Music

Classical Album Reviews: “Ravel Fragments” & Stephen Hough plays Hough

June 23, 2025
Posted in , , ,

Pianist Bertrand Chamayou demonstrates just how mercurial and influential Ravel could be; composer-pianist Stephen Hough’s Piano Concerto casts a Ravel-like spell.

Musician Interview: Saxophonist, Composer, and Historian of Early Jazz Allen Lowe — An Invaluable Maverick

June 22, 2025
Posted in , , ,

Allen Lowe is a saxophonist, composer, and historian of early jazz and roots music who doesn’t think he’s getting a fair shake from jazz’s gatekeepers.

Jazz Concert Review: Tight Like That — Steven Bernstein and Sexmob

June 21, 2025
Posted in , , ,

The whole band demonstrated an expressive variety of mark-making, as visual artists like to say: lines and squiggles and blotches, graceful or rude.

Classical Music Album Reviews: Stewart Goodyear and “Hallelujah Junction”

June 21, 2025
Posted in , , ,

Pianist Stewart Goodyear livens up a tried-and-true program with works new and unfamiliar; the husband-and-wife team of Lukas Geniušas and Anna Geniushene survey piano music written on these shores, starting in 1932.

Opera Album Review: Finally, Verdi’s Original 1857 Version of “Simon Boccanegra” Gets the Recording It Deserves

June 21, 2025
Posted in , , ,

The skillful Mark Elder leads a fine cast, including the superb Peruvian tenor Iván Ayón-Rivas.

Jazz Album Reviews: Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans — Two Indispensable Recordings

June 20, 2025
Posted in , , ,

Happily, these clean, bright Craft reissues make some invaluable music glisten.

Concert Review: The Chicago Blues Festival — A Reassuring Vision of the Future

June 19, 2025
Posted in , , ,

This year’s Chicago Blues Festival provided plenty of hope for the blues.

Classical Music Album Reviews: Ravel/Bach and Bruch & Korngold Violin Concertos

June 19, 2025
Posted in , ,

Pianist Yeol Eum Son is more than up to the demands of J.S. Bach and Maurice Ravel; violinist Bomsori brings exquisite balances and shimmering sonority to Bruch and Korngold.

Concert Review: Boston Camerata’s “Gallery of Kings” — Uses and Abuses of Power, ca. 1300

June 17, 2025
Posted in , , ,

Through story, song, missives, and popular gibes at authority, the Boston Camerata program looked at kings remembered for their great deeds and those commemorated for their bumbling idiocy.

Opera Preview/Interview: White Snake Projects’ “To The People Like Us” — Understanding the Urgency of the Moment

June 16, 2025
Posted in , , , ,

Our conversation touched—considerably, as it turned out—on the current political climate and the dispiriting response of the musical world to the rising tide of homegrown authoritarianism.

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Categories

Archives