Music
I am grateful that Al Jardine (at 82, he’s showing signs of age) and Brian Wilson’s band are still bringing Wilson’s brilliant legacy to audiences.
Read More
Two very influential and brilliant Cuban musicians, Albita Rodríguez and Chucho Valdés, join together to make a fine album; Chilean guitarist/vocalist/composer Camila Meza serves up a potent mixture of jazz and lyrics concerned with social justice.
Read More
Fans who at least followed the band through its heyday in the late ’80s and early ’90s couldn’t have predicted the Mekons would wind it back in 2025 behind a new album just as galvanizing as their past catalog.
Read More
Could it be that Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp is the big kahuna of our symphonic music?
Read More
So what am I saying? That the system is imperfect, corrupted by bad voters like me (there must be a few others who didn’t listen to even close to everything on this list — show of hands?)
Read More
A particular guttural sequence of phrases from accordionist Ted Reichman suggested a musical cadence, and I felt myself respond with the jazz fan’s involuntary noise of appreciation: “Unh!”
Read More
Composer Michael Daugherty’s lovely survey of 20th-century touchstones continues; violinist Philippe Quint plays a lineup made up (mostly) of commissions.
Read More
Pianist Daniil Trifonov’s no stranger to playing Rachmaninoff with Nelsons and the BSO—they delivered a memorable outing of this very piano concerto in 2019—and, while Saturday’s traversal was periodically rusty, it built in spirit and tightness as the evening proceeded.
Read More
On “hommages,” United Strings of Europe is technically secure, rhythmically precise, richly colored, and ever attuned to matters of nuance and spirit. Tchaikovsky’s output could be uneven, and this installment of Alpesh Chauhan’s continuing traversal of the Russian icon’s orchestral music with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is proof.
Read More
The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll — Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year
We are all part of a community with a deep commitment to this extraordinary but way-too-often unappreciated musical art, and the late critic Francis Davis believed we should work together and share what we know. His poll was one important way to do just that
Read More