Music

Concert Review: Wayne Shorter’s 80th Birthday Celebration — A Memorable Bash

November 26, 2013
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One doesn’t come away from a Wayne Shorter Quartet performance merely raving about individual accomplishments: the set on Sunday night never felt like just a compelling sequence of solos.

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Music Interview: Childsplay — Featuring the Fiddles of Bob Childs

November 26, 2013
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What makes Childsplay unique and inspiring is its back story. Every one of the fiddles played on stage was made by Bob Childs, a Cambridge-based luthier who has been making exceptional instruments by hand for more than 30 years.

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Fuse Concert Review: Pianist Fred Hersch and Guitarist Julian Lage — A Sublime Duo

November 23, 2013
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The set was thrilling, full of the most intelligent byplay, and consistently songful. Chamber music doesn’t get any better than this.

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Classical Music CD Reviews: Lang Lang plays Prokofiev and Bartók (Sony Classical), Philadelphia Orchestra plays Stravinsky (Deutsche Grammophon)

November 21, 2013
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So we’ve got a mixed bag. If you get this Lang Lang disc, it should be for the Bartók, but not the Prokofiev: as things stand, the competition there simply blows Lang out of the water.

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Classical Music CD Reviews: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Early Classical Opera

November 20, 2013
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Two discs released by Harmonia Mundi benefit from the dramatic flair of conductor René Jacobs.

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Concert Review: Joshua Bell at Symphony Hall

November 19, 2013
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Violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Sam Haywood delivered a highly entertaining and substantive (if too short) Sunday afternoon recital.

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Rock Album Review: Beady Eye — “BE” Good?

November 19, 2013
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At its best, “BE” is an adventurous album, which automatically makes it an improvement over Beady Eye’s 2011 debut.

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CD Review: Death Grips — Hands On the Modern Moment

November 18, 2013
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Hopefully, Death Grips can keep finding new ways to convey contemporary dissonance, because as it stands now they have produced four of the most important musical works of the 21st Century.

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Music Commentary: Capleton’s Redemption Song?

November 14, 2013
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Capleton’s cancellation at Boston’s Hibernian Hall shows that reggae stars can’t easily escape their anti-gay discographies.

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Book Review: “Wail” — A Great Biography of Jazz Legend Bud Powell

November 13, 2013
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Peter Pullman deplores (without bathos) the wreckage of Bud Powell’s life and mourns (without tears) the consequent loss of so much masterful music. And his story of Powell’s life is even grimmer than the one we have previously been told.

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