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Music
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Concert Review: LISE DAVIDSEN & FREDDIE DE TOMMASO (BroadStage, Santa Monica)
TWO VOICES, ONE VOLTAGE An evening of operatic power finds its charge in connection, not just scale BroadStage does not often present evenings of this ambition. A sold-out house, a freelance orchestra under Iván López Reynoso, and two singers at or near the summit of their respective careers: Lise Davidsen, the Norwegian soprano who has…
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Opera Review: GILGAMESH: THE OPERA (Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts)
EPIC SOURCE, EPIC SCORE, EPIC PRODUCTION An ambitious new opera that struggles to connect its spectacle to a coherent narrative Want to know the quickest way to make me hesitate seeing a new musical? Append “: The Musical” to the title. So, here we have Gilgamesh: The Opera (which seems oblivious to at least seven…
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Music Review: LANG LANG PLAYS BEETHOVEN (Pacific Symphony)
FATE AND THE NEW WORLD Beethoven’s Egmont Overture was still settling into the air above Segerstrom Concert Hall when it became clear that Monday evening March 23 was going to demand more than the usual pleasant surrender to familiar music competently played. Carl St.Clair opened the Pacific Symphony’s program with the Egmont, followed by Dvorak’s…
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QUINCY’S WORLD: THE NEW FOUNDING FATHER OF AMERICAN MUSIC (MUSE/IQUE at The Wallis)
A THRILLER OF A CONCERT MUSE/IQUE’s vibrant tribute traces the extraordinary career of one of America’s greatest musical innovators Quincy Jones changed the face of music as a bold, brave, multi-hyphenate music mogul whose storied legacy is unlike anyone else’s—as a record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, composer, arranger, and cultural force. Over a career spanning more…
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GUITAR PICKUPS: THE TINY PARTS THAT GIVE YOUR GUITAR ITS VOICE
The first thing that a person pays attention to when playing electric guitar is, more often than not, the shape of the body, the brand or the amplifier. However, with experienced players, the true magic is often something much smaller, such as guitar pickups. These little pieces rest in the silence of the strings, though…
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Concert Review: FROM MOZART TO MAHLER (Pacific Symphony)
INTIMACY AND ENORMITY: MOZART AND MAHLER IN COSTA MESA Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, is a peculiar piece to a classical program. It omits oboes entirely, replacing them with clarinets for a softer, more inward blend, and there are no trumpets or drums at all, no means of making a…
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Opera Review: AKHNATEN (LA Opera)
STILL THE PHARAOH-EST OF THEM ALL, AKHNATEN STUNS AT LA OPERA An intellectually rigorous, visually arresting production that embraces the opera’s challenges rather than disguising them John Holiday as Akhnaten There is a structural difficulty at the heart of Akhnaten that admiration alone cannot resolve—although admiration at last night’s opening at The Chandler is never…
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Music Review: AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH PATTI AUSTIN (City Winery / New York City)
SAVING MONEY, LOSING MAGIC A great voice deserves live accompaniment A talented, long-careered singer put on a long show that was very long on talk. The audience at City Winery NYC can’t say that Patti Austin didn’t give them a heads-up. Unlike most acts, hers didn’t start with a burst of song. She made a…
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Concert Review: DUDAMEL CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN AND LORENZ (LA Phil / Disney Hall)
THREE THEORIES OF WITNESS At Disney Hall with the LA Phil on February 12, Ricardo Lorenz’s Humboldt’s Nature opened the evening by staking out a proposition: that orchestral music can think, not merely illustrate. The piece follows Humboldt’s intellectual life not as biography but as cognitive event, a consciousness moving through accumulated observation toward something…
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Concert Preview: MISSA SOLEMNIS (Gustavo Dudamel and The LA Phil at Disney Hall)
Beethoven’s towering Missa Solemnis arrives at Disney Hall for a rare, monumental performance. Dudamel leads a massive musical and choral force in one of Beethoven’s most demanding—and least-heard—masterworks. “From the heart—may it go further to the heart.” That’s what Ludwig van Beethoven inscribed on the score of his Missa Solemnis, a work he labored over for four years—the…
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Music Review: COME SUNDAY: THE SACRED WORKS OF DUKE ELLINGTON (Jazz at Lincoln Center / New York City)
TAKE THE “A” TO AMEN Luther S. Allison reimagines Ellington’s sacred music with power, passion, and joyful reverence. A mix of jubilation and reverence was, appropriately, projected in a satisfying concert at the end of January in The Appel Room, one of the performance spaces of Jazz at Lincoln Center at Columbus Circle. To get…
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Music Review: WILD UP: THE GREAT LEARNING (The Broad)
EXPERIMENTAL SOUND MEETS MUSEUM SPACE — WITH MIXED RESULTS A well-intentioned immersion in Cardew’s radical score undone by acoustics, logistics, and audience reality On Saturday February 7, Wild Up performed The Great Learning, Paragraphs 2 and 7 by radical English composer Cornelius Cardew inside The Broad, in conjunction with the exhibition Robert Therrien: This is…
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Concert Review: THE DOVER QUARTET (Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall)
TRADITIONS IN CONVERSATION From Mendelssohn to Chickasaw works, a program unified by thoughtful playing The Dover Quartet — Joel Link, Bryan Lee, violins; Julianne Lee, viola; and Camden Shaw, cello) — is small but mighty. Originally formed at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in 2008, they are one of the greatest quartets you will ever…
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WHY CLASSICAL MUSIC NEEDS BETTER BUSINESS MINDS NOW MORE THAN EVER
If you spend time around classical music, you already know how much talent fills this world. There are gifted players, passionate singers, dedicated conductors, and audiences who love this art with their whole hearts. Still, if you look behind the curtain, you start to notice something else. Many of the challenges facing classical music today…
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Concert Review: BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA (Carnegie Hall)
Budapest Festival Orchestra took the audience around the world and back in time during their February 6 concert at Carnegie Hall. They also proved themselves capable of choral work, as they performed the Carnegie Hall premiere of the chorus version of Arvo Pärt’s Summa. From the modernist and minimalist Estonian, Pärt, the orchestra went to…
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Music Review: THE LOVESTRUCK BALLADEERS (Birdland Theater)
A POEM IN PRAISE OF THE LOVESTRUCK BALLADEERS There’s a super group that gets plenty of cheers:They’re called The Lovestruck Balladeers.They had a Birdland three-night gig.And the repertoire was pretty darn big.They play vintage music – originals, too.One cute highlight’s a song that’s called “Looking for You.”And this delight just happens to beThe title tune…
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Highly Recommended Concert: MARTIN CHALIFOUR & FRIENDS: THE ART OF CHAMBER MUSIC (The Music Guild at St. Alban’s, Westwood)
CHAMBER MUSIC IN AN IDEAL SETTING Glorious acoustics, a resonant space, and musicians who know how to listen to one another. There are few places in Los Angeles better suited to chamber music than St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, whose warm, luminous acoustics allow strings to bloom and piano lines to resonate without ever turning brittle….
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Concert Preview: THREADS OF GOLD—DOLLY PARTON GOES SYMPHONIC (National Tour)
THREADS OF GOLD—DOLLY PARTON GOES SYMPHONIC Her songs get the orchestral treatment in a cross-country concert experience Dolly Parton has never been one for half measures. When she says the threads of her life run through her songs, she means it. That idea is taken literally with Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs in Symphony, a…
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LICENSED BACKGROUND MUSIC: THE BUSINESS ADVANTAGE
Music influences perceptions and shapes moods. Choosing appropriate background music is not an afterthought for businesses. It seems like a good plan, but what insights do they have that we might be missing? Incorporating licensed music gives them a competitive edge because they can set the tone, mood, and all that positive experience for their…
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HOW THE ORDER OF GUITAR STRINGS AFFECTS YOUR PLAYING
Many people play the guitar as a creative outlet—a way to relax, express themselves, and enjoy making music. Understanding how the order of guitar strings relates to playing technique reveals both the technical skills involved and the joy of mastering the instrument. This blog will explore how string arrangement shapes sound, technique, and overall performance….
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