Peruse the catalogue of composer Richard Danielpour and one may deduce that he has a predilection for the mezzo-soprano voice. He’s written music for Jessye Norman (Sweet Talk), Denyce Graves (Margaret Garner) and Isabel Leonard (Of Love and Longing). He also has a penchant for collaborating with contemporary poets who know how to write elegantly about…
New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini once commented that there was an eerie similarity to the songs of contemporary American composers. In his learned estimation, only two things — text choice and the way a composer illuminated the voice of a specific singer — distinguished one from the other. American composer Evan Mack —…
Concert seasons are planned far in advance and when the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra announced that violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman would be playing Max Bruch’s most famous violin concerto at Symphony Hall on March 11, 2020, it wasn’t long before the event was sold out. It’s hard to plan for something like a coronavirus pandemic, though….
Travel on SC Highway 171 south from Charleston for about eight miles and you’ll arrive at Folly Beach, a simple seaside town with a lighthouse on one end and plucky surfers dotting the water along the coast. You can get fresh shrimp at Crosby’s or fish on the pier all afternoon long. This was George…
When solar winds convey charged particles from the sun, they collide with gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere and create a natural wonder, the Aurora Borealis. These dancing lights in the sky, milky-white apparitions sometimes tinged with hues of pink or green, are usually reserved for the pleasure of people in Scandinavia. Yet, every once in…
If Finnish composer Jean Sibelius were alive today you might find him perusing the self-help section at Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, a massive bookstore in Helsinki designed by the famous architect Alvar Aalto. Plagued by depression, insecurity and alcoholism, the composer left letters and diary entries that reveal his inner struggles. He was a contemporary of Wolf,…
Robert Spano announced exactly two years ago that he’ll soon step down as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s music director.The New York Times calls him the man who made the ASO “a force to be reckoned with in contemporary American music,” and his departure spells opportunity for a new talent able to conduct, fundraise and inspire….
“Two souls with but one nasty thought; two pens that drool as one,” wrote New York critic W.J. Henderson in 1907, finding Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss well matched when it came to the play and, soon after, the opera version of Salome. Despite Salome’s salacious subject matter — or perhaps because of it — the…
Numerous works have been derived from William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. It’s the timeless and provocative story of two star-crossed lovers in Verona, unable to overcome the powerful divide between their families. “Heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold,” it seemed for a time that Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s…
Despite the claim of composer Dmitri Shostakovich that his final symphony contained no extra-musical meaning, doubt remains. Post-glasnost realizations make it more likely that his Symphony No. 15, which premiered in 1972, encompasses programmatic significance camouflaged by a masterful composer then at the height of his creative powers. On Saturday evening, Principal Guest Conductor Donald…
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