From the category archives:

Music

Music

Opera Boston’s “Madame White Snake”

Thumbnail image for Opera Boston’s “Madame White Snake” by Bryce Lambert March 3, 2010

Boston lowbrow attends the first local opera premiere in decades.

Music

Spanish Mustaches and Puppy Dog Lips: Riverside Theater Works’ “Cosi Fan Tutti”

Thumbnail image for Spanish Mustaches and Puppy Dog Lips: Riverside Theater Works’ “Cosi Fan Tutti” by Erin Huelskamp February 24, 2010

Erin Huelskamp takes in Riverside Theater Works’ “Cosi Fan Tutti” and some wine in Hyde Park.

Music

BLO Does Britten in a Real Live Castle

Thumbnail image for BLO Does Britten in a Real Live Castle by Bryce Lambert February 9, 2010

Seeing the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of The Turn of the Screw in the Park Plaza Castle and perusing the press literature on their demographics, outreach, and special events, is enough to convince me that they’re moving the the direction every opera company (and for that matter, every high-culture producer) wants to move in. Upon [...]

Music

A Far Cry: Boston’s Conductorless Chamber Ensemble

Thumbnail image for A Far Cry: Boston’s Conductorless Chamber Ensemble by Bryce Lambert February 4, 2010

Boston’s lucky to have an orchestra like A Far Cry and while a reviewer might be tempted to focus on their core “gimmicks”–that they are young, stand while performing, and perform without principle players or a conductor–that would really be gimmicky in itself, because nothing should distract attention from the Criers’ unequivocal musicianship. They bring [...]

Music

Collecting Classical Music, Digitally or iTunes Sucks

Thumbnail image for Collecting Classical Music, Digitally or iTunes Sucks by Bryce Lambert January 30, 2010

I was happy to see Jeremy Eichler’s Untouchable: What a collector loses (and gains) in the age of music downloading in the Globe last month, but, although it was a nice piece on the larger, intangible issues classical music collectors face when considering going or going digital, it lacked mention of the more practical and [...]

Music

BMOP: Band in Boston

Thumbnail image for BMOP: Band in Boston by Bryce Lambert January 25, 2010

The BMOP continued its season last Friday with their Band in Boston concert, celebrating 20th and 21st century music for wind ensemble with two repertoire mainstays by Stravinsky and Percy Grainger, as well as some newer compositions by Harold Meltzer, Wayne Peterson, and Joseph Schwantner. Robert Kirzinger’s excellent program notes make the case that band [...]

Music

Palmer Goes Pops, Lockhart Goes Punk!

Thumbnail image for Palmer Goes Pops, Lockhart Goes Punk! by Bryce Lambert January 2, 2010

The Amanda Palmer/Pops concert made for probably the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had. Her set, including such popular selections from her Dresden Dolls and solo material as Missed Me, Runs in the Family, Coin-Operated Boy, and Leeds United, though short, was utterly spectacular. Palmer’s music has a unique quality of retaining a vintageness, [...]

Music

The Docket: New Year’s Eve

Thumbnail image for The Docket: New Year’s Eve by Bryce Lambert December 30, 2009

For me, New Year’s Eve was between Boston Baroque’s Mozart and Cimarosa double-bill and the Boston Pops concert with Amanda Palmer, because First Night is kind of for the kids, if I saw Dane Cook I don’t think I’d make it to 2010, and I’m not really interested in pretending I’m a celebrity for a [...]

Music

“The Christmas Revels,” Preserving American Music

Thumbnail image for “The Christmas Revels,” Preserving American Music by Bryce Lambert December 22, 2009

The Christmas Revels, now in its 39th annual production at Sanders Theater (through Dec. 27th), may sometimes appear, at its surface, a corny family-friendly holiday show where a bunch sometimes amateurish performers hop around the stage in patched overalls and bonnets singing long-forgotten songs. But, it’s actually engaging in a very necessary act of cultural [...]

Music

Boston Baroque’s Messiah

Thumbnail image for Boston Baroque’s <em>Messiah</em> by Bryce Lambert December 16, 2009

For me, a good Messiah is not muddled by Victorian applications of pomp and grandiloquence or weighed-down by its “sacred” subject matter. Nor should it be made into a dry academic exercise, in-line with trends in early music performance and recording that sometimes push for too much “authenticity.” It should try to bring something fresh [...]

Music

Free Beethoven: The Chiara Quartet at Harvard

Thumbnail image for Free Beethoven: The Chiara Quartet at Harvard by Bryce Lambert December 5, 2009

The Chiara Quartet, in-residence at Harvard’s music department, performed the first of six-concert series surveying Beethoven’s complete string quartets. Vance Koven reviewed it on the Musical Intelligencer. The concerts continue February 12th and April 9th. Free tickets are available in advance from the Harvard Box Office, but as long as you show up at Paine [...]

Music

BMOP Bangs Big

Thumbnail image for BMOP Bangs Big by Bryce Lambert November 17, 2009

I’m later to it than I’d like to be, but I wanted to offer some words on BMOP’s Big Bang concert last Friday in addition to my earlier brief post of anticipatory excitement. The name of the concert is a clever pun. It not only refers to the percussion pieces that made up the program, [...]

Music

BMOP Makes Some Noise up in Jordan

Thumbnail image for BMOP Makes Some Noise up in Jordan by Bryce Lambert November 11, 2009

The BMOP is back. After a bit of a break following their excellent Voices of America Festival, they’ll be tearing up Jordan Hall Friday night with an ambitious concert entitled Big Bang. On the program:
Edgard Varèse: Ionization
Lou Harrison: La Koro Sutro
George Antheil: Ballet mécanique
This is jarring music that involves bizarre large-scale orchestrations and will fill [...]

Movies

The Music of Traffic: Sufjan Stevens’ The BQE

Thumbnail image for The Music of Traffic: Sufjan Stevens’ <em>The BQE</em> by Bryce Lambert November 8, 2009

Sufjan Stevens’ recent foray into film, The BQE (click for an interesting description), a visual and orchestral essay on the scar and affront to urban planning that is the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, is one of those movies made to be seen on DVD. The chances of seeing a screening, except for some lucky urbanites well on [...]

Music

Opera Boston’s Tancredi

Thumbnail image for Opera Boston’s Tancredi by Bryce Lambert October 25, 2009

Opera Boston’s Tancredi (final show the 27th) is exactly what Boston opera should be. Not a lavish star-studded production that’s recorded to be sold on DVD, or broadcast live to movie theaters; but an intimate relatively inexpensive production that showcases local talent and brings to the stage works that have fallen from favor. $30 or [...]

Music

James Levine Calls In Sick for Beethoven Nos. 1-4

Thumbnail image for James Levine Calls In Sick for Beethoven Nos. 1-4 by Bryce Lambert October 22, 2009

According to today’s Globe, James Levine will not return to the BSO tonight as planned to conduct the first concert in this season’s complete Beethoven symphony cycle. From what I’ve seen, I’ve enjoyed the guest conductors, particularly Ludovic Morlot’s recent program. The local in me would have liked a box set of the complete symphonies [...]

Music

God Save Ning Feng!

Thumbnail image for God Save Ning Feng! by Bryce Lambert October 12, 2009

The Boston Philharmonic played its third and final performance of its first concert this season at Sanders Theater on Sunday afternoon. On the program was Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major, featuring Chinese violin virtuoso (the word falls short) Feng Ning, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7. As his first encore to the concerto, Feng [...]

Lectures

Opera, from the Future?

Thumbnail image for Opera, from the Future? by Bryce Lambert October 8, 2009

Elly Jessop (left), a master’s student in Tod Machover’s MIT Media Lab research group, gave a talk Wednesday night at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on the upcoming production Death and the Powers, billed the opera of the future. Set to premier in Monaco September 2010, and tour internationally with a stop at the [...]

Music

First Monday at Jordan Hall

Thumbnail image for First Monday at Jordan Hall by Bryce Lambert October 6, 2009

The New England Conservatory’s chamber music series ‘First Monday’ opened this week for its 25th season with an excellent concert of Gabrieli, Bach, and Mozart. Started in 1985 by NEC then president and cellist Laurence Lesser (younger at left), First Monday programs six free chamber concerts with wonderfully eclectic programs and distinguished NEC faculty and [...]

Music

BMOP and Florestan Sing Barber

Thumbnail image for BMOP and Florestan Sing Barber by Bryce Lambert September 28, 2009

On Sunday Boston’s, if not America’s, premiere new music orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, in conjunction with the Florestan Recital Project, concluded their weekend long festival ‘Voice of America.’ Double billed concerts on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday paired Florestan performances of Samuel Barber songs (entitled ‘Barberfest’) with BMOP concerts of American vocal music. Tufts’ [...]