Music

KING ARTHUR DETHRONED If you’re a hardcore Henry Purcell fan, don’t expect anything resembling his original 1691 semi-opera, King Arthur, in Long Beach Opera’s production, which opened yesterday, Jan. 12, at the Beverly O’Neill. (A semi-opera is an unusual form of early opera that was half-sung and half-spoken.) Even in John Dryden’s libretto, there is…

A FOX FANTASY The Verdi Chorus is So Cal’s only choral group which centers around the dramatic and diverse music for an opera chorus. The Fox Singers, who constitute the professional ensemble of this wonderful chorus, are presenting, for one-night only on Sat. Feb. 1 at 7:30, a program devoted to all things fantastical. You…

A KRISTIN PRESENT FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE The supremely talented platinum blonde speaks in a small voice and possesses a very petite, yet bodacious body. When she sings, however, we get very unique, beautiful and extraordinarily powerful musical notes in perfect pitch. At 4’ 11”, this wacky and vulnerable powerhouse is the new amalgamated American…

A RINGER Erich Wolfgang Korngold is best known for his grand scores of the golden age of movie music – principally for such swashbucklers as The Seahawk,  Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse  and The Adventures of Robin Hood.  Andre Previn praised these great scores thus: “His wonderful melodies, orchestrated in the most gorgeous Richard Strauss-oriented manner, are a joy…

HANDEL TO PERFECTION There’s little to say about Handel’s Messiah that hasn’t already been said. That this great work has been a seasonal favorite for two hundred and fifty years, assures us it will be performed at least annually for at least the next two hundred and fifty, and beyond. The scale of the piece…

DIANNE TIME IS HERE She was the first singer to ever perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and she returns this Friday, Dec 2, 2019, to get your jazz going with a holiday confection of yuletide treats. Songbird Dianne Reeves is easily one of my favorite voices, and I’m astounded how many folks are not…

THE WHIMSICAL FLUTE How to illustrate such whimsy: Chaplin on a Seussian sleigh, perhaps, belting an aria from Metropolis into the bowels of Dante’s Inferno. That’s as succinctly I can describe the magic awaiting audiences this holiday season in LA Opera’s dazzling production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte). The fact that…

HERE COMES L.A.’S COLOSSAL CHORALE WITH CHRISTMAS CHORAL CONCERTS AND CAROLS With the indefatigable Energizer Bunny of conducting, Grant Gershon, at the helm, Los Angeles Master Chorale (LAMC) can easily be labeled one of the best choirs on earth, and you have a chance to see four separate holiday programs this year at Walt Disney…

GERALD CLAYTON SOLOS AT LACC ONE NIGHT ONLY There are few times in life that one witnesses an artist and knows immediately that something is different. I can even catch it on a recording. That specialness that can’t be replicated by imitation or study. Well, to quote Thelonius Monk: “Know it when you hear it.”…

GARRIFIC It’s been almost a half-century since Garrick Ohlsson won the International Frédéric Chopin Competition in Warsaw, so I attended his recital at The Wallis in Beverly Hills last Friday with a bit of trepidation. And seeing his large frame in person, I wondered at first that he should be hauling the piano not playing…

LIVE MUSIC IS ALWAYS SUSTENANCE I’m happy to report that Andrew Norman’s Sustain, an LA Phil centennial commission that premiered last year — and saw a second showing last weekend at Disney Hall — is far more agreeable than much of the atmospheric “new” music these days, and a much more promising avenue for this…

MAGIC CAN STRIKE THRICE IN THE SAME PLACE In 2013, a new production of  The Magic Flute from Berlin’s Komische Oper became a sell-out sensation, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera. In 2016, it returned just as magical as it was the first time. Now, it returns to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion starting Saturday, November 16,…

BELL, BAX, BACH: BEAUTIFUL, BRILLIANT, BREATHTAKING I first saw Italian pianist Alessio Bax five years ago when he made his Los Angeles premiere playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with the L.A. Chamber Orchestra. I remember thinking he has all the right moves but had yet to incorporate personality into his work. While he demonstrated…

CAMARENA HAS BELLAS ARTES IN HIS SOUL When I was 19, a friend asked if I’d like to drive to San Francisco from L.A. to hear Luciano Pavarotti in recital. Being a musical theater buff, it took quite a bit of convincing to get me into anything that smacked of opera, especially 400 miles away….