My top pick is:

JAZZ:  STAY – Julieta Eugenio – Self-Released

Argentinian saxophonist Julieta Eugenio is joined by drummer Jonathan Barber and bassist Matt Dwonszyk on this beautiful album that feels like it could have been recorded 60 years ago, yet feels of our time in equal measure. Leo Genovese plays piano on two tracks.

Nine of the ten tracks on this album are originals. The sole cover is of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady. (An amazing rendition of that song!) 

There are certain album that you listen to that help you tune out the world and allow you to enter the world of the musicians so thoroughly that their journey becomes your journey. Stay is that kind of album.

Not having heard her before, I also listened to her 2022 album, Jump, with the same musicians. It’s another album that is old school and new simultaneously. Eugenie is a major talent.

Here’s the rest of New In Music This Week: March 29th:

CLASSICAL: BACH: VIOLIN CONCERTOS – Leonidas Kavakos – Sony Classical

This is Kavakos’ second album of music by Bach (the first was Sei Solo which found him playing Bach’s partitas and sonatas for violin.) Here he performs the violin concerti in D Minor, A Minor, E Major, G Minor and the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major.

As one would expect from Kavakos, this playing is exquisite. He is joined by the Apollon Ensemble.

On the website for the album, Kavakos says of Bach’s slow movements that they, “carry us to the place where every human soul would love to be.” I wholeheartedly agree, particulary the way Kavakos plays this music.

CLASSICAL:  RACHMANINOFF FOR TWO – Daniil Trifonov/Sergei Babayan – Deutsche Grammophon

Readers of Cultural Attaché know how much I love Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music. So, it’s inevitable that this album of music arranged for two pianos and played by Trifonov and Babayan is going to register.

And it did. Strongly. The album opens with the third movement of the composer’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, a lushly romantic part of the symphony. That is followed by Suite No. 2 for 2 Pianos, Op. 17 and Suite No. 1 for 2 Pianos, Op. 5. Closing out this wonderful recording is the two-piano version of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.

85 minutes of music that speeds by in an instant. I guess I’ll just have to listen to it again.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL:  SYMPHONIES OF MOTHER AND CHILD – Nova Pon & Turning Point Ensemble – Redshift Records

This was my first introduction to Canadian composer Nova Pon’s work. The opening track, World Within, serves as a counterpoint to the five-movement title work. It’s filled with brass and a propulsive energy that is different than what follows.

Symphonies of Mother and Child is a 40-minute work for a 15-member chamber orchestra. It’s a fascinating work that seems to fully straddle the worlds of minimalism and romanticism at the same time. (It also has a clever reference to itsy Bitsy Spider built into the second movement.)

Owen Underhill leads the Turning Point Ensemble in this recording. After hearing this recording, I will be exploring more of Nova Pon’s work.

JAZZ:  MUSIC FOR YOUR SOUL – Giuseppe Cucchiara Quartet – Fresh Sound Records

Bassist/composer Cucchiara leads his quartet that includes Adam Arruda on drums, Chris McCarthy on piano and Ben Solomon on tenor sax. He’s also the composer of 7 of the  tracks on this album. (Drummer Arruda is the composer, as you would expect, on the track Drum Interlude).

This is an album that swings when it wants to. Gets melancholy when it needs to. Is joyful when you want it to. In other words, it covers all aspects of your soul.

This, his second album, means we have a very talented musician and composer carving out his place in the music scene. I, for one, am looking forward to what the future brings for Cucchiara.

JAZZ:  LÉ NO – Arnaud Dolmen & Léonardo Montana – Quai son Records & Samana Production

Though drummer Dolmen is an award-winning musician, this was the first time I’ve heard his work. He’s paired here with pianist Montana. Both men provide vocals to this surprising and wonderful album.

What they share, beyond an obvious passion for music, is the tiny island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Montana was born in Bolivia, was adopted and as a teenager made his way 

to Guadeloupe.  He was immediately intrigued by a big drum called Gwoka.

The music these two men have created on this album sounds like it must involve more than just two musicians. The music is rich, layered, enjoyable, rhythmic and ultimately, magical. I fell immediately in love with Lé No.

JAZZ:  EVEN ODDS – Dan Weiss – Cygnus Recordings

Here’s an intriguing idea for an album. Half the songs are fully composed before recording. The other dozen tracks began their lives as “brief drum exercises or grooves” recorded by drummer Dan Weiss. Then his fellow musicians, pianist Matt Mitchell and saxophonist Miguel Zenón individually composed their own improvisations to accompany these grooves.

The end result is an album that surprises with each of the 18 tracks being really interesting. Amongst my favorites are the emotional The Children of Uvalde, Five to Nine and Peculiar Pathos of Self Importance.

MUSICALS:  WHITE GIRL IN DANGER: A NEW MUSICAL – Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording – Yellow Sound Label

Michael R. Jackson, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner for A Strange Loop, followed up that show with White Girl in Danger last year.  The show takes place in the town of Allwhite. The “drama” of their lives is front and center. Whereas the Blackgrounds have their lives relegated to those of police brutality and slavery. 

Enter Keesha Gibbs who refused to remain in the Blackground and takes her place saying, “I will fight back.” But can she handle the heat (I don’t mean police, btw) that the spotlight inevitably comes with? 

The songs are catchy and well-performed. Though the show received mixed reviews, this recording makes a convincing argument for more exploration with White Girl in Danger. If the show is half as much fun as the recording, bring it on!

Just a side note, I listened to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter while writing New In Music This Week: March 29^th and thoroughly enjoyed it.

That’s it for New In Music This Week: March 29^th.

Enjoy the music!

Enjoy the weekend!

Main Photo: Part of the album cover for Julieta Eugenio’s Stay

The post New In Music This Week: March 29th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

On May 7th, Ólafsson will begin the final performances of this album at the Symphony Center in Chicago. This is followed by three additional performances in San Francisco (May 9th), Los Angeles (May 10th) and Santa Barbara (May 11th). He does not intend to perform this program again anywhere in the world.

A week before Ólafsson calls it a wrap on this project, we spoke about this program, his passion for Mozart and Bach and whether music being written today will be rediscovered the way he rediscovered Galuppi’s Piano Sonata No. 9 in F Minor or Cimarosa’s Sonata No. 55 in A Minor for Mozart & Contemporaries.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

In these final four concerts you will play an entire album from start to finish and ask the audience not to applaud. As if they are listening to the album live in front of them. What’s the logic behind that and how has your relationship to this work that was released almost two years ago evolved since that time? 

At this point, I don’t think of it as Mozart and Contemporaries, but rather Wolfie and Co. I love this program and those are actually the very last concerts I will ever play this anywhere. It’s just the end of a big project for me I’ve played throughout the whole world. The idea with the programing and the way it works from the first piece to the last, I ask people to go into this state of mind with me and allow one piece to speak to the other and merge into the next; melt together almost. It’s because I love to think of my albums and recital programs as a kind of a collage.

I’ve actually never in my life played an album like that from beginning to end without changing anything. When I was doing my Bach album, my Rameau album, my other albums, I’m usually playing one half the album with some sort of a compilation I create, and then I’ll do something completely different in the second half. But the Mozart, one I tried that. I couldn’t find what to erase from this program. It is really going from lights into the shadow. There’s a lot of playfulness and a playful exchange between Mozart and the other composers in the first part of the program. Then as it progresses, it gets darker and darker and more and more difficult, but also more romantic and denser and in a way greater.

You talk about how it gets darker and darker, but when you get to Liszt transcription of the Ave verum corpus at the end, it’s just heavenly. 

These are maybe the greatest 3 minutes ever composed. Mozart wrote this in an afternoon for a friend who was celebrating Corpus Christi somewhere in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Austria. He just threw it together in one afternoon. The funny thing about Mozart is that he was always so annoyed when people claimed that he had a divine sort of talent. He always maintained that he worked harder than everybody else. And that is true. Consensus said that he probably killed himself with overwork. But at the same time, however much you choose to work or spend time on your art, you can’t just then write Ave verum corpus once you passed your 100,000 hours. It doesn’t happen like that. That’s what makes Mozart Mozart.

31 years ago when you were tackling the Sonata in C Major at the age of eight, I have a feeling you didn’t quite think of him in such high regard.

I had a troubled relationship with Mozart. As I did with Bach, which is very funny because those are my two favorite composers to play. I still think they’re the most difficult ones to play, but maybe that’s why I love them and maybe that’s why I hated them when I was eight. [Mozart] was the first composer that made me realize that nothing is good enough from the piano when you play music with that status at that level. Any nuance has to almost match the nuance of the composition. That is, in itself, just an impossible task. You just can’t expect to reach that height of piano playing. No one will. But that’s somehow what Mozart seems to demand.

If you could go back in time or if you could bring to present day Mozart and Bach, what would you most want to know about why they wrote the way they did or about their work or who they were?

Good question. It’s an impossible question, of course. First of all, I would just try to go and hear them play. Hopefully the same music on two consecutive nights to get confirmation for what I’m absolutely certain is true. That they would never repeat themselves and play, let’s say the Goldberg Variations, twice the same or the same mindset. I’m not just talking about ornamentation or little things like that. I’m talking about actual tempos. I’m talking about phrasing and dynamics and the detail within the detail.

Second of all, I would just go up to them and ask them, How can I help you? Can I do your laundry? Do you need money? Can I just do something for you? Because those guys, they didn’t enjoy what they should have enjoyed in their life. They had a very difficult life when they had to work more than we probably understand and comprehend today. 

I would probably also ask Mozart what he wanted from his instrument because the instrument was changing so much. I feel in the C Minor Sonata, which is the biggest keyboard sonata and one of the biggest pieces he ever wrote in a way keyboard, I would ask him, are you content with the instrument? He seems to me to be, in the late works, pushing the boundaries of the instrument of the piano or whatever his instrument was at his disposal. He’s pushing it so far. I’d love his thoughts about the pros and cons of the piano of the day and how he would ideally have the piano developed.

If I would be back in Bach’s day, I would like to hear him play on the harpsichord. I would really want to hear him play the organ and hear how he would register the organ just to get a sense for his colors and what he would be going for. Then I would go back in the time machine and travel to 2023 and maybe try to recreate some of that on the on the piano, because I think the piano has that potential. But if I could bring a piano with me back in time to those guys, I think that would be the best present they would ever receive without being able to say that. But I think they would love the potential of it, the polyphony in the way you can differentiate the different voices.

On Mozart and Contemporaries I love that you introduce us to composers we probably have never heard of before. As somebody who believes that we’re in a golden age of classical music, do you think that in 100 or 200 years from now, some of the music that might get discarded presently can be rediscovered and will be rediscovered?

There’s sadly so much music being written today that deserves a platform that doesn’t get it for very different reasons. But that could be said about almost anything in the world presently, because we have never had anything like the kind of prosperity that we have today. Never before have so many people been able to do something that actually interests them out of passion. We’re not having a golden age only for classical music, but in terms of humanity the fact that people can develop, devote their time to doing something beautiful by necessity.

But a lot of that is unfortunately going to be forgotten and never heard. And that’s going to be difficult for people to admit. Things are probably going to be even more crowded or prosperous. So to have any time or any reason to seek out unknown people from the 21st century? I don’t know. It’s sort of sad, but it’s also very beautiful, because the process is, in the end, what matters. 

In 2017, you did a rapid fire interview for for a Deutsche Gramophone’s YouTube channel. You were asked to choose between original and remix. Your answer was original. Now you have other artists who are taking your work from From Afar and they are now reworking it. Has your perspective changed on original versus remix?

I think that I like to do the remakes myself. Even as a pianist, you’re kind of remixing if you’re an interpretive musician and you take your thing seriously. Rachmaninoff played Chopin – he’s effectively remixing it. It changes everything almost in the dynamics and he does it so freely. So if you just take it on a sort of broader scale, we are all remixers here in the classical world.

But I think I’ve come to appreciate this process of reversing the creative process, my creative process, which is to take the works of others and try to lend them my meaning and connect with my world and my experiences and bring that to the audience. Then to take art to the studio and then to actually take that and give that material to the composer. It’s basically reversing the creative process. Giving them my recordings or just prolonging the chain of creativity. It’s very interesting. It’s a little bit humbling for me to to do it because you have to just let loose and let go of your creations, which are my recordings, which are very dear to me and matter to me very much. That’s an interesting process for me. I can experiment in letting go of my ego. 

I feel like this is the 21st century answer to transcriptions. 

Yeah, you could say that. Usually it’s people that I’m taken with one way or another. It’s something about them that strikes me as interesting and brilliant. We’ve just had two new reworks released just in the last weeks: an amazingly beautiful lullaby by Icelandic singer Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir. She’s just written a lullaby with an Icelandic text for her young newborn son on top of material from Brahms’s Intermezzo Opus 116, Number Four, which is my favorite intermezzo. It’s my recording from my From Afar album. I think it’s magically beautiful. I’m absolutely in love with it. Of course, I’m very fortunate that anyone has an interest to do something like this with my material. So I’m going to continue with it.

A lot of people are eagerly anticipating your Goldberg Variations which I believe is coming down the pike sometime in the not-too-distant future. We’ve already talked about how important Bach is to you. He was asked about playing a musical instrument and he said, “There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right moment. The instrument plays itself.” That strikes me as a gross oversimplification of playing music, but is there any part of what Bach said that you could agree with, or is there truly something remarkable about playing music that you would say in response to him? 

You have to remember this is the greatest composer in the history of music. So for him the comparison between what I do, which is to play the music, and what he also did, which is to write the music and come up with the St. Matthew Passion. I can agree with him that in comparison what I do is pretty feeble. It’s not incredible, actually. Having said that, I actually think some of my favorite musicians of today are not necessarily composers, but rather some of the greatest performers alive who can bring new life to the music. Which can be more original than a new composition by a composer who doesn’t have a strikingly interesting point of view.

I agree with Bach. In his case that’s true. I love people who manage to bring something here and now. I would be interested to hear if this was actually what Bach thought. Of course, it would have been difficult to be him because he also suffered from lack of recognition. Here is history’s greatest, not even composer, I think greatest artist, everyone included, in my opinion. And yet he only had about four books published in his whole lifetime. He didn’t have any money. Much of his writing that we have is all about complaining about lack of salary or something like that. Who knows, maybe he had an off day. But I also believe he’s right. Compare those two facets of his life. Playing the music is nothing compared to writing it in his case.

I must say that some of my favorite performers in history approached the music from a composer’s standpoint. They’re so free with the music because they almost go to the source of most of the music. Seems to me that they almost understand how the music came to be and can then recreate it as if they had almost composed it. Rachmaninoff playing Chopin. This, I think, is the most authentic Chopin you can hear. But it’s also the one that strays, for the most part, furthest away from the score in terms of dynamics, in terms of so many things. He’s not afraid of changing things. He recomposed it like a rework almost, but it’s still so authentic. But it is a meeting between Rachmaninoff and Chopin. 

Ask John Adams or Thomas Adés if they always predicted everything. I don’t think the answer is going to be yes. I think that composer can very well not be aware of certain things about the music. The music has its own life somehow. It’s just like your children. I think for composers,you know your child better than everybody. You created it. It’s in your DNA. But the child still has facets that you don’t know and that will always be the case. 

To see the full interview with Víkingur Ólafsson, please go here.

All photos of Víkingur Ólafsson: ©Ari Magg/Courtesy Harrison Parrott

The post Bo23: Víkingur Ólafsson And the Final Four appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

On Sunday, November 12th, McVinnie will perform a recital on both the organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the piano. That concert will feature works by Johann Sebastian Bach, inti Figgis-Vizueta, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly and Gabriella Smith.

On Tuesday, November 14th, McVinnie will give the world premiere performance of Samuel Adams’ Eden Interstates as part of the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series. This concert is also at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

On Friday, November 17th and Saturday, November 18th, he joins the San Francisco Symphony where he will perform Smith’s Breathing Forests. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts those concerts.

With an upcoming repertoire that covers over three centuries of music, McVinnie and I had plenty to talk about when we spoke on Halloween. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with McVinnie, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Robert Schumann is quoted as having said about the organ, “No other instrument takes such an immediate revenge on sloppiness in composition and playing.” As a performer, how do you determine what music won’t allow sloppiness from you and does not represent sloppiness from a composer?

The organ had its zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries when music was all about counterpoint. That was the high point of that style of music making and there’s a kind of utopian ideal to counterpoint that always appealed to me. You have music made up of voices and the music works on these horizontal axes and the voices interact to create the piece of music, and there’s absolute equality of importance. You could play a Bach figure, for instance, and you take out one note and the whole artifice of the expedition falls apart. The organ’s an ideal instrument for counterpoint. You have this incredibly uniform quality to the sound across the range so you can hear every voice as clearly as the other.

That’s the compositional side. From the playing side there’s really nowhere to hide on the organ. Even if you think acoustics will cover you up, you’re perhaps on the wrong track there.

These concerts that you’re doing with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and with the San Francisco Symphony are a part of the California Festival, which is showcasing works by composers primarily written within the last five years. How do you know if most of the recent compositions that would qualify for inclusion in this festival – whether or not they are being performed by you or anyone else – represent the future you would like to see in contemporary classical music?

The composer whose work I’ve loved getting to know most recently is Gabriella Smith. Her music has this incredible immediacy to it. Her music hits a very deep note in how I think about what music should be and how immediate and how accessible music should be to everyone. 

Her work is predominantly preoccupied with the climate crisis. Humanity and the arts have been going hand-in-hand since the year dot. Gabriella has always been very keen that her music is a call to arms, really, and a way of making these issues that we’re faced with very prescient and very immediate.

This organ concerto I’m playing, Breathing Forests, is about the life cycle of a forest. It’s in three contiguous movements. Grow, Breathe and Burn are the three movement’s names. It’s about the natural lifecycle of the forest and forest fire is a natural part of what happens. This is a commentary on when fire becomes an unnatural part. I can think of no better way than to ignite imagination in listener and performer alike.

You gave the world premiere in February a year ago with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The climate crisis has gotten worse since then. As somebody who cares about the environment and who cares about music, how has your relationship to this particular piece and its message changed since you gave that first performance?

It’s just much more immediate. I’m sitting here in Devon, England, and there’s a storm happening outside. September was the hottest on record. I mean, it really is changing month by month. I’m 40. I don’t have kids. But, I fear for the kids that I see around and what kind of experiences they will have to endure as they grow older. It is something that I feel is growing in proportion in people’s general consciousness over here. Of course, that will be the case in the States as well. So it’s very urgent. 

You’re going to be doing Imaginary Pancake by Gabriella Smith in Los Angeles, which is a piano work that was commissioned for Timo Andres. Unless people are at both concerts, they aren’t going to know if there’s a conversation that happens between those two works. From a performer’s perspective, is there a dialog that you can see between the solo work of Imaginary Pancake and the robust relationship that the organ has with the orchestra in Breathing Forests?

One of the interesting things about music is that there are often seemingly simple cycles and progressions that repeat over time, which I guess has been the way most music has been put together. But her version is incredibly vital. That’s one of the reasons why I think the music is incredibly approachable from a layperson’s perspective. There are these moments in Imaginary Pancake that use exactly the same kind of grammar and the same kind of language. So yeah, definitely they’re kind of companion pieces. But that’s true of a lot of her music.

How important is it for you as a listener, or for you as an artist, that the music being composed today has that approachability?

It is important. You can have in MoMA a CRU modernist chair that’s beautiful to look at, but not terribly comfortable to sit on. We’ve gotten to the point in music where we can have an approachability and an intellectual element to it that can sit by, for want of a better kind of terminology, a prettiness to the music. Nico Muhly’s music does all of those things. It’s very beautiful music to listen to, but it’s acutely complex as well. Gabriela’s music as well. We have to remember as classical musicians that most people on the street say their idea of music is so different from mine or yours. Not that we should ever dumb ourselves down, but you have to give people a way in.

The first of your two concerts in Los Angeles is a recital where you’re going to be playing both the monster organ that is at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the piano. What’s the conversation that you want to create between the music that you choose to play on each instrument? 

What I have done in putting together this program is the music has the most important thread through the recital and have a sequence in program of music, irrespective of the instrument that I’m playing on. I’m actually playing an organ piece on the piano and I’m playing a piano piece by Meredith Monk on the organ. So I want to play around with this idea of what we think of as being the idealized instruments for the music.

In the second half, I’m playing music entirely by Philip Glass. There I’m using the organ rather like a synthesizer. I’m playing Music in Fifths, which is a piece that dates from the 1960s that he wrote for his ensemble. It’s possible to play that piece of music as a soloist on the organ, but use the organ in a way which is a nod to the sound of that very austere world. There are lots of ways of circumnavigating people’s expectations, which I try to do with my programing and the instruments that I play.

I like Counterpoint, the album you released where you went back and forth between Glass and Bach, because I thought that it was easy to see a throughline between the two of them.

Definitely. Philip’s music has the same kind of economy I was talking about at the beginning about counterpoint. I called the record Counterpoint for that reason. If you take one of the tunes on the piano by Glass and you take one note away, it’s the same kind of effect that the artifice of the music completely disintegrates. It has a real integrity to it. I chose for that recording movements from Art of Fugue and the C Minor Prelude and Fugue. It’s that kind of intensity to that music and that immediacy and austerity, for want of a better way of describing that music, which is shared by lots of this music from the 1960s by Glass as well.

In a 2021 column for the New York Times, you were asked about the five minutes that will make you love the organ. You said, “Bach is the ultimate composer for this extraordinary, timeless instrument.” If you were to posit who, amongst composers writing for the organ today, is at the top of their game, who would you say it would be and why?

Nico Muhly’s music for the organ is incredibly natural. He understands how the organ works. It’s been very interesting working with other composers who are perhaps less familiar with the way in which you write in the compass of the instrument and the registration of possibilities.

The other people that I work with…Tom Jenkinson is on the other end of the spectrum. He’s an amazing musician who works and releases music under the name of Squarepusher. So if you’re into nineties electronic music, he’s absolutely a cult household name. Cecilia McDowall over here is a wonderful composer for the organ. I admire her music hugely. There’s Judith Bingham who has a huge catalog for the organ, a slightly different musical ecosystem to the one I work in. Her music is very well worth checking out. And then, of course, there are a few pieces by Arvo Pärt’s that I love playing.

French organist composer Charles-Marie Widor is quoted as having said, “Organ playing is the manifestation of a will filled with the vision of eternity.” How would you define your will when you are sitting at the organ bench and what visions do you have while you’re playing about what eternity might be? 

Wow, what a question. It sounds like Widor’s talking about his religious faith. I don’t know whether he was, but I think it’s safe to assume that he was a religious man. Most organists in the 19th century were. I like liturgy and I like church music. Where I stand on the spectrum of faith is a complex issue. I guess the only thing I can say is the organ is definitely the most transcendental instrument that you could possibly play – whether you’re in a cathedral or in a concert hall or a tiny room playing to your friends on a two-stop chamber organ. To those who have religious faith, obviously it has huge implications. For those who don’t, it’s still an extraordinary instrument that goes to the very heart of who I am as feeling as I could have a vocation to do what I do. It’s a wonderful thing.

To see the full interview with James McVinnie, please go here.

Main Photo: James McVinnie (Photo by Graham Lacadao/Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic)

The post James McVinnie Discusses Three Centuries of Music appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

My top choice doesn’t easily fit into any genre, but it’s an oldie that you’ll either love or hate:

TUBULAR BELLS – Mike Oldfield (Universal Music Group)

It’s hard to believe that Tubular Bells came out 50 years ago. But here we are. This is a special 50th Anniversary Edition on vinyl of the music that many people associate with its use in the film The Exorcist (which is also 50 years old this year.) It’s hard to get that haunting melody out of your head.

In addition to the two suites found not he original album, a second record contains a demo for Tubular Bells 4, the music as used in the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, a remix, the original single and more.

Here are the rest of this week’s picks of New In Music This Week: May 26th:

CLASSICAL: INFINITE BACH – Maya Beiser (Islandia Music Records)

Cellist Maya Beiser not only explores Johann Sebastian Bach’s Solo Cello Suites, she explores the sound that can be created in both the recording process and the listening process. Infinite Bach will be released in different ways: on Apple Music you can get it digitally in Dolby Atmos spatial audio. Other platforms will have the album in what’s described as an “immersive binaural mix.” Having heard Infinite Bach it’s not a traditional recording of these cherished works, but it is certainly a fascinating one. Audiophiles will want to take Beiser’s journey into Infinite Bach.

CLASSICAL: CHILDHOOD TALES – Isata Kanneh-Mason (Decca Classics)

There are 46 tracks on this album from pianist Kanneh-Mason. They range in length from 24 seconds to 4 minutes and 21 seconds. They are predominantly miniature works. Childhood Tales begins with Mozart’s Ah! Vous diary-je, mama performed as a theme and 12 variations. You might not recognize the name, but you’ll know the melody instantaneously as we refer to it as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

In addition to Mozart, Kanneh-Mason performs works by Claude Debussy (Children’s Corner) and Robert Schumann (Kinderszenen, Op. 15). Don’t be fooled…there’s nothing childish about her performances of these pieces. They might be short, but don’t think they come without challenges.

CLASSICAL: FROM AFAR: REWORKS – Various Artists and Vikingur Ólafsson – Deutsche Grammophon

If you read our recent interview with pianist Ólafsson, you’ll have seen that he talked about this album of remixes of his recordings from his 2022 album From Afar as “basically reversing the creative process.” Six different contemporary composers have written new material to accompany some or all Ólafsson’s original recordings. Those composers are Christian Badzura, Álfheiður Guðmundsdóttir, Snorri Hallgrímsson, Helgi Jonsson, Michael A. Muller, and Herdís Stefánsdóttir. Don’t expect to be dancing across your living room listening to these works. Do expect to get into a very peaceful and contemplative state instead.

JAZZ: SHE SEES – Erik Friedlander (Skipstone Records)

Cellist Friedlander is not going to let anything get in the way of making joyous music. Friedlander was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2016. Last summer he had Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery. This album, filled with titles like Baskets, Biscuits, Rain; Soak! Soak! and Wit & Whimsy showcase an enthusiasm for living life.

Joining Friedlander on this record are Diego Espinosa on percussion, Ava Mendoza on guitar and Stomu Takeishi on bass. Espinosa and Mendoza played in Friedlander’s 2020 album Sentinel.

JAZZ: AFTER|LIFE – Brian McCarthy (Truth Evolution Recording Collective)

Saxophonist/composer McCarthy is definitely ambitious. His most 2017 album The Better Angels of Our Nature used music old and new to explore the Civil War. On this follow-up album he’s going boldly to where no man has gone before: to the stars. There are eight tracks on this record with the three-movement suite After Life anchoring the recording. It closes with a song entitled Lucy, but she’s not in the sky with diamonds.

His nine piece band, featured on Better Angels, is almost entirely reunited for this record. They are: bassist Matt Aronoff, saxophonist Andrew Gutauskas, pianist Justin Kauflin, saxophonist Stantawn Kendrick, trombonist Cameron McManus, trumpeter Bill Mobley, drummer Jared Shooing and saxophonist Daniel Ian Smith. This is a cool record!

Those are my selections of the best of what’s New In Music This Week: May 26th. What are you listening to? Drop us a line in the comments. Enjoy the music and enjoy your weekend!

Main Photo: Part of the album art for Tubular Bells

The post New In Music This Week: May 26th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

The end result will be six different programs (one for each suite). Which of the new works by these composers are included in each performance of Fragments will only be revealed to the public after the performance. The project is directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer.

The world premiere of Fragments 1 and 2 took place in Toronto in January. Weilerstein gives the US premiere of Fragments 1 at UC Santa Barbara on Friday, March 10th. On Sunday, March 12th she will also perform Fragments 1 at Irvine Barclay Theatre. She follows that with a performance on Tuesday, March 14th at The Baker-Baum Concert Hall in La Jolla. The New York premiere will take place on April 1st at Carnegie Hall.

Weilerstein’s 2020 recording of the Bach Cello Suites received great reviews. It was also her first recording of this essential work for cellists.

But for now, she’s focused on Fragments.

I spoke with Weilerstein last week. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

The concept of Fragments allows you as an artist to keep a centuries old work old alive. By combining it with newer composers you get to introduce, perhaps, a whole new audience to both something old and something new simultaneously. Was that part of the impetus for this? 

Juxtaposing the familiar with the new, for sure it was part of it. But the way in which we’re doing it is a bit different. All six of Bach’s suites are integrated into the project and 27 new pieces are integrated into the complete project. I didn’t want this to feel like a plus project. There’s actually far more new music than there is Bach – even in terms of timing. So I asked each composer to write 10 minutes of music and two or three fragments that could stand alone.

I was very upfront with every composer saying that this is not going to be used in a conventional way. These are not going to be played in order. They’re going to be interspersed with other works of music as well as the movements of the Bach. There’s not a single new piece that’s played in the order that it was written and there’s not a single Bach suite in this project that is played in its written order. There are six programs I’ve constructed to make musical sense as an entirely original work of art. 

That seems a bit like a Tetris game. You had 27 composers and they each had three fragments, you’re looking at up to 81 different pieces of music that you could place anywhere you wanted. What was the process of figuring out the right match? It seems like at any different time you might have put a different set of pieces together. 

There are certain rules, let’s say, to the game if we’re going to use the Tetris analogy. I knew I was going to construct six programs. The timing was very strict that each one was going to be one hour. Each one had to have a complete Bach Suite in it. Some composers wrote two fragments actually and the timing worked out just fine. Some wrote three. There are a few who wrote one and it was just a longer fragment, but it still worked out just fine.

There’s no Bach movement that’s going to be next to another Bach movement. It’s all going to be interspersed with other music – even though the complete thing will be there. These are my parameters also in constructing the programs. I did a lot of singing and juxtaposing different harmonic languages with another. Sometimes I really wanted to completely contrast the program.

I also had to take myself outside of it. What would I want as an audience member? Has it been too much kind of reflective music? Is it time now for complete shock? Is it time for something to be a continuation of something else or here’s a kind of a mirror image of something that came before it. It was really fun to play with all of that. 

Did you do this from looking at scores or did you have recorded samples so that you could hear what each piece sounded like?

I had to learn the pieces first and internalize them and then I could put the programs together. I couldn’t do it without that. I needed to hear them and kind of feel them in my fingers as well. 

Were these fragments meant to be inspired by the cello suites or could they be completely disassociated?

Several the composers asked me that actually. So it’s a very astute question. My answer always was the only absolute parameter are the timings. If the spirit moves you to be inspired by a Bach suite, by all means go for it. I got back a very wide variety of pieces; some were very obvious direct responses to something that they had heard. Some had absolutely zero to do with Bach at all. And everything in between.

Is there a dialog that you are creating not just with the Bach, but amongst these contemporary composers? 

I think so. There are certain pieces that support others, I think, or that are continuations of what other pieces say. Sometimes I’m creating a real break and a real contrast. Like the way you would hear a like a familiar piece that has a very kind of slash and burn movement followed by something very ethereal. 

I asked everybody to do the same thing and they’re all contemporary classical composers. I wasn’t interested in fusion or in any sort of crossover. I wanted to really celebrate what our art form does really well. Yet within that framework there’s so much variety. Every piece is so different. There’s not a single piece that’s remotely like another one.

That’s another reason for the no programs rule. I just wanted people to experience this music in a primal and hypnotic way. Kind of going back to what made us fall in love with music in the first place; how it how it reaches you without all this kind of context around it. 

In Toronto you played Fragments One and Two. Right now those are the only two on your schedule. What is the plan to roll out the remaining Fragments? 

One, two, three and four will be available next season. Then five and six will be added to that for the 24/25 [season]. So the whole thing will be out for the world to see by that point.

How has your relationship with Bach’s Cello Suites evolved over time as you’ve matured as a person and as a performer?

I’ve been playing the Bach suites for as long as I can remember. The first Bach Prelude, I could play the notes before I could really properly play the cello. As I got older I would kind of play one suite in public. But I thought this was something I was going to do when I was much, much older. I thought I was going to be 75 and have all of this, quote unquote, wisdom, which I couldn’t possibly have as a young, more middle-aged person. 

I started playing them in public in the five years leading up to the recording. I also started doing the Bach marathons – the complete suites in public. I realized that I was never going to be satisfied with the way I was playing them. This was something I had to accept or just not play them at all. I was 37 when I recorded them. It was a snapshot in time. When I’m 50, I’m going to do it again. It’s going to be different and that’s a good thing. 

There’s something about the power of this music that compels audiences to listen to it regularly and attend the marathons you’ve talked about. What is it about Bach’s Cello Suites? 

That’s the mystery, isn’t it? It’s also one of the reasons why they are such a challenge and joy at the same time to play. There is something that is untouchable about the music in the sense that it is very hard to describe. People describe being just viscerally touched by the music. They can’t necessarily tell you why in words, but it’s just something that is so perfect intellectually and yet so naked emotionally. You don’t have to come to the Bach suites with any prior knowledge to be moved by them and that’s just really remarkable. 

What’s remarkable about being on the performance side of it and being the musician who’s getting to express all of that beautiful music? 

This is one of the most amazing experiences. I feel very lucky because I’ve been able to play the complete Bach suites so many times now in concert. The experience of going through that music, which take me about two and a half hours, I just feel completely wrung out intellectually, emotionally, physically by all of it. It’s deeply satisfying to go to all of those places with the suites.

You want the audience to listen and be present with their hearts, their minds and their ears when they experience Fragments. That’s the antithesis of the way we live our very distracted lives right now. What are the challenges that you see, or maybe saw in Toronto, in getting an audience instantly on board with this concept? When were you aware that true listening had taken them over? 

I felt that people were there right away. I’m sure people walked in skeptical. It’s a new concept. I felt that kind of the fantastic tension when a performance is really reaching a kind of universal place. I felt that immediately. In speaking to some people who were very experienced classical listeners, they said it took them about 15 minutes to let go of the desire to want to know exactly who they were hearing. Once they consciously let go they had a totally different experience.

Talking to people who are not experienced classical music listeners, they had absolutely zero issue with this at all. Which gives me a lot of hope. The audience was quite young. Younger than usual. There was a 19-year-old guy who brought his friends with him. They’re not accustomed to classical music concerts at all, but they somehow found themselves there. They were very positive about the concert. They said the staging was super interesting and they were saying some nice things about it. And they said, “But where do they hide the microphones?” This was my favorite comment of the evening. Yes, a cello really can make all of those sounds. It was a completely sincere, well-meaning question. That made my night.

The composers who have contributed new works to FRAGMENTS are: Andy Akiho, Courtney Bryan, Chen Yi, Alan Fletcher, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Joseph Hallman, Gabriel Kahane, Daniel Kidane, Thomas Larcher, Tania Leon, Allison Loggins-Hull, Missy Mazzoli, Gerard McBurney, Jessie Montgomery, Reinaldo Moya, Jeffrey Mumford, Matthias Pintscher, Gity Razaz, Gili Schwarzman, Caroline Shaw, Carlos Simon, Gabriela Smith, Ana Sokolović, Joan Tower, Mathilde Wantenaar and Paul Wiancko

To see when Alisa Weilerstein and Fragments might be in your city, please go here.

Main Photo: Alisa Weilerstein in the world premiere performance of Fragments in Toronto in January 2023 (Photo by Lisa Sakulensky/Courtesy 21C Media Group)

The post Cellist Alisa Weilerstein Juxtaposes Bach… appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“I really came to a standstill March and April of 2020, and I didn’t want to practice and I didn’t want to play and I didn’t want to listen to music.” The early days of the pandemic did not leave classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein inspired. It took a suggestion by her producer that she make new recordings on the piano in her home to end her lethargy.

The result of that suggestion is a trilogy of albums: A Character of Quiet released in 2020; An American Mosaic released in 2021 and Undersong which was released last Friday.

Composer Richard Danielpour wrote An American Mosaic specifically for Dinnerstein. It’s a beautiful work that runs over 50 minutes and yielded Dinnerstein her first Grammy Award nomination.

She first came to attention for her recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in 2007. Undersong marks her 12th album.

Two weeks ago I spoke via Zoom with Dinnerstein about Undersong, her interpretation of the music of Philip Glass on the album and how she’d like these albums to help ease the pain of living. Her comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Did you set out to record a trilogy? If not, how did this come about?

The first album, A Character of Quiet, that music on that album just really felt like the music that was relevant for me to play at that moment in time, which was in June 2020. Then Richard Danielpour approached me about writing An American Mosaic for me. And the third album, Undersong, came out of an at-home recital that I was doing for Music Worcester, which is this fabulous organization in Worcester, Massachusetts. And so I created an album. I actually recorded the Concert for Music Worcester and the Concert for the Oregon Bach Festival, which was the virtual premiere of An American Mosaic, all of that in one week. I essentially made two albums in one week. That was in November of 2020.

Having not had an interest in playing or hearing music, how did recording these albums impact your relationship with the piano?

I think my relationship has definitely changed. I think it’s hard getting back into the real world. Not that we’re totally back right now, but I have had a crazy fall of performing. Before the fall began I think that this period of time at home that I had – and just working for the recordings and just for myself mainly – made me realize, and I think a lot of people have realized this, that time is time. Our time here is finite and it doesn’t make sense to do things that don’t feel meaningful or that make us unhappy. I just felt that I became much more in touch with the kind of music that I wanted to play, the kind of playing I want to do and the kinds of projects that I find really engaging.

Many of us have had to seek out alternatives to in-person performance as audience members during the pandemic. Did you find yourself discovering or rediscovering new ways to enjoy art or music during this time?

It was the first time in in quite a long time that I started actually sitting down and listening to music at home because I think I felt quite burnt out when I was traveling on the road and all these years of just busting a gut. And so my husband and I invested in a really wonderful LP player and new speakers and we started collecting some vinyl. And it’s a very different form of listening to sit down and listen to records. And so we started having an evening where we would just sit down and listen to a whole record. It was amazing because I haven’t listened to music like that at home and since I was in my early 20s.

Undersong is anchored by Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16. It’s a romantic work that he personally dedicated to his wife, Clara. As we hopefully start to come out from under the pandemic how does this work speak to you and what we’ve been going through?

There’s something about it that’s truly modern and strange rhythmically; the use of meter, just the sort of displacements of beats. There’s a feeling about it that is not quite settled. It’s also quite influenced by Bach, too. There’s so much counterpoint in it. And all of the music in Kreisleriana has a tendency to kind of circle in on itself. There’s a lot of introspection and quick changes from something very, very agitated to something very still and looking into oneself. I think that all of those qualities are very reflective of the time that we’re in right now because we do feel kind of unsettled and not grounded. And there’s been a very strange feeling about time. Many people talked about they were in an endless loop and feeling like things are getting better and then things are getting worse, and it’s just very, very up and down. I think that Kriesleriana really is such an amazing piece of music and I just feel like it resonates right now.

The album also includes Mad Rush by Philip Glass and the way you play it is distinctly different than the way he performed it on his album Solo Piano. What latitude should a performer have to perform a piece differently than its composer did?

I think that Philip Glass would be the first person to say that the music comes to life in the performance by the performer. He certainly grants that freedom to people that interpret his music.

I think that really great music has a lot in it and a lot of different directions it can go in. It’s the role of the interpreter to look into that music and try to make sense out of it and create a form with it. Maybe what I’m saying is some kind of heresy, but I don’t understand when people think that composers know exactly how their music should be played. And frankly, if I was to hear a composer say that music should be played exactly in one way, I feel like that’s incredibly limiting to their own work.

Schumann, you said, wrote Kreisleriana in four days. What could he have know about all that was included in that work in so short a period of time?

He had very strong opinions about how his music should be played and I’m sure that there are many composers that do have very strong opinions about it. Playing Kreisleriana in 2020 is a completely different kettle of fish than playing it – when did he write it? 1838, I think so. Even if I was playing a piece of music that somebody wrote just the other day like Richard Danielpour almost a year ago. He may have a very strong idea about how it should be played, but it could work in other ways too. Maybe he wouldn’t consider it his approved version, but it still is music that exists and that can exist. I mean, it’s nothing without coming to light, in my opinion.

I want to finish out our time together by asking you about something that Philip Glass wrote in his memoir, Words Without Music. And he said one of Allen Ginsberg’s T-shirts said, “Well, while I’m here, I’ll do the work. And what’s the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else? Drunken dumbshow.” How does music ease the pain of living for you, and by extension, how would you like this trilogy to help ease the pain of a world in which we live in today?

That’s a heavy question. I get a lot of really beautiful emails from people who have listened to my recordings and I’ve had different kinds of profound responses to them or life events that have taken place around them – really important things. I think that the music on these three albums is music that, I hope, will make the listeners more reflective and create a kind of – I was not going to say framework, I don’t even think framework is the right word – a filter through which to see the world. You know I think that’s what really great art does. All of the music on these albums is just like the best music. And I hope that it will give people that kind of reflection and peace and understanding.

To see my full interview with Simone Dinnerstein, please go here to our YouTube channel.

Dinnerstein is currently on tour and has performances at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts on January 27th; Chamber Music Monterey Bay on January 29th; Broward Center for the Performing Arts on February 8th; Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on February 28th; Longwood Gardens on March 3rd; McCarter Theatre Center on March 11th; Dance Cleveland on March 19th; Green Music Center on March 25th; The Broad Stage on March 27th and Miller Theater at Columbia University on March 31st. For her complete schedule, please go here.

Photo of Simone Dinnerstein by Arianna Dominguez

The post Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Completes Her Pandemic Trilogy appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

The title comes from a poem by 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz. The full phrase is:

When
The violin
Can forgive the past

It starts singing.

Gupta, whom I first got to know when he was a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, certainly makes his instrument sing. He joined the orchestra as its youngest member when he was 19. In 2018 he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

In addition to being a gifted musician he’s also the founder and Artistic Director of Street Symphony, an organization that works with members of Los Angeles’s community that are often pushed to the margins of society: the homeless, the addicted and the incarcerated.

When we spoke last week via Zoom, I asked Gupta about the album, the art of listening and about music as an act of giving and receiving. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. (If you want to see and hear the complete interview, please go to Cultural Attaché’s YouTube channel here.)

In the liner notes you wrote “In the music of my childhood, I found a key to reinvention.” You’re obviously referring to the work by Bach. At the time that you found that key to reinvention was that something you were looking for? 

As a musician, as a violinist, I feel that every day I pick up the instrument is an opportunity to reinvent myself better. Better in the image of the instrument, which will always be better than me, better in the image of the composer’s living or recently dead or long dead, who are often also humbling figures in in one’s psyche. 

I’m currently reading halfway through Paul Elie’s book Reinventing Bach, which is an incredible, incredible book about how Bach was constantly reinventing himself and how the players, the musicians who found themselves making Bach’s music, especially recording Bach’s music, found keys to reinvention for themselves and for the technology that they were using. So Albert Schweitzer for the LP and [Pablo] Casals and Glenn Gould and Yo-Yo [Ma] and so on and so forth. So I was particularly interested in reinventing myself in the image of Bach, who was reinventing himself three hundred years ago to the year in seventeen twenty when he wrote these six pieces for unaccompanied violin.

If you look at this album I would assume that there would be a lot of people who would have said this isn’t a path to success. So how important was it for you to take a risk and to define yourself by following your instincts as opposed to following the traditional path to success?

I think that for much of my life I have been incredibly lucky to have lived many different iterations of the traditional pathways of success. I won my first audition that I ever took for the Philharmonic when I was 19. I still don’t know how that happened. I was incredibly lucky to also see what traditional success looked like from the perspective of being in a Harvard neuroscience lab and seeing what the top scientists were studying. I think that whether we’re looking at neuroscience or traditional classical music and looking at the greatest soloists of the time, there is a sort of externally imposed assumption that that person has kind of fit into a niche and has risen exponentially because the niche exists. 

I had to make this album because I had to make this album. And that is an incredibly vulnerable act, because as an artist, immediately one asks oneself, what is this just inherently narcissistic? Am I being selfish by imposing my will upon the most precious resource that any human being has, which is their time? But hopefully what any creative endeavor accomplishes is the ability to create a portal that mirrors, or a lens of one’s attention in time, to be able to give oneself a glimpse to say, you know what, I have the right to create something, too. I have a voice. I have something to say. We all have something to say. Whether we’re going to sit ourselves down and apply ourselves to the craft of creating, manifesting something from that capacity, is the work before us.

It feels like listening is an art form that is that is fast fading into a dying art form. And I’m wondering, as a musician who relies on people to listen, what your thoughts are or hopes that I’m wrong. 

For me, listening is an act of love. And I am taught this every time I visit the community of people who have become a family to me in Skid Row. In fact, several years ago, there was a man named Brian Palmer, who I became quite close with. He was a member of a choir in Skid Row, and he was the one who said, “One act of love I know for sure is to listen.” Where we listen, how we place our attention in the world, is really where we direct the most precious resource we have: our time, our focus, our attention. You know, it’s not only that music and art are being commodified, but our very attention itself is the greatest commodity that everyone seems to be bidding for. And so listening to music, to even a track of the album, is something that I know I can never take for granted. Anyone who has taken the time to listen to this album has has given the most precious thing that they can possibly give. And I am incredibly honored and grateful that that has happened. 

Hafiz wrote that “The heart is a thousand stringed instrument that can only be tuned with love.” How does your four-stringed instrument allow you not to just express love, but to receive it and through that have an impact on the world in which you live?

I recorded this album in a very special sanctuary here in Pasadena, where I live, at All Saints Church. Even though the church was empty I knew that I was in communion with something more than myself. When I entered that space, it wasn’t just about the acoustics, it was a kind of spiritual acoustic. When I played a note, it was not just an act of putting a note into the space, but using my ears to listen to how that space was giving something back to me. And in that moment of exchange and reciprocity is created in a mutual way such that I relax. I open. I’m more able to be vulnerable. And I kind of allow that heart to open up just wide enough so that it’s exposed six feet to the microphone that’s receiving what happens to be coming out of my instrument. So that point of mutual reciprocity and exchange makes playing music both an act of giving, but more importantly, an act of receiving, just as you’ve put it so beautifully.

All photos of Vijay Gupta by Kat Bawden (Courtesy Shuman Associates)

To see the complete interview with Vijay Gupta, please go to Cultural Attaché’s YouTube channel here.

The post Vijay Gupta Reinvents Himself Better appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

There are other concerts that are going to be familiar to those who frequent the Bowl. The annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular is back as is a salute to the music of film composer John Williams.

I’ve combed through the schedule and here are the shows that stand out to me as the best bets this summer for fans of the performing arts. They are listed chronologically.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: July 15th: Peter and the Wolf

Gustavo Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a concert that will feature Oscar and Tony Award-winning actress Viola Davis narrating Peter and the Wolf (with music, of course, by Sergei Prokofiev). The composer’s Symphony No. 1 “Classical” opens the program. Margaret Bonds wrote the Montgomery Variations in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Selections from the work will be performed to conclude the first half of the concert.

JAZZ: July 18th: Kamasi Washington

If you watched the LA Phil’s Sound/Stage series you know how exciting a performer/composer Kamasi Washington is. (And if you haven’t, you should do so immediately.) Between the richness of his writing and the freedom he gives his very large band to improvise and contribute to the musical dialogue on stage, you will see very quickly why Washington is so highly-acclaimed.

As of press time, this is the only concert on his schedule. Opening is hip-hop artist Earl Sweatshirt. Both artists are from Los Angeles.

JAZZ: July 24th: Ledisi Sings Nina Simone

Singer/actress Ledisi is releasing an album of songs made famous by Nina Simone the night before this concert at The Hollywood Bowl. Ledisi Sings Nina includes such classic songs as Feeling Good, My Baby Just Cares for Me and Wild Is the Wind.

For this concert she will be joined by Thomas Wilkins leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

One week later she will be performing at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 31st and she’ll be at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego on August 17th. Wilkins will lead the San Diego Symphony Orchestra in that show.

I fully anticipate that Ledisi will put a spell on you at this concert.

BROADWAY/VOCALS: July 30th: Cynthia Erivo

Also releasing an album, her first solo recording, is the destined-to-be-an-EGOT Cynthia Erivo. (She’s only missing an Academy Award and that is certainly in her future.) That record, Ch. 1 Vs. 1, will be released on September 17th. The first single, The Good, came out last month.

The star of The Color Purple on Broadway and the recent Genius: Aretha Franklin will probably include songs from both her stage and screen career. She’ll be joined by Wilkins and the LA Philharmonic for this concert. At press time this was her only solo concert on her schedule.

I saw her in her Tony Award-winning role as Celie. She blew the roof off the Jacobs Theatre in New York every night. If anyone can make the shell of the Bowl levitate, it’s going to be Erivo.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: August 5th: Schumann & Beethoven UPDATED

Gemma New leads the LA Phil in this concert that opens with warp & weft by Sarah Gibson. She is a Los Angeles-based composer and pianist who also performs as a member of HOCKET.

warp & weft was given its world premiere performance in 2019 by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason was scheduled to perform Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. However visa issues got in the way. She is being replaced by pianist Behzod Abduraimov. He will be performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15.

The second half of the program will feature the Rhenish Symphony No. 3 by Robert Schumann.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: August 10th: Dudamel Conducts Gershwin

What could be a better line-up of music for the summer than Cuban Overture, Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and songs by George Gershwin? Obviously for fans of this composer (count me in) this is pure heaven.

Gustavo Dudamel will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic for this concert.

Joining them will be pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and counter-tenor John Holiday.

As part of the Sound/Stage series, Thibaudet joined the LA Phil to perform the jazz band arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue. Perhaps this will be the full orchestra version. I hope so!

CLASSICAL MUSIC: August 17th: Dudamel Leads Elgar and Grieg

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel for a concert featuring the works of British composer Edward Elgar and Norwegian composer Edvard Greig.

Opening the program is Grieg’s immensely popular Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. From the opening notes of this work, you’ll immediately recognize it.

Kanneh-Mason joins for the chamber version of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. This was the composer’s last major work for orchestra. Kanneh-Mason’s 2020 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle received glowing reviews. Rob Cowan, writing for Gramophone, said of the performance:

“It really is a remarkable performance, one that has already given me enormous pleasure.”

The performance concludes with Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: September 9th: Beethoven and Schumann

One month earlier you had the chance to hear what a piano concerto in A minor written by Clara Schumann sounds like. With this concert you can hear what Robert Schumann did with his Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54. What makes this concert so appealing is the soloist, Hélène Grimaud.

Long a fan of Schumann’s work, Grimaud made her US concert debut with a performance of this work with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1990. Twelve years later she performed the concerto as part of her debut at Carnegie Hall. In other words, this piece has a special and substantial place in her heart.

The concert, lead by conductor Marta Gardolińska, will open with Overture by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. After the intermission, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 will conclude the evening’s performance.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: September 14th: Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach Project

Bach’s Six Cello Suites will be performed by Yo-Yo Ma alone on the massive Hollywood Bowl stage. Almost exactly four years prior to this concert, he did exactly the same concert. The quiet, emotional and intimate music of Johann Sebastian Bach performed on a single instrument for two-and-a-half hours to an enraptured audience.

I know what you’re thinking, did this really work?

Here are some excerpts from Mark Swed‘s review for the Los Angeles Times:

“…the concert proved an unquestionably great, memorable Bowl occasion. …This audience sat in nearly unbelievable rapt attention focused on Ma as each musically complex and austere six-movement suite followed suite. …Extraordinarily, this had the effect of a kind of visual and aural intimacy you could never reproduce in a concert hall while at the same time producing a sense of awe being in a large outdoor arena where attention-deficit is normally taken for granted. With the Bowl doing everything right — the lighting, the mood, the outstanding sound system — Ma made the astonishing an argument against dumbing down.”

I certainly hope to experience this performance. If you do, don’t hesitate to get tickets. The previous performance was sold out.

JAZZ: September 26th: Herbie Hancock

He’s a legend. He always puts on a massively entertaining show. And I’d venture a guess by saying no two performances by keyboardist/composer Herbie Hancock are the same.

With a career that spans from Miles Davis to The Headhunters to his Oscar-winning score for Round Midnight, Hancock is always trying something new and pushing the definition of jazz into new areas. His support of young artists is also powerfully important.

There are no guests announced yet for this concert, but there will undoubtedly be many. He’ll be performing with his band (though wouldn’t a solo concert be amazing?).

I’ve seen Hancock several times and can strongly recommend seeing this concert.

Those are my selections as the best bets for the Hollywood Bowl 2021 season. If, like me, you enjoy a wide range of music, I recommend checking out the full schedule.

Coming soon will be my selection of the Best Bets at The Ford.

Leave a message in the comments section and let me know what you’re looking forward to seeing most this summer at the Hollywood Bowl.

Update: This post has been updated to reflect the change of soloists and material being performed on August 5th. Isata Kanneh-Mason was unable to get a visa.

Photo: Hollywood Bowl with Fireworks (Photo by Adam Latham/Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic)

The post Top Picks for the Hollywood Bowl 2021 Summer Season UPDATED appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

There are five recitals in the Signature Recital Series and once they debut they will be available for streaming through July 1st.

Up first – in a recital that debuted last Friday – is tenor Russell Thomas.

Filmed at Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, his recital finds performances of works Adolphus Hailstork, George Frideric Handel, Roberts Owens and Robert Schumann. He’s accompanied by pianist Mi-Kyung Kim.

Thomas was recently named an Artist-in-Residence with LA Opera. That announcement falls in line with something he told me was important for real progress in the performing arts when I interviewed him in 2018. At that time he was preparing to sing Verdi’s Otello with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

“What happens when you diversify the back office then the stage will become diversified and then the audience. You can’t expect audiences to be diversified if they don’t see themselves on stage. …I understand everything is about dollars and cents, but I think the long term survival of classical arts is at stake. If you look around the room and everybody looks the same, there’s a problem.”

I attended that performance of Otello. Thomas is the real deal.

Thomas will be seen in Verdi’s Aida with the LA Opera during the 2021-2022 season.

The second recital is by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham and it will debut on April 23rd. She will be showcasing the work of composer Kurt Weill in this recital filmed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

Amongst the songs she performs are I’m a Stranger Here Myself, Lonely House and September Song. Graham is accompanied by pianist Jeremy Frank.

She is one of those rare singers who embraces music from multiple periods of music. Graham is just as comfortable singing the work of Handel and Mozart as she is works by contemporary composers such as Jake Heggie and Tobias Picker.

Her next appearance at LA Opera will be in a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the spring of 2022.

The third recital is by Wagnerian soprano Christine Goerke. This is billed as an intimate performance from New Jersey’s Art Factory with pianist Craig Terry accompanying her. The debut of her performance is scheduled for May 7th.

Goerke’s diverse program will include works by Brahms, Handel and Strauss, show tunes, Italian art songs and a song cycle by Carrie Jacobs-Bonds called Half-Minute Songs.

If you’ve watched any of the Met Opera streaming productions you might have seen her in Turandot and as Brunhilde in Die Walküre. I saw her sing excerpts from Götterdämmerung with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and was seriously impressed with not just the power of her voice, but also the quieter and softer tones as well.

The fourth recital is by soprano Julia Bullock with pianist Laura Boe. The performance was filmed at Blaibach Concert Hall in Germany. This recital will debut on May 21st.

On Bullock’s program are works by John Adams, Margaret Bonds, Robert Schumann, William Grant Still, Kurt Weill and Hugo Wolf. The finale is a series of songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.

Another singer who embraces both classic works and contemporary works, Bullock in the past few years has appeared in the world premieres of John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West at San Francisco Opera and Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones at Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

In 2019 she opened the Los Angeles Philharmonic season with a performance of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville. This was also a concert I attended and I can’t wait for an opportunity to see Bullock in a fully-staged production.

The last recital is by mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges beginning June 4th. Accompanied by pianist Howard Watkins, Bridges’ recital was filmed at Harlem School of the Arts in New York. The program has yet to be announced.

If you’ve seen any of the multiple streams of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten, you know how amazing she is. She also appeared in the composer’s Satyagraha at LA Opera during the 2018-2019 season.

How can you watch the Signature Recital Series? They are available as a package for $45 for non-subscribers and $30 for LA Opera subscribers. Single tickets are not available. However, regardless of when you purchase the package you will have through July 1st to watch each of the concerts. Tickets are available here.

Photo: Russell Thomas from his Signature Recital Series performance (Courtesy Los Angeles Opera)

The post LA Opera’s Signature Recital Series Has Begun appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

On tap (no pun intended) is a wonderful tap performance from New York’s Joyce Theater by Ayodele Casel; a musical where popular princesses from animated films imagine a different definition of “Happily Ever After;” the return of Tony Award-winner Lena Hall with some new “Obsessions;” a live performance from The Royal Opera House of work by Brecht and Weill; a concert performance of one of Verdi’s least-performed operas and the first of a two-part live performance of a play adapted from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

My top pick this weekend comes from San Francisco Opera. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher inspired an unfinished opera by Claude Debussy and a newer work by Gordon Getty. Both operas are being streamed this weekend and their rarity easily makes this the most interesting option for the weekend.

I’ll begin with my top pick for the week and the balance of my Best Bets: April 9th – April 12th are listed in the order in which they are available.

Here are my Best Bets: April 9th – April 12th:

*TOP PICK* OPERA: House of Usher – San Francisco Opera – April 10th – April 11th

Conducted by Lawrence Foster; starring Brian Mullian, Jason Bridges, Antony Reed, Jamielyn Duggan, Jacqueline Piccolino, Edward Nelson and Joel Sorensen. This David Poutney production is from the 2014-2015 season.

You know Cultural Attaché covers operas on a very regular basis. So it’s exciting to let you know about two one-act operas that are rarely performed and have not, to my knowledge, been streamed before this offering from San Francisco Opera.

Composers Claude Debussy and Gordon Getty each wrote operas inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe tells the story of Roderick Usher through the eyes of his friend and reveals what may or may not have happened to Usher’s sister Madeline.

Debussy’s work, La chute de la maison Usher, is an unfinished opera that he worked on from 1908-1917. The opera was completed and orchestrated, based on the composer’s draft, by Robert Orledge in 2004. The premiere of the completed opera was in 2014 paired with Getty’s version at the Welsh National Opera. It is this production that came to San Francisco Opera with different casting.

Philip Glass also composed a work inspired by The Fall of the House of Usher. A film, directed by James Darrah, is available for streaming from Boston Lyric Opera for $10. These two one-act operas, our top pick for the weekend, are available for free but only through Sunday, April 11th.

BALLET: Concerto – Royal Ballet – Now – April 25th

This work by legendary choreographer Kenneth MacMillan was one of two pieces that premiered at the first performance after he was named Director of Berlin’s Deutsche Opera Ballet in 1966. For Concerto he used Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concert No. 2 in F as his inspiration.

This new post came after his wildly successful years at Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet where he created nine new ballets.

This Royal Ballet performance is from 2019 and features soloists James Hay, Mayara Magri and Anna Rose O’Sullivan. They are joined by principals Ryoichi Hirano and Yasmine Naghdi.

Sarah Crompton, writing in The Guardian, said of this production: “…a plotless piece of sharp geometric angles and airy leaps, danced to Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 2. Set by Jürgen Rose against a perfect pale lemon backdrop, with the dancers in orange, russet and yellow, it has a breezy sophistication, with a delicate cross work of steps for soloists and a large corps de ballet. It seems simple but is devilishly complicated.”

The performance is available now for streaming. The price is £3 which equals $3.47.

PLAY READING: Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous – Broadway’s Best Shows – Now – April 12th

Sisters Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad star in the reading of Pearl Cleage’s 2019 play Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous which is being read as part of the Spotlight on Plays series from Broadway’s Best Shows.

After their production of scenes from August Wilson’s Fences ignited a major controversy actress Anna Campbell and director Betty Samson fled to Amsterdam for what they thought would be short-term assignment. 25 years later they are invited back to the United States where their version, nicknamed Naked Wilson, is going to open a women’s theater festival. But the festival wants to work with a much younger actress than Campbell. You don’t think that’s going to go over well, do you?

Also participating in the reading are Heather Alicia Simms and Alicia Stith. Camille A. Brown directs.

Tickets are $15 with proceeds going to the Actors Fund. The show will remain available through Monday, April 12th.

DANCE: Chasing Magic – The Joyce Theater Foundation – Now – April 21st

Fans of tap dance will definitely want to check out Chasing Magic by Ayodele Casel streaming now from The Joyce Theater in New York. I saw the film and it’s simply amazing.

For this world premiere, Casel has collaborated with director Torya Beard, dancer/choreographer Ronald K. Brown, singer/songwriter Crystal Monee Hall, composer/musician Arturo O’Farrill, percussionist Sent Stoney and composer Annastasia Victory.

Viewers can expect both traditional tap and also a contemporary style of tap – both of which will put a smile on your face, just as it does the dancers performing.

Tickets are $25/household.

BALLET: Carmen – State Street Ballet – Now – April 14th

Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen serves as the inspiration for this work by William Soleau (Co-Artistic Director of State Street Ballet). The work had its premiere in 2014 and this is a film from a performance at The Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara from that year.

For those unfamiliar with the opera, here is the synopsis:

Set in Seville, Spain, Carmen is a gypsy who has caught everyone’s eye. A soldier, Don José, plays coy and gives her no attention. Her flirtation causes troubles for both when Don José’s girlfriend, Micaëla arrives. Tensions escalate between the two women and after a knight fight, José must arrest Carmen. When she seduces him it sets off a series of events that will not end well for the gypsy woman.

Leila Drake dances the title role. Ryan Camou dances the role of Don José. Randy Herrera dances the role of the Toreador Escamillo and Cecily Stewart MacDougall dances the role of Micaëla.

There is no charge to watch the performance which will remain available through midnight on April 14th.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Simone Porter and Hsin-I Huang – Soka Performing Arts Center – Now – June 30th

As part of their Signature Encore Series, the Soka Performing Arts Center is making this 2019 concert by violinist Simone Porter and pianist Hsin-I Huang available through June 30th.

Their performance features works by Mozart (Sonata No. 24 in F Major, K. 376); Leoš Janáček (Violin Sonata, JW VII/7); Esa-Pekka Salonen (Lachen Verlent); Ernest Bloch (“Ningun” from Baal Shem); Maurice Ravel (Tzigane) and Sergei Prokofiev (3 pieces from Romeo & Juliet, Op. 64).

This concert is free to watch on both the Soka website and also their YouTube channel.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: The Heart of the Matter – St. Louis Symphony Orchestra – Now – May 8th

Three of the four pieces being performed in this concert by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra are very well known to classical music fans.

Edward Elgar’s Serenade for Strings; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile and Giacomo Puccini’s I crisantemi (The Chrysanthemums). The last work was written originally for string quartet, but is rarely heard in that version.

Less known is the first piece on the program: Within Her Arms by composer Anna Clyne.

This work has been compared to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings for the depth of its emotion. It’s a composition that inspired violinist Jennifer Koh to tell the New York Times, “Sometimes things reach you and it’s colorful or intricate or structured in an interesting way or the orchestration is wonderful. But the extraordinary thing about Anna’s music is that it is incredibly moving. And I hadn’t had that reaction for a long time.”

Stéphane Denève leads the SLSO in this performance. Tickets are $15.

MUSICAL: Disenchanted – Stream.Theatre – April 9th – April 11th

Cinderella, The Little mermaid, Pocahontas, The Princess Who Kissed the Frog and Snow White are just some of the princesses who are changing the definition of happily ever after in this musical with book, lyrics and music by Dennis T. Giacino.

Disnenchanted opened off-Broadway in 2014 and was the recipient of numerous nominations including Best New Musical. The production that is streaming this weekend is from England.

The cast or women playing the princesses are Courtney Bowman, Natalie Chua, Allie Daniel, Shanay Holmes, Sophie Isaacs, Aisha Jawando, Grace Mouat, Millie O’Connell, Jenny O’Leary, and Jodie Steele. Tom Jackson Greaves directs.

There are only three performances. The show will be streamed at 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are £18 (including service charges) which equals almost $25.

OPERA/DANCE: The Seven Deadly Sins and Mahagonny Songspiel – Royal Opera House – April 9th – 2:30 PM EDT/11:30 AM PDT

The Royal Opera House offers its first live broadcast of the year with this double bill of works by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

The Seven Deadly Sins is called a ballet chanté. That means it is a sung ballet. The work had its world premiere in Paris in 1933. As you might imagine from the title, each of the seven deadly sins (envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth and wrath) is explored through the story of two sisters: Anna I and Anna II. The first Anna (Stephanie Wake-Edwards) is a singer and the second a dancer (Jonadette Carpio).

Also in the company are Tenors Filipe Manu and Egor Zhuravskii; baritone Dominic Sedgwick, and bass Blaise Malaba who are joined by dancer Thomasin Gülgeç.    

This is satire at its best and it was also the last significant collaboration between Brecht and Weill.

Mahagonny Sonspiel premiered in 1927 in Baden-Baden, Germany. A perfect companion piece to The Seven Deadly Sins, Brecht and Weill were offering their opinion on the pursuit of pleasure. Amongst the songs in this work is The Alabama Song which many will know from the version recorded by Jim Morrison and The Doors.

For this performance, mezzo-soprano Kseniia Nkolaieva will sing the role of Bessie.

Choreographer Julia Cheng has kept the streaming experience in mind while creating this production.

Tickets are $11.53. The performance will be available for streaming through May 9th.

COCKTAILS AND CONVERSATION: Virtual Halston – Cast Party Network on YouTube – April 9th – 5:00 PM EDT/2:00 PM PDT

I adore Julia Halston and her Friday soirees have been a staple of my winding down and getting ready for the weekend. So I’m sad that this weekend, her 40th episode, will be her last for the time being.

However, I’m thrilled that she’s going on a hiatus to work on a new theater project.

For this episode Halston will welcome producers Ruby Locknar and Jim Caruso for a look back on those 40 episodes that have featured everyone from Charles Busch to Jane Monheit to Michael Urie and so many more.

The show is free to watch but donations to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation are encouraged.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Lena Hall: Obsessed – April 9th – 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

When Tony Award winner Lena Hall (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) launched her Obsessed series of EPs in 2018, she offered her versions of both well-known songs and deep-tracks of such artists as Beck, David Bowie, Nirvana, Pink, Radiohead, Jack White and more.

Given her voice, it was probably a surprise she didn’t also record the music of Heart – the duo best known for songs like Baracuda, Crazy on You and Magic Man.

But she’s going to be singing their songs in a live concert on Friday night. This video, from a Broadway Sessions performance at the Laurie Beechman Theatre gives you a taste of what she can do with this music (it does contain some profanity):

Does this foreshadow a second Obsessed series? This is a one-time only concert. There will be no streaming if you can’t see it as it happens. And you should. Lena Hall rocks!

Tickets are $20 and $50. The higher-priced VIP tickets allows for interaction with Hall during the concert.

JAZZ: Claudia Villela: The Music of Jobim – SFJAZZ – April 9th – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

There are certain artists who can use just one name and you know immediately who it is. Brazilian composer Jobim is one of them. (For the record his full name is Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim).

Amongst his best-known songs are Corcovado, Desafinado and The Girl from Ipanema.

Singer Claudia Villela will pay tribute to Jobim in this concert from 2019. She is joined by special guest guitarist Chico Pinheiro. Her band includes Celso Alberti on drums and percussion; Gary Brown on bass; Gary Meek on saxophone and flute and Jasnam Daya Singh on piano and keys.

There will be an encore presentation Saturday, April 10th at 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT.

This concert is available to digital members of SFJAZZ. Membership is $5 for one month of programs or $60 for one year.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Beethoven Serioso – Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra – Debuts April 9th – 9:30 PM EDT/6:30 PM PDT

As they did with their most recent episode of Close Quarters, the camera moves in and amongst the musicians in this performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 nicknamed Serioso. The orchestration is by Gustav Mahler. Margaret Batjer leads LACO in this performance.

Given the significance the camera plays in this film, I want to give attention to cinematographer Michael Thomas whose deft work breathes new life into ensemble performance. Visual artist Ken Honjo also contributed to this episode.

If you haven’t checked out this terrific series, all previous videos are available for streaming. There’s no charge to watch Beethoven Serioso or any of the other videos.

DANCE: Awakening – Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company – April 10th – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT

For over 30 years, New Jersey’s Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has been at the forefront of creating works that express through contemporary dance that long history of the Chinese American cultural tradition.

This program will find the company offering two world premieres (Luminescence and Shadow Force) along with two works from 2019 (Truth Bound and Introspection). The works are united in their exploration of ideas we have all probably faced during the pandemic: identity, information, optimism, outside forces that complicate our lives, truth and more.

Tickets are $10 to watch the performance. If you are a member of the South Orange Performing Arts Center, you can watch for free.

THEATER: From Number to Name – East West Players – April 10th – April 11th

Wednesday afternoon I published an interview with the provocative performance artist Kristina Wong who is helming From Number to Name.

Through a series of interviews and over the course of six-and-a-half weeks, Wong and her collaborators have put together this dramatic show that explores the impact of incarceration on the Asian/Pacific Islander community in America. It is a story filled with shame, regret and finds those who are released from prison rarely having a familial support system to reintegrate into society.

There are two performances of From Number to Name. The first is on Saturday at 10:00 PM EDT/7:00 PM PDT. The second is on Sunday at 5:00 PM EDT/2:00 PM PDT.

Tickets begin at $5 and go up in price based on your ability to include a donation to East West Players.

CHORAL: Amore della Vita, Love of Life – The Verdi Chorus – April 11th – 1:00 PM EDT/10:00 AM PDT

For those clamoring for all things Italian, this weekend’s virtual concert by The Fox Singers from the Verdi Chorus will delight. They will be performing a program of Italian art songs.

Amongst the composers are Ruggero Leoncavallo (best known for his one-act opera Pagliacci), Pietro Mascagni (best known for Cavalleria rusticana), Gioachino Rossini (best known for the theme song to The Lone Ranger*) and Paolo Tosti (best known for his over 50 art songs).

Featured performers in this concert are sopranos Tiffany Ho, Megan Lindsey McDonald and Sarah Salazar; mezzo-soprano Ariana Stultz; and tenors Elias Berezin and Joseph Gárate. Anne Marie Ketchum leads the ensemble with Laraine Ann Madden accompanying.

If this concert (and perhaps Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy) makes you hungry, The Verdi Chorus is publishing The Verdi Chorus Pandemic Cookbook. How many of the recipes are Italian, I couldn’t tell you. But if they can cook like they sing…. The book is available for pre-order here.

CABARET: Ali Stroker – Seth Concert Series – April 11th – 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT

Ali Stroker won a Tony Award for her performance as Ado Annie in the 2019 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! She became the first performer in a wheelchair to win a Tony Award. (She was paralyzed in an automobile accident when she was two years old.)

This wasn’t her first Broadway performance. She appeared in the 2015 revival of Spring Awakening. This was the Deaf West Theatre production that was first performed at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

She is Seth Rudetsky‘s guest for this weekend’s concert and conversation.

I saw Stroker in both shows and she is simply amazing. This will be well worth watching.

In addition to the live concert on Sunday afternoon there will be an encore showing Sunday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT. Tickets for either showing are $25.

OPERA: Atilla Highlights in Concert – Lyric Opera of Chicago – April 11th – 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT

Giuseppe Verdi’s Atilla had its world premiere in Venice in 1846. The opera tells the story of Atilla the Hun (how many other Atillas do you know?) and his ill-fated relationship with Odabella, a prisoner whose father died at the hands of Atilla. Foresto and Ezio, having their own reasons for wanting revenge on Atilla, defer to Odabella who will stop at nothing to see Atilla die.

Atilla is not amongst Verdi’s most popular nor the most commonly-performed. In fact, the Metropolitan Opera only staged Atilla for the first time in 2010. The Lyric Opera of Chicago staged their first production ten years earlier.

On Sunday they will premiere a concert of excerpts from Atilla that will feature bass-baritone Christian Van Horn singing the role of Attila, soprano Tamara Wilson singing Odabella, tenor Matthew Polenzani singing Foresto, and baritone Quinn Kelsey singing Ezio. Pianist William C. Billingham and Jerad Mosbey accompany the singers.

Enrique Mazzola leads the concert which will be available on the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: A Tour of Iran – New West Symphony – April 11th – 6:00 PM EDT/3:00 PM PDT

Michael Christie leads the New West Symphony in a performance of work exploring the influence of Iranian poetry and music on the West. Joining the performance are mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and two Iranian instrumentalists: Pejman Hadadi (tombak and dad) and Masoud Rezaei (setar).

The program features a mix of classical works by Mozart (The Magic Flute Overture), Rameau (Suite from Zoroastre), Handel (“Ombra mai fu” from Xerxes) and Gounod(selections from Faust) with works by Iranian composers Khayam (Seven Valleys of Love for Strings), Ranjbaran (Enchanted Garden: Joy) and excerpts from Rezaei’s album Nothingness.

Tickets to stream the concert are $25 per household and will include a post-performance reception with Christie and the guest artists.

CLASSICAL MUSIC/CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Jennifer Koh Solo Recital – Shriver Hall Concert Series – April 11th – 5:30 PM EDT/2:30 PM PDT

Violinist Jennifer Koh appears in this very intriguing concert which finds her playing two compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and peppering the concert with twelve new compositions that she commissioned in 2020 for her Alone Together project.

Bach’s Partita No. 3 and the Sonata No. 3 are sharing space with works by Kati Agócs, Katherine Beach, Hanna Benn, Patrick Castillo, Vijay Iyer, Angelica Negrón, Andrew Norman, Ellen Reid, Darian Donovan Thomas with electronics by Layale Chaker, Ian Chang, George Lewis and Cassie Wieland.

Tickets are $15. The recital will remain available through April 18th.

PLAY: Smokefall – Goodman Theatre – April 12th – April 25th

Critics found themselves searching for superlatives when Noah Haidle’s Smokefall opened in 2013. From the writing to the performances and the production, the acclaim was universal.

In Haidle’s play, Violet is pregnant with twins and anticipating a major shift in her life. What she doesn’t know is that her husband is getting ready to leave her.

Adding to her worries is that her daughter has chosen not to speak and her father is suffering from senility. Just what an expectant mother wants in her life as she’s about to give birth to twins.

Starring in Smokefall are Catherine Combs, Anne Fogarty, Katherine Keberlein, Guy Massey, Mike Nussbaum, Eric Slater. (In case you are wondering, two of the actors play Fetus One and Fetus Two). Directing is Anne Kaufmann.

There’s no charge to stream Smokefall, but you do need to reserve your streaming opportunity.

PLAY READING: Paradise Lost – Red Bull Theater – April 12th – 7:30 PM EDT/4:30 PM PDT

John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic poem about temptation and the fall of man seen through the eyes of Adam & Eve and Satan, was probably something you read in college.

It has proven to be catnip for playwrights who want to find a way of putting this extraordinary work on stage.

Enter Michael Barakiva who offered up a 13-hour adaptation in 2013 with Upstart Creatures.

New York’s Red Bull Theater is offering a live reading of the play with the first part on Monday. (I’m betting that the play has been edited since its first presentation eight years ago). The second part will be performed live on Monday, April 26th.

Starring as Satan is Jason Butler Harner. Said Arrika Ekulona is God. The cast includes Stephen Bel Davies, Sheldon Best, Gisela Chípe, Robert Cuccioli, Carol Halstead, Gregory Linington, Daniel José Molina, Sam Morales, Howard Overshown and Cherie Corinne Rice. Barakiva directs.

Tickets are pay what you can. After the initial live performance, the livestream will remain available until 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST the Friday immediately following the live performance.

CABARET AND CONVERSATION: Jim Caruso’s Pajama Cast Party – April 12th – 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

Joining Jim Caruso for this Monday’s Pajama Cast Party are up-and-coming musical theater performer D’Marreon Alexander, Jackie Burns (Wicked), singer Jacob Daniel Cummings and country singers Chase McDaniel and Emily West.

The show is free to watch and if you can’t make it Monday night, the show (and Virtual Halston for that matter) will remain available for streaming on the Cast Party Network on YouTube.

That’s my official list of Best Bets: April 9th – April 12th. But you know I always have a few reminders:

The Metropolitan Opera continues its From Page to Stage series with their 2013-2014 season production of Shostakovich’s The Nose on Friday; their 2007-2008 season production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette on Saturday and their 2017-2018 season production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller on Sunday.

Monday the Metropolitan Opera begins a series of operas based on fairy tales called Once Upon a Time. They start with the 2017-2018 of Massenet’s Cendrillon. I’ll have the full line-up for you on Monday.

This is your last weekend to watch Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike free on Broadway on Demand. The Lincoln Center Theater production stars Billy Magnussen, Kristine Nielsen, David Hyde Pierce and Sigourney Weaver. If you need a good laugh this weekend, this play will offer you many of them. (Use code VANYAFREE on the BOD website)

Also be sure to check with previous Best Bets to find other options that might still be available. As you can see from this week’s list, there are always shows you can watch well after this weekend is over.

That’s officially a wrap on this week’s Best Bets: April 9th – April 12th. Enjoy your weekend!

Photo: An image from House of Usher (Photo by Cory Weaver/Courtesy San Francisco Opera)

*You don’t think I’m serious do you?

The post Best Bets: April 9th – April 12th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.