Review

Jazz Album Review: Dizzy Gillespie’s “Soul & Salvation” — The Spirit Is Cheesy But Willing

May 17, 2024
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“Soul & Salvation” is a short album, and you’ll be sorry when it’s over. It’s hardly an essential album in Dizzy Gillespie’s long discography, but you won’t regret giving it a listen.

Doc Talk: Four Documentaries Defy Doomsday at the Global Cinema Film Festival of Boston

May 16, 2024
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What have you done to prevent the end of the world? A quartet of documentaries in this year’s Global World Film Festival offer different answers to this nagging question.

Classical Album Reviews: James Ehnes plays Bernstein and Williams and ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Does “City Noir”

May 16, 2024
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The performance of John Adams’s “City Noir” is swift and characterful, though sometimes pushed perhaps a bit too hard for its own good. The rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade” is clear but a bit too safe.

Blues Album Review: Gary Clark Jr.’s “JPEG RAW” — Branching Out in New Directions

May 15, 2024
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Gary Clark Jr.’s “JPEG RAW” could be seen as an orchard whose far-reaching sonic branches — nurtured by the rich, fertile, and ancient soil of the blues — stretch into jazz, hip hop, and funk.

Theater Review: Broadway’s “Water for Elephants” – A Counterargument

May 15, 2024
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“Arts Fuse” theater critic Christopher Caggiano, among others, found that the new Broadway musical “Water for Elephants” “has very little going for it.” Let’s agree to disagree

Jazz Album Review: Kenny Barron’s “Beyond This Place” – As Enthralling as Ever

May 15, 2024
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The spirited restraint of the pianist’s playing — its omnipresent precision and clarity — sounds contemporary and fresh.

Dance Review: “Naughty Bits” — Pushing Back on a Culture of Sexual Abuse

May 14, 2024
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Sara Juli has proven herself to be a master of using humor to examine subjects that are uncomfortable and not at all comic. 

Music Album Review: Josie Lowder’s “Here To Love” — Extraordinary Guitar Playing, Soulful Vocals, and Buoyant Personality

May 14, 2024
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Josie Lowder debut solo album “Here To Love” is more than a reminder of how good she was — it stands as incontrovertible evidence that she has grown as an artist and especially as a songwriter.

Opera Album Review: “Circé,” A Big Hit from the 2023 Boston Early Music Festival, Now Enchantingly Recorded

May 13, 2024
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The BEMF performed the work in July 2023 in New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, to enormous enthusiasm.

Classical Music Album Review: Mendelssohn’s Complete Symphonies

May 13, 2024
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The Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich recording of Mendelssohn’s Symphonies doesn’t cast the composer as a radical, but the effort highlights the strengths of his music and finds ways to put distinctive interpretive stamps on several of these scores.

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