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The Belvedere Series is a chamber music group whose mission of bringing the art form to new audiences is matched by an admirable desire to expand and redefine just what the canon is. Even better: that ambition is backed up by top-flight programming, playing, and musicianship.
It’s wonderful to see the cinema do justice to the magic of this beloved musical.
Most in the Berklee audience seemed satisfied with the chance to be in South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s presence, subdued perhaps, but still casting a magisterial aura.
Director David Charles Rodrigues incorporates this wealth of material, a superflux of images generated by Genesis P-Orridge and the various artistic enterprises s/he founded, with concision and insight. The life and work of his subject is chronicled over the course of a lucid and kaleidoscopic 100 minutes.
Because this “play” relies on audience participation, Vinny DePonto selects inevitably befuddled men and women from the audience on which to demonstrate his mental prowess.
Let’s hope the exhibit inspires some critical thinking about the importance and fragility of democracy, both here and around the world.
“Every record makes the setlist better because we get to keep the things that have really been killin’ and then do things that make you push yourself because these are songs that you haven’t played in several years.”
The only serious flaw in Boston Lyric Opera’s stripped-down staging approach to Aida was that not all the participants were quite up to the organization’s usual standards.
When the performers finally left the platform, breathing hard, crawling towards us and into the audience, I realized I was seeing something new.
Abigail C. Onwunali’s powerhouse performance is memorable, but the mechanics of Mfoniso Udofia’s play don’t always match the lead’s boundary-stretching strengths.
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