Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Swinging big band music was hot in Manhattan this week! From the moment the Tony Kadleck Big Band began their set at the Birdland Jazz Club, we tapped our toes and jumped to a tasteful, tigh…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 06:23PMSunday, January 29, 2023
The program opened with Camille Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 in C minor “Organ” (1886). When the organ spoke at the first poco adagio along with lush strings and harmonies, the amalgam…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 04:24PMSunday, January 22, 2023
Existentialism seemed to dominate undertones dealing with the passage of time, mechanically repeating the practices of our predecessors, and our insignificance in the vastness of the univers…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:00PMTrombonist/composer Conrad Herwig and the Latin side all-stars ascended the stage to deliver their first musical offering. Splendid charts, extended improvisation, artistic interaction, virt…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 02:57PMMonday, January 16, 2023
Brine honored the music of The Smiths through an auto-biographical perspective revealing universal human needs like love, friendship, and realized ambitions. We discovered Brine’s Bible Be…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:19PMRaconteur and narrator Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago) guided us through the majestic proclamations of dances, storytelling, and music representing the magnificence and provenance of these ric…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:16PMSunday, January 8, 2023
This is a sad tale of the tragic nature of Russia’s brutal conflagration with Ukraine, as explicated by actor, writer, and director Stephan Morrow in a complex “kaleidoscope” of ideas …
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 07:52PMFriday, December 23, 2022
Maestro Kent Tritle and Musica Sacra delivered an elegant, nonpareil performance expressing the radiant afflatus of Handel’s artistic and spiritual masterpiece Messiah. The exquisite sound…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:22PMTuesday, December 20, 2022
This notable variety of musical works is apposite for The Orchestra Now, an ensemble of young professionals assembling to hone their skills for careers in music around the world. This evenin…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 12:46PMTuesday, December 6, 2022
Today was a splendid example of the expressive power of visual and auditory art articulated with a fine orchestra, magnificent art exhibit, and stimulating repartee.
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 01:07PMSunday, December 4, 2022
If the 17-piece Kevin Blanq big band and Kathryn Farmer were not enough to get you in the mood for smooth swinging and dancing, the urbane, bespoke, and suave dancer extraordinaire Manuel Ro…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 12:44PMA Tomato Can’t Grow in the Bronx is a heartfelt, sentimental look at old-world family dynamics that many of us saw weaken after the shifts from cities to suburbs accelerated in the late 60…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 12:41PMMonday, November 21, 2022
For the first time in 35 years, Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts returned to the stage. Envisioned initially by Ellington as a “Festival of Grace,” provenance for Sacred Concerts is in…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:17PMWendy Moten ascended to the Birdland stage with a smile and charm that lit up the room. From her first words and the comfortable swing tempo of her first song, All of Me, Moten emerged as a …
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:12PMTuesday, November 15, 2022
The rich baritone voice of raconteur Frank Zilinyi launched Radiotheatre’s deliciously macabre exordium of The Haunting of 85 East 4th Street, a dark, spellbinding tale of New York City hi…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 09:55AMThursday, November 10, 2022
Blake Allen’s Insomnia is a cerebral, enigmatic, and mystifying artistic creation chronicling a night of an insomniac narrator. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Sleep and Wa…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:25PMTuesday, November 8, 2022
Benjamin Franklin the man emerged as a frowzy, flawed, and crafty roué, relentlessly attempting to seduce the married Mme Brillon. Franklin deftly engaged and modified his façon de parler …
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:31PMMonday, November 7, 2022
Maestro Botstein and The Orchestra Now demonstrated their capacity to express powerful rich intones, frenetic fugatos, and exquisite, intense subtleties.
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 08:13AMFriday, November 4, 2022
Wendel's songs are strikingly original, expressive, and extraordinarily inventive. His ideas and improvisations are freely chromatic, virtuosic, and organic, and he employed subtle be-bop id…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 12:40PMThursday, November 3, 2022
This cast deserves high praise for maintaining the challenging, complex characters and tensions while also charming and engaging viewers who could not resist being sympathetic and moved. The…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 10:30PMSunday, October 30, 2022
The performance of Mozart's Requiem, K526, was glorious and ecstatic. The sui generis admixture of rich sounds from soloists, chorus, and orchestra was superb. At the same time, the sumptuou…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 05:12PMThursday, October 27, 2022
Charlap opened with a sumptuous, gentle introduction to Tommy Dorsey's I'm Getting Sentimental Over You, leading to a string of some of the greatest songs of the American Songbook and jazz c…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 05:04PMWednesday, October 26, 2022
With the production’s delights of flamenco dancing, passionate arias, magnificent costuming, staging, lighting, soaring melodies, and powerful drama, we ultimately gasp in awe at the power…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 05:47PMTuesday, October 25, 2022
Kittredge is a songstress of sumptuous romantic energy who possesses a dazzling gift for expressing the rich meaning of songs. She owns a sensitive, delightful facon de parler and freely com…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 04:15PMMonday, October 24, 2022
As the cast masterfully characterized Shakespeare’s saturnine work, we were inexorably drawn into the portentous tale. Supporting the account were the dim penumbra of macabre images, a pan…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 10:08AMFriday, October 21, 2022
Love Online was a delightful musical journey enhanced by some of the finest songs that were ever written. It was performed by two enchanting, empathetic, and erudite individuals who understa…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 10:02AMTuesday, October 18, 2022
The Orchestra Now stands proudly in the well-earned tradition of excellence among the superb symphony orchestras that regularly perform in New York City. And while they celebrate major stand…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:35PMFriday, October 14, 2022
This play production “Susan B” reminds us that Susan B. Anthony was an astounding, courageous voice in a wilderness who, at her peril, evoked an awakening of clear thinking, reflection, …
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 03:43PMTuesday, October 11, 2022
Human nature prevails as little has changed since Henrik Ibsen's portrayal of "Hedda Gabler" in 1891 Norway. In tonight's "Hedda Gabler," we witnessed the meandering deviltries of the pistol…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 02:28PMSunday, October 2, 2022
New York City Center presented the fourth installment of its Fall For Dance Festival, a trio of spectacular, diverse dance offerings and celebration of dance and music and a magical fusion o…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 06:25PMSaturday, September 24, 2022
The men were dapper, the ladies elegant, they were all beautiful, and together drew viewers into the time best befitting each Irving Berlin song’s historical context. We heard charming ane…
SOURCE: The Front Row Center at 06:35PM 
