Review
Flipping through this volume will help readers understand just how much the internet and consumer technology has changed the world of arts and culture.
The voice in Field Music is disciplined, its cagey earthiness unfailingly engaging our attention.
Calidore String Quartet’s Babel is one of the year’s best albums; Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered offers an unsettling and beautifully direct rethinking of the traditional Roman liturgy; for John Luther Adams fans – and the Adams-curious – Become Trilogy is a must.
Daniil Trifonov’s Silver Age pays bracing tribute to fin-de-siecle and post-Revolutionary Russian music; Jonathan Leshnoff’s Third Symphony is smartly-written and affecting. What happens when tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres team up for an album of duets and ensembles from various Rossini operas? Fireworks.
Alabama Snake is crazy, but it also provides the kind of off-kilter insights into humanity one finds in the best of Southern folklore
Violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong’s Beethoven violin sonatas feel and sound absolutely right; Quatuor Ébène’s comes up with one of this anniversary year’s few, true benchmark releases; Nikolai Lugansky’s traversal of three of Beethoven’s late piano sonatas is often admirable.
Trumpeter Doc Severinsen had the right combination of talent and showmanship to reach and stay in the spotlight, and he adjusted the pieces of his life to maintain his singular place.
Uri Caine’s score about the life and murder of a 19th-century civil rights icon is direct and potent; touching documentation of Richard Pittman’s advocacy for the inventive composer Bernard Hoffer and a demonstration of the sheer musical excellence of Boston Musica Viva; Igor Levit’s keyboard playing is dynamic, precisely articulated, vividly felt, and beautifully voiced.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a stellar artistic accomplishment, a blazingly powerful dramatic experience.
This innovative “documentary” is a major accomplishment: it merits a much broader viewing than it is likely to attract (this one has “sleeper” and “cult classic” written all over it).
Recent Comments