Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Sasha Frere-Jones' recent article in The New Yorker about the British songstress Paloma Faith’s entrée into the United States market got me thinking about the fortunes of British female s…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 01:58PMMonday, November 26, 2012
I feel sort of embarrassed to say this as the thing has gotten such euphoric reviews, but Steven Spielberg's new movie about Abraham Lincoln kinda left me cold. I exited the theatre over the…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 04:31PMTuesday, November 20, 2012
The Theatre Development Fund has launched a whimsical online resource called Theatre Dictionary.The tool is being billed as "a video guide to 'theatre lingo' by TDF and theatre companies fro…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 01:35PMMonday, November 19, 2012
The current production of Tosca at the San Francisco Opera is wonderful to hear. The orchestra plays lavishly and the excellent double cast (which featured Patricia Racette in the title…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 06:55PMWednesday, November 14, 2012
Why does time so often play tricks on us when we go to the theatre? Why do plays rarely feel the length that they actually are -- even ones that claim a unity of time, place and action?I ask…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 12:56PMFriday, November 9, 2012
From the moment a friend in Washington DC introduced me to Martin Sexton this summer (when I was over there doing a fellowship at the Library of Congress) I have been hooked on the singer-so…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 04:21PMWednesday, November 7, 2012
Today's blogpost is brought to you by 11-year-old San Francisco school student Jasmin Tejeda (pictured left). Jasmin joined me for The Lion King during its latest run in San Francisco.&…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 01:28PMTuesday, November 6, 2012
I snapped the poster pictured on the left this morning when I was in a stall in the ladies bathrooms at the Stanford gymnasium. It was hanging on the inside of the stall door and I suspect e…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 12:58PMMonday, November 5, 2012
I am hard-pressed to find a more wonderful anecdote to these discombobulating times of mudslinging politics, economic crises and really awful weather, than Pitch Perfect. I saw the film yest…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 03:07PMSaturday, November 3, 2012
My head was full of thoughts about Costas Vaxevanis, the journalist who was arrested and put on trial by the Greek authorities a few days ago for publishing a list of wealthy Swiss bank acco…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 11:40PMWednesday, October 31, 2012
I've lately -- and embarrassingly belatedly -- become hooked on The Voice, NBC's singing show which asks celebrity judges from the music world like Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green to pic…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:32PMMonday, October 29, 2012
The San Francisco Giants won the World Series and a rogue group of fans left the city in a state of disrepair. Crazy times. Mitt Romney's threats notwithstanding, at least we will always hav…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:54PMFriday, October 26, 2012
I quite often find myself wishing that curatorial statements could be excised from the walls of art museums. Or that they could be less pretentious.This feeling struck me palpably last week …
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 04:51PMWednesday, October 24, 2012
When Orson Welles adapted Herman Melville's Moby Dick for the stage in 1955, Kenneth Tynan famously wrote: "It is absurd to expect Orson Welles to attempt anything less than the impossible. …
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:33PMMonday, October 22, 2012
I was lured to the East coast this week with the promise of fall color and experienced not only incredibly vibrant scenery out of doors but also colorful art happenings inside, including one…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:35PMTuesday, October 16, 2012
If you want to make bank as a musical theatre creator, come up with a production that will have recycle value.And if you can write something that will come into vogue, say, ooh, I dunno, eve…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 09:02AMSunday, October 14, 2012
When Bellini wrote The Capulets and the Montagues in 1830, trouser roles were on their way out. Romeo was the last major role of this kind in Italian opera.To see Joyce DiDonato p…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 12:39PMWednesday, October 10, 2012
Andras Schiff gave an hour-long lecture about J S Bach last night at Davies Symphony Hall. The pianist recently began a two-year residency with the San Francisco Symphony, during which time …
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 08:57PMTuesday, October 9, 2012
I spent the weekend in Lone Pine, a cowboy town on the far side of California.I'm not kidding about the cowboys; there were horses hanging outside the saloons on the main thoroughfare while …
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 06:23PMMonday, October 8, 2012
This picture represents a yogic approach to voice. The different chakras in the body are aligned with the vowel sounds. While western singing practices mostly focus on the resonance of the v…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 07:52PMWednesday, October 3, 2012
OK. Playing catchup on a few experiences of the past few days. Had to get some thoughts out about public book readings this morning and now will devote some time to sharing brief thoughts ab…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 05:30PMSome novelists and poets are extraordinary readers. By all accounts, Charles Dickens was an incredible orator. And I've gotten goosebumps while listening to Dylan Thomas read Under Milk Wood…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:48PMTuesday, September 25, 2012
We've all known it for a while now: It's become close to impossible to make a living as a full-time arts journalist these days.And it's not just arts journalists who know it; a friend of min…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 12:33PMMonday, September 24, 2012
Finding a way to talk about California Shakespeare Theatre's production of Hamlet, SF Playhouse's take on My Fair Lady and the Man Ray and Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism exhibition at th…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 06:45PMWednesday, September 19, 2012
What made last week's Public Radio Program Directors Conference in Las Vegas barely tolerable was getting off The Strip for an evening.I have visited Vegas before several times (for conferen…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 01:50PMMonday, September 17, 2012
San Francisco Opera's Opera in the Ballpark event is one of the best things about living in San Francisco. I've been to every single simulcast, which the company presents once a year at the …
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 07:40PMMonday, September 10, 2012
My life has been a bit of a blur between returning from working for the music division at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and preparing for the Public Radio Program Directors Confer…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 08:20PMWednesday, September 5, 2012
One of my final acts as a hired gun at the Library of Congress's music division this summer was to help the concert office produce a podcast to advertise its upcoming season. The challenge w…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 08:42PMTuesday, September 4, 2012
It's official: the classical music revolution has arrived.I think there can be no greater sign of this than the advent of the upcoming music festival created by Classical Revolution, a grass…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:16PMFriday, August 31, 2012
The Library of Congress's Music Division looks like the archetypal government institution. The walls are beige. There's little natural light. The staff cubicles and reader study desks are un…
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 02:56PMMonday, August 27, 2012
Artists as diverse as John Gay and Bono have long used the stage as a pulpit from which to preach a political, religious or social message. Al Green has come to realize the power of sharing …
SOURCE: Chloe Veltman at 11:23AM 
