With this performance, the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony has fervidly conquered Mahler's Symphony No. 5, bringing its ineffable, sumptuous beauty and afflatus to life. When listening, one is …
AUDIENCE was presented with fine acting, powerful multi-dimensional visuals, cultural significance, context and import, rich vigilance, and irony.
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…
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 of …
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…
Trombonist/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…
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 Belt…
Raconteur 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…
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 and th…
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 o…
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…
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.
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…
A 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 60s.
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 informed…
Wendy 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 …
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 hist…
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 Waking" …
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 parle…
Maestro Botstein and The Orchestra Now demonstrated their capacity to express powerful rich intones, frenetic fugatos, and exquisite, intense subtleties.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 o…