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Tony Frankel
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Music Review: DUDAMEL CONDUCTS SALONEN & SHOSTAKOVICH (Los Angeles Philharmonic)
A WONDERFUL WORLD PREMIERE BY SALONEN There’s nothing more wonderful than witnessing a world premiere and craving to hear it again immediately as an encore. Such was the experience with Esa-Pekka Salonen’s brand new 12-minute tone poem, composed this year. If the Symbolist Debussy and Modernist Salonen had a love child (Debusalonen!), it would be…
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Dance Review: GISELLE (Dada Masilo & The Dance Factory at The Wallis in Beverly Hills)
WILIS AT THE WALLIS First staged in 1841, Giselle is one of the oldest surviving ballets still in the international repertory, especially because the lead role is a showcase for the world’s leading prima ballerinas. Since its inception, the Romantic story ballet has had several revisions, but most companies follow Marius Petipa’s fin de siècle version. Now, South African…
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Theater Review: SAINT JOAN (Bedlam Theatre Company on tour at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica)
SAVING FAITH Even with a few blemishes, Bedlam’s revival of George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 masterpiece Saint Joan is an immersive and ultimately gratifying theatrical experience. The story, told in six scenes and an epilogue, concerns the last two years of Joan of Arc’s life (1429-31): arrival at court and the discovery of the dauphin; leadership of sieges…
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Los Angeles Music Review: MAHLER’S SONG OF THE EARTH (LA Phil)
FANTASIA 2018 Coming in at a clean 68 minutes, LA Phil’s production of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) was short and sweet with plenty of meat. But through Saturday night, you get far more than just an orchestral rendering, which was also a mournful offering from conductor Gutavo Dudamel to…
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Dance Preview: ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET (on tour at The Soraya in Northridge)
NOW YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SANTA FE Aspen Santa Fe Ballet (ASFB) celebrates the third year of its four-year residency at The Soraya with a program of three works that celebrate the company’s commitment to creating new contemporary dance. The entire evening, which plays only once — this Saturday April 7, 2018 at 8…
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CD Review: THE BAND’S VISIT (Original Broadway Cast Recording on Ghostlight Records)
WELL WORTH A VISIT Perhaps composer/lyricist David Yazbek (The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) was inspired by one of our best new playwrights, Itamar Moses, and his adaptation of the terrific 2007 film, The Band’s Visit. Perhaps his experimentation with harmony, melody, Spanish rhythms, and character development on Women on the Verge of a Nervous…
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Los Angeles Theater Feature: REPRISE RETURNS WITH NEW SEASON OF MUSICALS (Freud Playhouse)
REPRISE REPRISED It’s a strange sort of serendipity. Just when Musical Theatre West announced its final season after eight glorious years presenting rarely produced musicals in concert form (The Reiner Reading Series), along comes an organization that shuttered its doors years ago, but now returns. Reprise! Broadway’s Best, which presented nearly 50 productions of classic musicals between…
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Dance Review: ROMEO AND JULIET (Joffrey Ballet)
SUCH SWEET SORROW FOR THE WRONG REASONS It’s as if choreographer Krzysztof Pastor, director of the Polish National Ballet, gave Prokofiev the opportunity to protest Stalin’s tyranny that he never had in 1940. Pastor’s two-act treatment of the Russian’s celebrated three-act ballet carries no Renaissance finery, just real-world immediacy. Premiered by the Scottish Ballet in…
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Los Angeles Opera Review: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE / ORPHÉE ET EURYDICE (LA Opera)
DON’T MYTH OUT, OR DANCING THAT’S ORPH THE CHARTS LA Opera’s gorgeous production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (Orphée et Eurydice), featuring a welcome collaboration with the Staatsoper Hamburg and Chicago’s Lyric Opera (with the Hamburg and Joffrey Ballets), lives up to the hype, hope, and expectation it has generated since its announcement….
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Music Review: JOHN BEASLEY’S MONK’ESTRA & GERI ALLEN’S ERROL GARNER PROJECT (Disney Hall)
THE MAGICAL MONK LEFT HIS MARK Just when I thought nothing could touch Jason Moran’s recreation of Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall recording last November, along comes the great John Beasley with his take on the great jazz inventor. Beasley wasn’t trying to recreate Monk at Disney Hall last night; instead, he has come up with themes…
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CD Review: A SONG FOR YOU (Steve Tyrell)
A HOMOGENIZED SONG FOR YOU Look, it’s a matter of taste. Steve Tyrell began his career in the ’60s as a music supervisor for Scepter Records in the 1960s where his mentors were Burt Bacharach and Hal David (Tyrell even tagged fellow Texan B.J. Thomas to sing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” for Butch Cassidy…
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CD Review: ERNEST SHACKLETON LOVES ME (Original Cast Recording)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST I’m actually happy I didn’t see this musical live on stage. It makes for a wonderful original cast recording, but what seems like a giant heart on this CD, out recently from Broadway Records, seems like it would get awfully silly on stage (bookwriter Joe DiPietro can get like that)….
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CD Review: WORKING: A MUSICAL (Original London Cast Recording on Ghostlight Records)
THE MUSICAL THAT KEEPS ON WORKING Was 2017 really the European premiere of this oft-produced musical? Yep. 40 years since the Broadway opening of Working, and we’re just getting the Original London Cast recording. Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso’s 1978 musical — adapted from Studs Terkel’s 1974 nonfiction book about working-class Americans – moves between monologues…
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CD Review: LISZT — The Two Piano Concertos; 12 Transcendental Études (Alessandro Ambrosoli)
ANOTHER ÉTUDES TO ADD TO YOUR LISZT … COLLECTION, THAT IS Dynamic Records has just released an album of Liszt starring Italian pianist Alessandro Ambrosoli (b. 1969). Disc 1 is all 12 Études d’exécution transcendante; disc 2 are Liszt’s two piano concertos. Independent Italian record company Dynamic often releases live recordings, but that only applies to…
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Los Angeles Music Review: A TRIP TO THE MOON & THE PLANETS (Teddy Abrams and the LA Phil)
WHAT A TRIP Close on the heels of LA Phil’s behemoth production of Bernstein’s Mass comes another large-scale work with mind-boggling logistics. Co-commissioned with the London Symphony, A Trip to the Moon is Andrew Norman’s fanciful musical about a fin de siècle voyage to the Moon, whose inhabitants have trouble communicating with the Edwardian/Victorian astronomers…
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Los Angeles Music Review: THE OSCAR CONCERT (A.M.P.A.S. and LA Phil at Disney Hall)
HIGH SCORES FOR A CONCERT OF SCORES The logistics of putting together this terrific night, including an assemblage of Hollywood’s A-List composers and directors, must have been daunting. Indeed, so much work went into The Oscar Concert that it’s a shame it only played once. A co-production of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and…
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Los Angeles Music Review: DANIIL TRIFONOV & SERGEI BABAYAN (Two-Piano Recital at Disney Hall)
A WELL-MATCHED TEACHER AND STUDENT One of our greatest living pianists — if not the greatest — Daniil Trifonov (dan-EEL TREE-fon-ov) came to Disney Hall for a solo recital exactly two years ago. He played a gargantuan program lasting over 160 minutes. Included were the Brahms Chaconne in D minor for the Left Hand (after…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Boston Court in Pasadena)
A MODERNIZED STREETCAR Since struggle for power among the classes is one of the main themes in Tennessee Williams’ still-shocking A Streetcar Named Desire, it makes perfect sense that director Michael Michetti would choose to update the Pulitzer Prize winner for modern times. A Southern Belle schoolteacher, Blanche DuBois, arrives in New Orleans needing the…
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CD Review: FIORENTINO PLAYS LISZT: Selections (Sergio Fiorentino)
FIORENTINO PLAYS LISZT His astounding musical insights turned the most well-known works into a brand new revelation, and his ken of composers from Chopin to Bach to Schumann to Scriabin was nearly unparalleled. But when this amazing Italian pianist died suddenly and painlessly at his home in 1998 at the age of 69, his fame…
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CD Review: WEINBERG Violin Concerto KABALEVSKY Piano Fantasy & Cello Concerto No. 1 (Cornelius Meister & the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra)
COMPOSERS FORGOTTEN NO MORE Immediately accessible and thrilling, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO) — under the exciting leadership of its Principal Conductor and Artistic Director Cornelius Meister — and three young soloists bring us lesser-known works by equally lesser-known composers who are finally finding themselves, decades after their deaths, edging their way into…
Theater Review: ST. NICHOLAS (Black Button Eyes / City Lit / Chicago)
by Croydon Fernandes | July 3, 2026
in Chicago, TheaterFAST PAYOUT CASINOS USA 2026 — 5 BEST INSTANT WITHDRAWAL CASINOS RANKED
by Michael Carr | July 3, 2026
in ExtrasTheater Review: MEN OF SOUL (Black Ensemble Theater / Chicago)
by Mitchell Oldham | July 1, 2026
in Chicago, Theater
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