Year: 2009
Leonard Bernstein was the most charismatic conductor of the last century. Gustavo Dudamel is the most charismatic of this one – and is likely to remain so for a long time to come. By Caldwell Titcomb In the arena of classical music, the world’s most exciting personage continues to be Gustavo Dudamel, the dynamo from…
Read MoreReviewed by William Webster In Boston’s world of classical music, Winsor Music is indeed a gem; its current director and founder (1996) Peggy Pearson, has done an incredible job pursuing the three dimensions of this organization — chamber music concert series, the commission of new works and a community outreach program engaging talented students in…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble Various Films at Stuart Street Playhouse This isn’t so much a ringing endorsement of the current offerings, the biopic Coco Before Chanel or the British comedy Pirate Radio, as much as it is a plug for the brand-new Stuart Street Playhouse. Located in the heart of the city, the fantastic new venue…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx The prospect of holiday cheer on stage is pretty depressing to contemplate after the soporific treacle of Paula Vogel’s PC-crazed “A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration,” which culminates in the unintentionally eye-popping vision of Walt Whitman, dressed as Kris Kringle, visiting a dying Jewish soldier. For those reluctant to take…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Dec. 1: The Tufts Early Music Ensemble, including singers and instrumentalists, will present a free concert of secular music by the great 15th-century composer Guillaume Dufay and his contemporaries, whom we rarely get to hear in live performance. Distler Performance Hall, Granoff Music Center, Tufts University, 8 p.m.
Read MoreBy Justin Marble “If its Halloween, it must be “‘Saw,’” claims the trailer for the latest iteration of the tired torture-horror franchise surviving more on its audience’s predilection for gooey and gruesome death scenes than coherent storytelling. “Oh yes, there will be blood,” echoes the creepy “Saw” antagonist Jigsaw, a psychotic old man who creates…
Read MoreRomeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, in repertory at the Gamm Theatre, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, November 25 through December 5, 2009. Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb To celebrate the start of its 25th season, the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is offering two Shakespeare plays in repertory: “Romeo and Juliet”…
Read MoreThe Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, Princeton University Press, 248 pages, $16.95. Reviewed by Harvey Blume In 1916, as Europe waged an horrific war that, nearly a century later, makes even less sense, if possible, than it did at the time, refugees, renegades, draft dodgers, opportunists, revolutionaries and artists…
Read MoreWhether you’re a Jungian or a Freudian, think Jung was a genius or charlatan, or even if you’re someone who’s never given much thought to psychotherapy, the exhibition on the “The Red Book” at New York City’s Rubin Museum of Art (which runs through February 15) is worth a visit. THE RED BOOK by C.G.…
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