118 stories 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…
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 dext…
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 paced. A…
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." Nally j…
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 trumpe…
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 obituary …
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 use…
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…
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 commissioning…
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 the d…
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…
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 use …
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…
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 … a…
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 piece…
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…
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. The …
"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 …
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 effe…
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 " …
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 somet…
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 Qui…
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 each of…
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 commandingly…
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…
