The Metropolitan Opera is preparing to kick off its 2018-2019 season tomorrow, September 24, under the leadership of new Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin. According to The New York Times, he company is making its future plans, including its first-ever commissions of operas written by women. Among them are new works by Jeanine Tesori and Missy Mazzoli.
Koerner Hall's 10th Anniversary Opening Festival continues with Kathleen Battle, The Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble, Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducting the Orchestre Metropolitain and Nicholas Angelich, and the debuts by northern Canadian groups The Jerry Cans and New North Collective Royal Conservatory alumnus Chilly Gonzales returns to Koerner Hall, Lunasa and The Bombadils in a double-bill concert as part of the Roots and Folk series, Jamey Haddad's Under One Sun and Cyro Baptista's Vira Loucos open the World Music series Quiet Please, There's a Lady on Stage series opens with Amanda Martinez and Kellylee Evans. Seong-Jin Cho makes his Koerner Hall debut in a sold out concert.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica presents three concerts with violist Richard Yongjae O'Neill, its artist in residence. O'Neill will lead three programs - on Saturday September 8, he performs Schubert and Beethoven in a program title Homage with the Ehnes Quartet; on Sunday, March 3 he performs a program of British composers -- Britten, Bowen, Bridge, Carter and Clarke with pianist Steven Lin; and he closes with a program called L.A. Masters with works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Brahms with Jennifer Frautschi (violin), Jesse Mills (violin), Fred Sherry (cello), and Orion Weiss (piano).
Koerner Hall opened on September 25, 2009, Glenn Gould's birthday, with a Grand Opening Festival that featured 10 concerts. For the 10th anniversary season Mervon Mehta, Executive Director of Performing Arts at The Conservatory, has planned an opening festival (as well as a closing festival in April and May of 2019) that will consist of seven concerts.
When Christine Goerke took on the title role in the Met's revival of Richard Strauss's masterwork ELEKTRA--the final work of director Patrice Chereau--she wasn't so much competing with Nina Stemme, who sang the premiere of the production last spring, but with herself. Six months before this version first came to Lincoln Center, Goerke performed the role in concert with the Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall and blew the roof off. She was a transfixing, sensational presence that you just couldn't keep your eyes off.
The 2018 McCammon Voice Competition judges have chosen the semi-finalists for the eighteenth biennial competition, to be held on March 16, 2018 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The finals will be held March 17, 2018 at Bass Performance Hall. This year's competitors are David Araujo, Amanda Blue, Nicolette Book, Ryan Bradford, Rachael Braustein, Kathleen Buccleugh, Chelsea Coyne, Danielle Davis, Peter Scott Drackley, Helen Huang, Hao Hu, Emily Michiko Jensen, Abigail Kempson, Chonghwa Kim, Abigail Levis, Brandon Morales, Elizabeth Moran, Langelihle Mngxati, Chong Yoon Noh, Brittany Nickell, Yulan Piao, Anthony Reed, Michael St. Peter and Andrew Wannigman.
Christine Goerke sings her first Elektra at the Met in Patrice Chéreau's landmark production, a sensation at its Met premiere last spring, which the Wall Street Journal called “revolutionary … a triumph on all fronts.” Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Strauss's shattering score, a tour de force for the singers and the orchestra alike.
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra presents The Courage to Create on Saturday, March 24, 2018 at 7pm in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, featuring internationally-acclaimed Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili in her Orpheus debut. Batiashvili is highlighted in Prokofiev's elegant Second Violin Concerto, a work steeped in the crosscurrents between Russia and the West. The evening also includes the Entr'acte No. 1 to Schubert's Rosamunde, Prokofiev's Schubert Waltzes Suite arranged by Paul Chihara, and Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B Minor “Unfinished.”
Richard Wagner's last opera, PARSIFAL, is a tough nut to crack. With its highly religious overtones, lack of action and incredible length (it ran about 5 hours 40 minutes the other night), it's not exactly a 'light night' at the opera--even if for those of us who consider opera to be a 'light night'. Still, with the right cast and conductor, it can be transcendent. The Met's new revival came pretty close to getting us there.
Accelerating his arrival as Music Director by two seasons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin will take up the post in time for the start of the Metropolitan Opera's 2018–19 season, it was announced today. By freeing up some guest conducting weeks in his busy calendar in both the 2018–19 and 2019–20 seasons, Nézet-Séguin will now be able to conduct three operas and two Met Orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall in each of those seasons, instead of the two operas per season originally scheduled. With the assumption of the Music Director title in the fall of 2018, Nézet-Séguin will also be taking on the full artistic responsibilities for the orchestra, chorus, and music staff. His full-time collaboration with Met General Manager Peter Gelb on all other artistic matters will also begin at that time. As previously announced, Nézet-Séguin will begin conducting a minimum of five operas per season starting with the 2020–21 season.
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra announces the appointment of Lahav Shani as its Music Director, starting from the orchestra's 2020-2021 season. For the 2019-20 season he will have the title Music Director Designate. The 29-year-old Israeli conductor and pianist will succeed Zubin Mehta, the IPO's legendary Music Director, who was appointed to the position in 1969.
It's just about time to wish you all a happy 2018--but I'm not quite ready to put 2017 to rest. Though it won't go into the annals as one of the best years ever, there were quite enough performances and performers that made this year a winner for me, operatically speaking at least, in my corner of the world.
In their first co-production collaboration ever, the Bolshoi and the Met announced plans today to jointly create new productions of Aida, Salome, and Lohengrin, with performances to take place in New York and Moscow between 2019 and 2022. The two companies will pool their creative and technical resources to develop and build the new productions, with the Bolshoi performing the productions at their theater in Moscow and the Met performing them in New York.
Penny Van Horn, Board Chair of The Solti Foundation U.S. and Elizabeth Buccheri, Artistic and Awards Committee Chair, today announced the names of the recipients of the 2017 Solti Foundation Career Assistance Awards, bringing the number of such grants given by the Foundation to 55, and the amount awarded to young conductors since 2004 to $500,000, a major milestone in the organization's history. This year's recipients hold positions throughout the United States, Canada and Brazil with posts in California, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, Hamilton, Ontario, and Rio de Janiero.
The Leonard Bernstein Office today announced "Leonard Bernstein at 100," a two-year global celebration of the life and career of the 20th century cultural giant, featuring more than 1,000 events on six continents. A kickoff at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, September 22, 2017 will officially launch the celebrations which continue worldwide through the end of August 2019.
The audience was there to be thrilled on Tuesday, when the Met's new Music Director, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, took on Wagner's DER FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN) and they weren't disappointed. It was a musically glorious performance with the Met orchestra in peak form under its new maestro, the company's great chorus both charming and energetic, and the cast of principals marvelous, led by baritone Michael Volle in the title role and soprano Amber Wagner as Senta.
On November 14, 2016, Sono Luminus Records releases J.S. Bach: Partitas for Keyboard, BWV 825-830 [DSL 92209] a 3-CD set featuring two-time GRAMMY®-nominated harpsichordistJory Vinikour. For this recording the harpsichordist and conductor, whose performances have been called "so buoyant, glistening or noble that you'll likely find yourself glued to your speakers (or headphones)" by Gramophone, performs on a stunning copy of a North German instrument of Bach's time built by Tom and Barbara Wolf.
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College continues its 2015-16 season with a concert version of The Beatles' iconic album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, performed by the Art of Time Ensemble, tonight, November 21, 2015 at 8pm.
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College continues its 2015-16 season with a concert version of The Beatles' iconic album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, performed by the Art of Time Ensemble, on Saturday, November 21, 2015 at 8pm.
Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn, originally scheduled to perform with the Houston Symphony in Fall 2015, has notified the Houston Symphony of her plans to take a short leave to care for her newborn baby due this summer, a decision that would force her to withdraw from her performances at Jones Hall tonight, September 25-27, 2015.
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