By Dennis D. Rooney A Ukrainian native now residing in Montréal, Québec, Serhiy Salov’s shoulder-length hair and all-black dress bore more than a casual resemblance to Franz Liszt. But that virtuoso pianist composer’s music was not on the program of Mozart and Debussy that Salov played at the Mainly Mozart Festival XXIV on June 11 at the Alhambra Ballroom in Coral Gables’s … [Read more...]
Morikami to teach traditional Japanese instruments at summer camp
Since the opening of Japan to the West in 1868, the residents of that island nation arguably have sought more often to achieve excellence in Western styles of music instead of their own indigenous sonic heritage. But native Japanese music remains an important part of the culture, and this month, the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in western Delray Beach will bring it … [Read more...]
In Detroit, Wynton Marsalis’s best piece
DETROIT — The compositions of Wynton Marsalis now extend to a substantial catalog in jazz and classical genres that includes many works for jazz ensembles, oratorios (Blood on the Fields, All Rise), a string quartet, sacred works (In This House, The Abyssinian Mass), numerous film and dance scores and four symphonies. This is a hugely impressive accomplishment, and the bulk … [Read more...]
Core Ensemble explores gender, mystery of ‘Mona Lisa’
Write about the Mona Lisa, and chances are some variation of the word “enigma” will be pulled out of your authorial toolbox. Although Leonardo da Vinci probably didn’t mean to make Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini) mysterious when he painted the cloth merchant’s wife in 1503, it has always struck viewers that way, and no doubt that has helped encourage speculation about who … [Read more...]
Heart’s Ann Wilson brings solo show to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce
Ann Wilson’s soaring soprano was one of the voices that defined rock music through the 1970s, as her Seattle-spawned band Heart pre-dated that city’s heralded grunge movement by nearly two decades. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, Heart’s ’70s hits included “Crazy On You,?” “Magic Man,” “Barracuda,” “Heartless,” “Dog & Butterfly,” and “Straight On,” … [Read more...]
10-piano tribute to Rand impressive but underwhelming
Interpreting a piece of writing through music without going through the medium of the theater is a tricky thing to do: How do you get across what the book said to you? And maybe it’s even trickier if you try to express it with 10 pianos. Then again, maybe not. At the New World Center on May 13, pianist and entrepreneur Mia Vassilev and nine of her fellow Miami Piano … [Read more...]
New Fort Lauderdale opera company launches Saturday
By Robert Croan It isn’t every day that three friends get together over a glass of wine and decide to start a new opera company in Broward County. Even less often do they go through with the project, apply for funding and get some excellent young singers to follow through with them. But that’s what happened one evening in the summer of 2016, when Jack Gardner, a … [Read more...]
Muse brings powerful set to Perfect Vodka
British trio Muse has been a rarity since emerging from Teignmouth, England, in 1994 — and not just because they’ve kept the same personnel for 23 years. That country’s creative popular music influence from the 1960s and 1970s (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, The Police, etc.) had previously been … [Read more...]
Strong second cast in Verdi’s ‘Ballo’ closes FGO season
By Robert Croan Antonio Somma’s libretto for Verdi’s A Masked Ball was originally based on the assassination in 1792 of Swedish King Gustav III. The political situation in Europe in the 1850s, however, was too volatile for the censors to pass on such a sensitive subject, so by the time the opera had its premiere in Rome in 1859, the locale had been moved from Sweden to … [Read more...]
Violinist Gourdjia opens Mainly Mozart Festival with high style, elegance
One of the joys associated with the Mainly Mozart Festival, now in its 24th season in Coral Gables, is that it introduces audiences to rising players they are unlikely to have heard before. This past Sunday, for the festival’s opening, it was the young Russian-born violinist Liana Gourdjia, who studied in Moscow, the Cleveland Institute and Indiana University, and now lives … [Read more...]