Music

Music Interview: Disco Biscuits Redux — “Revolution in Motion”

March 10, 2024
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The Disco Biscuits improvisations are not driven by a guitar-rock root: they are more apt to dive into a piece of classical music and then ease into a propulsive dance-club beat that eventually swerves into Zappa-style brainy grime.

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Opera Reviews: BLO and Enigma Chamber Opera Serve Up a Feast of Music and Drama

March 9, 2024
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Some may continue to lament the (supposed) dearth of opera in Boston, but an honest look at these enterprising companies suggest that vivid stories are being told with invention and economy.

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Rock Album Review: Kim Gordon’s “The Collective” — Ensnared in Anxieties

March 8, 2024
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The album’s layers of thick and swampy sound make Kim Gordon’s anxious point.

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Opera Album Review: A Resplendent First Recording of a Forgotten Opera by the Composer of “Manon” and “Thaïs”

March 8, 2024
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With Egyptian-born Amina Edris in the title role, Massenet’s opera engages the musical and theatrical imagination with its rich characterizations of Greek mythic adventures.

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Concert and Album Reviews: Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra plays Britten, Tchaikovsky, Ives, and Ravel — Isabelle Faust plays Britten

March 7, 2024
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Conductor Benjamin Zander put the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra to challenging work at Symphony Hall, while, on record, Isabelle Faust delivers a vital, urgent, and engrossing traversal of the Britten Violin Concerto.

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Concert Review: John Storgårds opens the BSO’s Music of the Midnight Sun Festival

March 6, 2024
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The Finnish conductor’s welcome return to the Boston Symphony Orchestra heralds the kick-off of a two-week festival of Nordic music.

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Jazz Album Review: Gustavo Cortiñas’s “Live in Chicago” — The Culmination of a Decade’s Worth of Music

March 6, 2024
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Throughout this superb live album, percussionist Gustavo Cortiñas allows his fellow band members an enormous amount of space, and that is welcome because of their high level of musicianship.

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Jazz Album Review: Abdullah Ibrahim’s “3” – Meditations on a Legacy

March 5, 2024
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A new release from Abdullah Ibrahim adds almost 100 minutes to a legacy of paramount importance to jazz, to world music, and to our understanding of a life lived in art.

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Classical Music Concert Preview: Cappella Clausura to Perform Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D

March 2, 2024
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Mass in D was Ethel Smyth’s first large-scale score and, according to Cappella Clausura conductor Amelia LeClair, the composition expressed her yearning for hope and redemption.

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Concert Review: The Boston Philharmonic Performs Ravel, Berg, and Mahler

February 29, 2024
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The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra was violinist Liza Ferschtman’s equal partner for much of the performance, imbuing Alban Berg’s dense orchestral writing with warmth and shapeliness

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