All stories by Jean Ballard Terepka on BroadwayStars

Friday, December 7, 2018

Experiments in Opera: Modularias by Jean Ballard Terepka

Since 2010, Experiments in Opera, founded by composers Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch and Jason Cady, has presented all sorts of new works that simultaneously affirm and challenge the very idea…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 07:10PM
Monday, November 12, 2018

Dada at the Movies: Guy Livingston, piano by Jean Ballard Terepka

The whole evening was an experience of two interconnected worlds. The first was the historical world of Dadaism, exhibited in music, words and visual images. The second was Livingston’s de…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 05:26PM
Sunday, October 14, 2018

Aynur, with special guest Kinan Azmeh (September 30, 2018) by Jean Ballard Terepka

Each song – some traditional folk ballads and some national calls to history and identity – became, in Aynur’s hands, an individual work of art, intricately structured and elegantly pa…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:45PM

The Crossing: Of Arms and the Man by Jean Ballard Terepka

Nally’s extensive program notes provided insights on the program, whose title comes from the opening line of Virgil’s "Aeneid," “Arma virumque cano” … “I sing of arms and the man…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:55PM
Friday, August 31, 2018

New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2018: Inspirations and Purposes by Jean Ballard Terepka

The Festival’s sole lecture-presentation proved useful in revealing how one composer viewed the intersections of science and art in his own composing: trumpeter Skye van Duuren, now a trum…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:22PM

New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2018: Excellence by Jean Ballard Terepka

In the very first concert, one of the finest – and also longest – pieces of the Festival was Marie-Helene Bernard’s BOA Sr (1.5, i.e. Concert 1, piece 5). In 2010, Bernard read the obi…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:04PM

New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival 2018: Overview by Jean Ballard Terepka

This year, the Festival site was the Abrons Arts Center; the three performance venues in the facility – the Experimental Theater, the  Playhouse and the Underground Theater – were all u…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:37PM
Friday, August 24, 2018

International Contemporary Ensemble: “Grand Pianola Music” by Jean Ballard Terepka

After intermission, German-born and now San Francisco based conductor Christian Reif led the International Contemporary Ensemble together with Quince Vocal Ensemble (Amanda DeBoer Bartlett/s…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 05:28PM
Friday, June 22, 2018

C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective Presents “Water Music” by Jean Ballard Terepka

One special feature of this concert was also a mark of C4’s maturity and clout as a musical organization with a well-deserved reputation for excellence: they sponsor the IGNITE commissioni…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 02:04PM
Friday, June 15, 2018

Tosca Opdam by Jean Ballard Terepka

Opdam’s de Raaff playing, in contrast, was marvelous. The composer took his inspiration from Willem de Kooning’s 1977 painting, "North Atlantic Light." De Raaff and Opdam both captured t…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:01PM
Thursday, May 31, 2018

C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective presents New Music with NY Composers Circle by Jean Ballard Terepka

The nine pieces on this program differed tremendously from each other in style, tone and effect. However, two important qualities unified all the performances. First, the composers all cause…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:51AM
Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Tanya Tagaq (World Music Institute) by Jean Ballard Terepka

Tagaq makes music with her whole body: it is an act as fundamental as consuming, excreting, orgasm and birthing. She can make any sound – whisper and howl, caress, growl and grunt – and …

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 01:53PM
Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Repast Baroque Ensemble: Bohemian Fantasy by Jean Ballard Terepka

The program opened and closed with pieces for all five musicians together. Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1620/23-1680) both made the quartet of string…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 02:38PM
Monday, May 7, 2018

Master-Pieces, A Chamber Opera by Jean Ballard Terepka

However, it’s not what we normally think of as an opera. And the performance, characterized by both moving strengths and disconcerting weaknesses, unfolded, awkwardly and interestingly ……

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:18PM
Sunday, May 6, 2018

If Not Now …? Chamber Music of Timothy Brown by Jean Ballard Terepka

Brown called his concert, "If Not Now …?" implying, for himself and us, then, when? Removed by more than a decade from the kinds of composing in which he’s now typically engaged, the pie…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:02PM
Monday, April 30, 2018

Composer Portraits Series: Frederic Rzewski by Jean Ballard Terepka

As a composer, Rzewski is no doubt best known for his astonishing 1975 piano work, "The People United Will Never Be Defeated." It will take another century of listening and assessment to kno…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:38AM
Thursday, April 19, 2018

Da Capo Chamber Players: Celebrating Charles Wuorinen’s 80th Year by Jean Ballard Terepka

The Da Capo Chamber Players’ recent concert at Merkin Concert Hall, billed as a celebration for composer Charles Wuorinen’s eightieth year, was an intimate, unexpectedly informal event. …

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:20PM
Monday, April 9, 2018

The National Chorale: Angela Rice’s “Thy Will Be Done” by Jean Ballard Terepka

"Thy Will Be Done" retains many of the core features of an oratorio, especially in its use of alternating solo arias and choruses to develop the basic story and in its development of choral …

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:13PM
Saturday, April 7, 2018

C4: Choral Composer/Conductor Collective: Devotion by Jean Ballard Terepka

The evening’s works were loosely organized around the theme of devotion, a big conceptual basket into which works about reverence, affection, awe and loves of all sorts could deftly and ef…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:31AM
Thursday, March 29, 2018

Voices of Ascension: Tracing the Path of Zurbarán’s “Jacob and His Twelve Sons” by Jean Ballard Terepka

Before the concert, audience members were invited to a special showing of the Zurbarán exhibit at the Frick; the museum and the site of the concert – Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church �…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:39PM
Monday, March 26, 2018

Yarn/Wire: Catherine Lamb, “curvo totalitas” by Jean Ballard Terepka

After the four musicians connected by eye contact to exactly synchronize their ‘phones, the piece began; sound emanated entirely slowly – it seemed like almost a minute before a steady s…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 03:08PM
Monday, March 5, 2018

Voices of Ascension: Claudio Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610” by Jean Ballard Terepka

Of the twelve soloists, several were outstanding. Tenor Scott Mello’s "Nigra Sum" was a virtuosic, romantically charged reveling in sensuality. The soprano duet, "Pulchra Es," with Molly Q…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:50PM
Monday, February 19, 2018

Lorelei Ensemble: Five Boroughs Music Festival 2017-2018 Season by Jean Ballard Terepka

Equally exciting is Lorelei’s celebration of each of the ensemble’s individual voices. Peter Gilbert’s "Tsukimi (Moon Viewing)," commissioned by Lorelei and premiered in 2013, offers e…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 12:30PM
Sunday, February 4, 2018

Voices of Ascension: Poulenc’s “Gloria” & Honegger’s “King David” by Jean Ballard Terepka

Presiding over the entire piece and working in close artistic collaboration with Keene was actor F. Murray Abraham; he read the King James Bible based narrative from Ascension’s commanding…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:29PM
Friday, December 29, 2017

The Nubian Word for Flowers/Rainbird by Jean Ballard Terepka

The set for the opera was itself a living, organic phenomenon; it functioned as an additional character in the opera. IONE sat near the moveable stage-flats; her back was to the audience, ye…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 02:51PM

Composer Portraits Series: Chen Yi by Jean Ballard Terepka

Chen Yi’s music is, in the best possible sense, powerful: it affirms. Musicians and audience alike, at the end of each piece, are strengthened in the continuing determination to do one’s…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 11:50AM
Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Tallis Scholars: Heinrich Isaac at 500 by Jean Ballard Terepka

The Tallis Scholars’ most recent turn in the Columbia University Miller Theatre Early Music Series was billed as “Heinrich Isaac at 500.” This concert title wasn’t quite accurate: th…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 04:06PM
Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Gerald Cohen: Voyagers, for Clarinet and String Quartet by Jean Ballard Terepka

Cohen then spoke; he presented the four-movement structure of the piece about to be performed. Although various passages in "Voyagers" evoked the diversity of music offerings on the Golden R…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 10:44PM
Tuesday, December 19, 2017

DakhaBrakha by Jean Ballard Terepka

Playing both traditional and modern instruments, usually amplified, all four musicians supplement and expand Ukrainian folk melodies and songs with rhythmic and stylistic adaptations as well…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 12:22PM
Friday, December 1, 2017

C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective: Love and Other Stories by Jean Ballard Terepka

Like most C4 concerts, this one had a theme: it was an evening of “songs about love – both for and against.” Songs’ ideas and purposes mirrored, echoed, anticipated and challenged ea…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:40PM
Friday, November 24, 2017

American Classical Orchestra and Chorus: Cherubini, Beethoven and Mozart by Jean Ballard Terepka

The two soprano soloists were marvelous. Hélène Brunet combines supple lyricism with technical elegance. Clara Rottsolk’s voice is at once silvery and earthy, delicate and powerful. In t…

SOURCE: www.theaterscene.net at 09:48PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards