feeling a bit blasé about entering a theatre and seeing a large pool of water on the stage (Jeremy O. Harris' DADDY and Lucas Hnath's RED SPEEDO are two recent examples) will undoubtedly be intrigued by the sumptuous display of aquatic symbolism greeting them at the Park Avenue Armory for director Satoshi Miyagi's entrancing staging of Shigetake Yaginuma's translation of Sophocles' Antigone.

Hudson Hall at the historic Hudson Opera House invites audiences to embrace a sense of adventure with a new season of music, theater, exhibitions, film, book launches, special events, and community programs this August to December.

This week's opera performances--Teatro Nuova's LA STRANIERA by Bellini and Mostly Mozart's MAGIC FLUTE--proved that opera can be considered alive and well (and living in New York), as long as those producing it believe in it and give us some voices worth hearing.

Having watched the Mark Morris over the past 20 years, I can say with all honesty that he has all the virtues that distinguish a fine choreographer: musicality, vitality, charm, humor. My problem is that I never find myself warming to anything I see, especially to the program on July 11, 2019.

Today the Merce Cunningham Trust announces Summer & Fall 2019 programming for the worldwide Merce Cunningham Centennial, which unites artists, companies, and cultural and educational institutions in a celebration of Cunningham's vital impact. Launched in the fall of 2018 and continuing throughout all of 2019, the Centennial honors Cunningham's legacy across continents and artistic disciplines. The diversity of activities and participating partners demonstrate the profound, enduring resonance of the choreographer's work and his approach to how the body moves in time and space.