a virtual journal and essential blog of the classical music scene in greater Boston
Lee Eiseman, publisher; Robert Levin, advisor; David Moran, assisting editor; Bettina A. Norton, emerita editor
News & Features
June 15, 2018
Meditating on the “Bounded Fields of Time”
by Richard Knox
All of us — well, except those who achieve Nirvana — rebel against time. We want to hold onto it, retrieve it, freeze it, even reverse it. And humans have always yearned for a release from time’s iron grip – an impossible return to an Edenic existence. (And what is a heavenly afterlife but lux [continued]
June 8, 2018
Concert Marketing 101
by BMINT STAFF
New England Conservatory recently announced the inaugural group of NEC’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship (EM) Nova Fellows, a new student-run music-presenting collaborative sponsored in part by a generous anonymous donor. EM Nova, a transformation of Symphony Nova, a professional development fellowship program founded in 2007 for orchestral musicians, will be integrating its operations into NEC’s entrepreneurial musicianship [continued]
May 30, 2018
Fempowering Opera
by BMINT STAFF
Nine divas from two centuries locked in the afterlife and pitted against one another will fight for the soul of opera—what couldn’t go right? OperaHub’s timely new play with music DIVAS is a female-powered world premiere written by Boston playwright Laura Neill and packed with true stories, extravagant fashion, and gorgeous music. Including 13 selections [continued]
May 25, 2018
Like Halcyon Barques to Portsmouth’s Shores
by BMINT STAFF
“What sorts of images and associations does the term ‘halcyon’ bring to mind,” our writer Mike Rocha wondered three years back. Honey-colored light and dappled shade? Warm summer zephyrs? Nostalgic yearnings? For its fifth season, the Halcyon Music Festival will offer six exuberant chamber music concerts at the sumptuously decorative and acoustically rich confines of [continued]
May 19, 2018
NEC Celebrates Itself & Sings Tchaikovsky
by BMINT STAFF
Tatyana Dudochkin, a member of the NEC Preperatory School piano faculty, will present her 28th-annual Jordan Hall concert honoring a composer in an anniversary year. This year, the Conservatory itself will share the spotlight with Tchaikovsky on Thursday at 7:30. Each year, she told BMInt, “I consider several composers until I am burning with enthusiasm, [continued]
May 17, 2018
Cambridge Acoustician Recognized
by BMINT STAFF
The Acoustical Society of America presents its prestigious Wallace Clement Sabine Award “to an individual of any nationality who has furthered the knowledge of architectural acoustics, as evidenced by contributions to professional journals and periodicals or by other accomplishments in the field of architectural acoustics.” The most recent winner, named last fall (it is not [continued]
May 11, 2018
Chamber Fest Rocks On Anew
by BMINT STAFF
The first Rockport Chamber Music Festival under the artistic direction of Barry Shiffman opens Friday June 15th and continues through Sunday July 15th. The dramatic theme for 2018 is r:EVOLUTION. Building on the its history of presenting high-caliber classical musicians, Festival artistic director Shiffman is making several enhancements: composer-in-residence (Osvaldo Golijov this season) , Rockport [continued]
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May 7, 2018
Invoking the Purcellian Parry
by Edward Elwyn Jones
The Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus’s veddy British “A Parry Premiere: Invocation to Music, and a Variety of Tidbits,” on Friday at 8:00 at Sanders Theater, will include the U.S. premiere of C. Hubert H. Parry’s Invocation to Music: In Honour of Henry Purcell, a cantata of melodic grandeur. Blest Pair of Sirens, a favorite of the British [continued]
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May 5, 2018
“Essential Voices”
by BMINT STAFF
The Boston-based Back Bay Chorale, an auditioned chorus of approximately 120 voices led by Music Director Scott Allen Jarrett, draws experienced singers from the metropolitan area. Founded in 1973 by Larry Hill, a famously charismatic figure even 29 years after his death, the Chorale created a musical ministry to bring artistic enrichment and education to [continued]
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April 30, 2018
Roosters To Crow at Trinity
by BMINT STAFF
The world-renowned a cappella male vocal ensemble Chanticleer is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2018 with a tour that includes Boston’s Trinity Church, Copley Square on Friday, May 4th at 7:30pm. Founded in San Francisco by Louis Botto in 1978, the group is celebrated as much for its astoundingly wide range of repertoire as for [continued]
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April 27, 2018
Boston Troubadour Remembers Essential Frenchman
by Joel Cohen
The main thing to know about Jean-Claude Malgoire was that he was a vivacious, imaginative, and intensely musical human being. All the rest, as the saying goes, is commentary. I remember Jean-Claude, short, bearded, and stocky, a demonstrative Mediterranean born and bred, serving his own, homemade, bean-and-basil soupe au pistou to a small gathering of [continued]
April 23, 2018
Cook Licks Own Fingers
by BMINT STAFF
Shakespeare Concerts will give the world premiere of The lady doth protest too much, by the composer Joseph Summer, as well as works by Serge Prokofiev, Howard Frazin, Binna Kim, Benjamin Pesetsky (also a BMInt contributor), and Thomas Schnauber on Friday April 27th at 8pm at Jordan Hall. A similar program repeats the next evening [continued]
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April 18, 2018
The Lost World of Florence Price
by Nathaniel Meyer
The Du Bois Orchestra will revive Price’s Mississippi River Suite in the second of a three-part series at the University Lutheran Church in Cambridge commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois. [continued]
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April 16, 2018
Moving Right Along at 150
by BMINT STAFF
We’re all used to hearing fine New England Conservatory performances of all sizes in its Jordan Hall. Next Wednesday, as part of the celebration of the conservatory’s 150th birthday, the NEC Philharmonia will move down the street to Symphony Hall. Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood director of orchestras Hugh Wolff, marking his 10th anniversary at [continued]
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John Oliver (1939–2018): An Appreciation
by Stephen H. Owades
One of the great figures in American choral music, John Oliver, died Wednesday April 11th after a long illness. He founded the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in 1970 and led it until his retirement in 2015. Before the formation of the TFC, the BSO had worked with a variety [continued]
April 15, 2018
Tristan and Iseult Entangle at Longy
by BMINT STAFF
The mythical couple emerges from the misty past next week at Longy in Boston Camerata’s “Tristan & Iseult: A Medieval Romance in Poetry and Music.” This iteration of the ancient love story, drawn entirely from authentic medieval sources, proposes a powerful and surprising rendition of the tale for modern audiences. The internationally acclaimed scenario and [continued]
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April 13, 2018
Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Announces 2018 Winner
by Bettina A. Norton
At its annual meeting, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund board unanimously chose as its 2018 competition prizewinner the 25-year-old pianist Jean Sélim Abdelmoula, from Switzerland, granting him a prize of $5000. Judge András Schiff had nominated Abdelmoula. “An uncommonly poetic musician”, according to The New York Times, Abdelmoula received first prizes at the 2012 Edvard [continued]
April 9, 2018
Operatic Immersion at JP Brewery
by BMINT STAFF
Thought about being young, penniless, and in love? Ever wanted to share a drink with the denizens of Café Momus? Did you like Rent? If the answer is yes to two out of three of these questions, then by all means plan to experience Boston Opera Collaborative’s site specific La Bohème, where industrial racks will [continued]
April 5, 2018
BSO’s Economic Muscle Grew 40% in the Last Decade
by BMINT STAFF
Beyond the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s benefits (tangible, musical, spiritual) to the 1.2 million people who attended its concerts in the past year, the organization’s activities led to $261 million in “economic impact” in our Commonwealth. An analysis the BSO commissioned from Williams College economics professor Stephen Shepard shows the impact to have grown 40% over [continued]
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March 31, 2018
Club Commissions Daniel Strong Godfrey
by Marcus Thompson
Each season since 2013, the Boston Chamber Music Society Commissioning Club, made up of nearly 30 households of patrons and subscribers, has supported the creation of a new work that features our member musicians and strengthens our commitment to the continuation of our art in our time. Past composers include George Tsontakis, Pierre Jalbert, Harold [continued]
March 25, 2018
NEC Quartets To Be Fêted
by Lee Eiseman
New England Conservatory celebrates its Professional String Quartet Training Program with three concerts in seven days, recognizing six of the ensembles that have participated since the program’s origins, in September 11th, 2001. The three Jordan Hall concerts, also marking NEC’s 150th anniversary, take place on: April 1st – Jupiter and Parker Quartets, 7:30pm; April 4th [continued]
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March 22, 2018
Symphony Announces 2018–19 Season
by Stephen H. Owades
Because the Boston Symphony includes three “brands”—the BSO, the Boston Pops, and Tanglewood—for which tickets and subscriptions are sold in the spring, they traditionally space out the three announcements and ticket sales. This year they’re providing the full details a week earlier than usual. [HERE]. The orchestra begins the fall with a two-week tour of [continued]
March 20, 2018
Concert/Meditation To Recall Robert Honeysucker
by Lee Eiseman
At St. Mary Church Charlestown, on March 25th at 3:30, distinguished organist Heinrich Christensen, pianist/choirmaster Daniel Sauceda, and the Charlestown Community Choir will offer music from Bach’s meditations on the Palm Sunday liturgy. Soprano Sirgourney Cook and baritone James Dargan will intone two of the most powerful arias from Bach’s Passion music and in memory [continued]
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March 16, 2018
Brewing the Electro-Classical Music of David Ibbett
by BMINT STAFF
We’ve witnessed Beethoven’s Fifth amongst hops bags and experienced solemn solo celloing in the shadows of giant fermentation tanks; at various times, Aeronaut Brewery, Short Path Distillery, and Slumbrew have all presented what could be called concert music. Next week we expect to run a feature on Boston Opera Collaborative’s April run of La Bohème [continued]
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March 3, 2018
Papa Bach Reborn Again at FLC
by Jonathan Wessler
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach, born on March 21, 1685, unquestionably stands at the high-water mark of the Lutheran musical tradition [or any other tradition for that matter]. Every year on a Saturday near Bach’s birthday, The First Lutheran Church of Boston celebrates this musical giant and his myriad contributions to music, both sacred and secular, [continued]
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