Of all the jobs that computer-related technology has caused to disappear, one other may soon need to be added to the list: Page turner. Concertgoers are used to seeing a turner come on stage, trailing the pianist, then sit unobtrusively to his or her left, and rise to turn the pages of the music when the time comes. It’s a job that is small but vital for musical continuity, … [Read more...]
Lisitsa, Lynn Philharmonia stand out at Boca fest
Last week, the Boca Raton Symphonia gave a respectable performance at the Festival of the Arts Boca 2012 of the soundtrack for Casablanca as it accompanied a well-attended screening of the movie. But the Lynn Philharmonia, which appeared Wednesday with the Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, is a much larger orchestra, and has this year performed the First Symphony of … [Read more...]
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra shows why jazz matters
When you think about it, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is essentially the only ensemble in the entire country quite like it, a group whose purpose is to keep a flame for the benefit of the American people and occasionally stoke it with fresh wood. There are many hundreds of university-based jazz bands, and most of the major symphonic orchestras do plenty of outreach at … [Read more...]
‘Florencia’ really should be on PBO mainstage
The Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists troupe wrapped its One Opera in One Hour season Friday night with an abridged version of Mexican composer Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas. And it showed that this is an opera that really should be on the mainstage here. That’s not because Catán’s score is a great one: Even cut to an hour, it never goes anywhere. It just sits and … [Read more...]
Handsome ‘Romeo’ largely successful at PB Opera
Palm Beach Opera was working out some kinks Friday night as it tried on the theatrical clothes of a new production, but in the end, it achieved a satisfying and reasonably compelling telling of a classic love story. Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, a tuneful, sentimental example of French Romantic opera at its most endearing, is the third production in the West Palm … [Read more...]
Cliburn medalist Zhang sets big challenges for himself
He is young and only at the beginning of his career, but Haochen Zhang already has a firm grasp on how to build a good concert program. Zhang, the gold medalist at the last Van Cliburn Competition in 2009, is ending his concert tonight at the Kravis Center with Islamey, Mili Balakirev’s corker of a showpiece, and one favored by an older generation of pianists. It doesn’t have … [Read more...]
Principals make FGO’s ‘Rigoletto’ do justice to Verdi
Florida Grand Opera’s third production of the season, Verdi’s Rigoletto, closes tonight at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, and if you can catch it before it leaves, you’ll catch a really fine operatic evening, and see a young soprano on her way up. FGO produced this 1851 Verdi classic only six years ago, and the current mounting is the ninth in the company’s … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire’s astonishing Bach not to be missed
Even if Seraphic Fire does not win either of the Grammy Awards it is being considered for Sunday, the performances the concert choir is giving this week of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor are nothing less than a milestone in South Florida culture. Not everything was perfect Friday night at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale for the first of the three performances of the Mass, … [Read more...]
Song of destiny? Seraphic Fire awaits Grammy results
By the time the last notes of J.S. Bach’s great B minor Mass have sounded at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton on Sunday afternoon, the audience will know whether it has been listening to a Grammy-winning ensemble. Seraphic Fire, a concert choir founded 10 years ago in South Miami, is one of the few local classical ensembles to have been honored with Grammy nods. … [Read more...]
Pianist Cohen most impressive in Four Arts recital
One of the best versions of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations I’ve ever heard came courtesy of a YouTube video featuring a German cellist whom I’d never heard of, and whose career turned out to be largely in academia. The classical music world has many excellent players like that, artists who have low public profiles but a stellar record of accomplishment. That’s one of the … [Read more...]