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Tony Frankel

  • CD Review: SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS (2018 Studio Recording on PS Classics)

    By Tony Frankel | January 20, 2019
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    SOMETHING SWELL FOR MUSICAL LOVERS A studio recording of Cole Porter’s 1943 boisterously farcical musical  Something for the Boys  has just been released, and producer and PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker has done it again. Since the early 1990s, he has helmed the making of studio cast albums of early Broadway musical scores that languished in near…

  • Music Preview: BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET & YUKO MABUCHI TRIO (Segerstrom Concert Hall)

    By Tony Frankel | January 18, 2019
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    JAZZIN’ HOT IN COSTA MESA With propulsive muscled arrangements, intense high-powered playing, and ceaseless creativity, saxophonist/composer Branford Marsalis is one of his best and brightest musicians that America has ever produced, and his proficiency in both jazz and classical is mind-boggling. He joins his hard-swinging yet sensitive quartet to heat up the winter for one…

  • CD Review: RACHMONINOV’S THE BELLS and SYMPHONIC DANCES (Bavarian Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra)

    By Tony Frankel | January 17, 2019
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    RING THOSE BELLS To say that these two tone poems are among Rachmaninov’s finest compositions may raise an eyebrow to those who find his Symphonies the best. Don’t take my word for it. Later in his life, the Great Russian believed that The Bells was his greatest achievement. And if you don’t believe The Rach…

  • Theater Review: 1776 (La Mirada Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | January 15, 2019
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    YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? How remarkable to have been a fly on the wall when the creators of 1776, the 1969 musical receiving a terrific La Mirada Theatre/McCoy Rigby revival, were deciding the 11 o’clock number (the trope given for the big, late in the second act number by a self-realizing main character…

  • Theater Review: MIDDLE8 (Stella Adler Theatre)

    By Tony Frankel | January 11, 2019
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    GREAT CHORUS, GREAT BRIDGE, GREAT INTRO WONKY SUPERSTRUCTURE A middle 8 is a section in song structure  — usually in the middle and consisting of eight bars — that is used to add some new content into the later part of a song to revitalize a tune that could get stale. It also breaks the repetition…

  • Dance & Music Preview: HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO & THIRD COAST PERCUSSION (The Wallis)

    By Tony Frankel | December 21, 2018
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    HUBBA-HUBBA-HUBBARD As one of the world’s most important contemporary dance companies, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago encompasses a vast array of techniques and forms, as well as an understanding of abstract artistry and the emotional nuances of movement. With an exuberant, athletic, and innovative repertoire, Hubbard Street presents performances that inspire, yes, but also challenge how…

  • Los Angeles Music Preview: DECK THE HALL HOLIDAY CONCERTS, 2018 (Disney Hall)

    By Tony Frankel | December 19, 2018
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    EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN ONE DECKED-OUT HALL The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Â Deck the Hall Â Holiday Concerts Â at Disney Hall are just around the corner, and the variety this year is awesome. Be Â enchanted by the ever-popular Â Holiday Sing-Along (Dec. 22 at 11:30am and 2:30pm), hosted this year by Melissa Peterman, who wows us every year at the Sing-A-Long Sound of…

  • CD Review: BERLIOZ’S ROMÉO ET JULIETTE (San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas)

    By Tony Frankel | December 9, 2018
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    HERE’S WHAT LOVE IS What’s in a name? That which we call a symphony by any other name would sound as sweet. In the way that Monteverdi rethought the madrigal, so too did Berlioz re-imagine symphonies. He altered any previous preconceptions of what a symphony can be with his Symphonie fantastique (my first classical album!)…

  • Theater Review: SHE LOVES ME (Actors Co-op)

    By Tony Frankel | December 5, 2018
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    LITTLE SHOP OF HAPPINESS I’ll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by Miklós László, is so resplendent, so charming, and so well-constructed that a 2011 gathering of literati for…

  • Music Review: MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS AND PATHÉTIQUE (Los Angeles Philharmonic)

    By Tony Frankel | December 4, 2018
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    NOTHING LIKE MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS EVER WAS Michael Tilson Thomas is a rock star. The Los Angeles native, who made his conducting debut here 50 years ago, proved last night at Disney Hall that he not only maintains a Bernstein-like vigor at the podium — bringing pulse-pounding magic and emotion to Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique — Â  he…

  • CD Review: WILL HE LIKE ME? (Philip Chaffin)

    By Tony Frankel | December 3, 2018
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    I LIKE HIM I’ve had a few friends do cabarets in which they sing songs they’ll never get hired to do. Then there are cabarets which are song cycles — those which tell the performer’s life story through songs. (There have also been albums like that: Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides, Now comes to mind.) Philip…

  • Theater Preview: SOUTH PACIFIC (Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura)

    By Tony Frankel | December 3, 2018
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    SOME ENCHANTED EVENING INDEED At about 8 am on December 7, 1941, Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below on the United States Naval Air Base in the Territory of Hawaii in the  Pacific. At 8:10, a 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck of the…

  • CD Review: HYMN (Sarah Brightman)

    By Tony Frankel | November 30, 2018
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    TIME TO SAY GOODBYE She stands on the cover of her latest album, Hymn, like a diva who just came down from Sinai with the word of God, but instead of 10 Commandments, the British Broadway, West End, and ersatz-pop star Sarah Brightman is wearing a tight golden dress — not unlike Cecil B. deMille’s…

  • Review: COME FROM AWAY (North American Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | November 29, 2018
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    A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER This intimate ensemble piece may only have one stand-alone song, and it may not even be the best-crafted musical or have the emotional impact it could have, but it’s a cultural blessing when a show comes along that melts away the coldness of our polarized times by…

  • CD Review: MYSTERY SONATAS (Augustin Hadelich)

    By Tony Frankel | November 22, 2018
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    IT’S A MYSTERY, ALRIGHT As a reviewer, I have tried  to create a critical and theoretical paradigm for this type of contemporary music that alienates or distracts more  than enraptures, but I’ve become too bored and, well, alienated to care. And when the composition is seven repetitive, ceaseless, caterwauling, cat-screeching violin solos from David Lang, boredom becomes…

  • CD Review: SONDHEIM SUBLIME (Melissa Errico)

    By Tony Frankel | November 22, 2018
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    MELISSA SOLEMNIS Both Sondheim and sublimity are promised and delivered in Melissa Errico’s newest album. Her emotional, authentic, stirring, gracious, sophisticated interpretations of 15 Sondheim tunes are delivered with her delicate, dulcet, relaxed, pleasant, unpretentious, murmuring warble of a vibrato. Refinement, subtlety, and shadings are ever-present here, even in songs that are not always thought…

  • Art Exhibit Review: KING TUT: THE TREASURES OF THE GOLDEN PHARAOH (California Science Center)

    By Tony Frankel | November 20, 2018
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    THE PHARAOH-EST OF THEM ALL One of the most famous people who has ever existed isn’t well-known because of his life, but his death. Over 5,000 perfectly preserved artifacts were discovered along with this young king’s mummified remains by English archaeologist Howard Carter on November 4, 1922 in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. As the…

  • Music Review: CAMERON CARPENTER PLAYS SAINT-SAí‹NS (LA Phil; Roderick Cox, conductor)

    By Tony Frankel | November 20, 2018
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    COX ROCKS Sharing a program with organ superstar Cameron Carpenter, a most exciting young conductor graced Disney Hall last weekend with his triumphant debut. Roderick Cox from Macon, Georgia, is one of the very few black conductors world-wide; tall, statuesque, handsome and elegant, the 31-year-old has an air of sophistication swirling about him (aided, no…

  • Album Review: COR CHRISTMAS (Cally Banham)

    By Tony Frankel | November 19, 2018
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    YOU’LL FEEL IT TO THE COR At first glance, I assumed this album from the assistant principal oboe — and Solo English horn position — of the Saint Louis Symphony (SLS), Cally Banham, would be flat-out Muzak. Boy oh hautboy, was I ever wrong. Intimate, warm, plaintive, whimsical, fresh, and full of heart, this holiday…

  • CD Review: EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAIME (Original West End Recording)

    By Tony Frankel | November 17, 2018
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    DANCE PARTY AS MUSICAL SCORE Based on a 2011 BBC documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16,  this pop musical tells in two acts the story of  Jamie New, who dreams of being nothing more than a professional drag queen. Verbally taunted by a bully, but surrounded by a slew of loving classmates and a bestie, Jamie is…

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