Andrew Samonsky and Elizabeth Stanley in the national tour of The Bridges of Madison County. (Photo by Matthew Murphy) In 1992, everywhere you looked, people were reading Robert James Waller’s pulpy romance novel, The Bridges of Madison County. But Broadway composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown was not one of them. “I hadn’t read the novel. I’d seen about 15 minutes of the … [Read more...]
Composer celebrates Miami for Cleveland Orchestra’s 10th local anniversary
Avner Dorman. Take a break from your alfresco waterfront nosh someday, walk out to the shore and take a close look at the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. You’ll see that the small waves are, except for their size, exactly like the big ones, but all of them join together to make an unstoppable force. So says Avner Dorman, whose sonic realization of that fact —and its metaphor … [Read more...]
Composer Zwilich featured at Lynn New Music Festival
The life of a composer is something like that of a permanent student, says Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Which will come in very handy this week when the eminent American composer confers with some young practitioners of the craft at Lynn University’s New Music Festival. “I’m always learning. I think that’s one of the fun things about what I do,” Zwilich said last week. “I always … [Read more...]
Composer Runestad offers message of love in new work for Seraphic Fire
Rather than hire a babysitter when they had choir practice at night, the parents of Jake Runestad simply took their son along to rehearsals. “I would just run around in the choir room, and I think a lot of that music seeped into my brain,” says Runestad (pronounced RUN-uh-sted), speaking last week from his home in Minneapolis. “There was just a lot of music in my own … [Read more...]
Letter from Tanglewood: Concert honors American masters
All music was once new. But in America, ever since Serge Koussevitzky founded the Berkshire Music Center on July 8, 1940, in Lenox, Mass., composers and their new music found a home for experimentation and performance. Randall Thompson’s Alleluia was the inaugural piece that balmy summer afternoon at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in July and August … [Read more...]
Composer, PBO prepare for ‘Enemies’ world premiere
Ask composer Ben Moore about writing an “accessible” opera, and he’s not all that comfortable with the term. “I like to say melodic, lyrical and memorable. Those are good words,” Moore said. And for the people behind his newest project, Moore is the ideal person to bring to the operatic stage a musical language in which lyricism is the driving impetus. “I had known Ben for … [Read more...]
Composer, lead performers triumph in ‘Bridges,’ closing too soon
Increasingly, the Broadway stage has turned into a theme park, full of lightweight musicals anchored by spectacle and special effects. That is fine, when appropriate for the material — you wouldn’t want to see Aladdin without its magical bells and whistles, would you? — but the problem is that these shows crowd out the simpler, more artful, adult musicals. Musicals such as The … [Read more...]
Sheldon Harnick: At 90, legendary lyricist still looks forward
If Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick only wrote Fiddler on the Roof, he would have earned a major place in the annals of musical theater. In fact, he is credited with almost two dozen shows, often collaborating with composer Jerry Bock, on such titles as Fiorello!, She Loves Me, The Apple Tree and The Rothschilds. This is a milestone year for Harnick. Late last month, he … [Read more...]
Scrupulously beautiful Beethoven, intriguing Beamish from Elias Quartet
Sometimes the difference between a splendid performance of something and one that’s merely good comes down to an exercise of fundamentals. In the case of Britain’s Elias String Quartet, which played the Society of the Four Arts on Sunday afternoon, its exceptional performances had a lot to do with dynamic range. Seldom have I heard a performance with the kind of soft dynamics … [Read more...]
Composer Muhly offers ‘festive’ world premiere fanfare for PBSO on Monday
There are composers, and there are compositeurs, and there are Komponists, but few of them working today have anything like the buzz that surrounds young Nico Muhly. At just age 32, Muhly (whose Twitter page uses the Icelandic word for composer, tónlist), has the kind of monstrously busy, high-profile, engaged career that would be the envy of any artist, not just contemporary … [Read more...]