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ELSEWHERE: A CelloOpera Premieres at Carolina Performing Arts
A moment from the Carolina Performing Arts-commissioned ELSEWHERE, a total work of art by Maya Beiser, Robert Woodruff, and assorted other artists. Photo courtesy the artists/CPA. What did you do last...
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Stars Fell on Carolina Last Night
In the early-falling dark, golden leaf-stars drifted down, skittering against the windshield, plastering themselves to the shining blacktop. They blew into shallow drifts against the steps of Memorial...
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Mariinsky in Chapel Hill, part 2
Two evenings with St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra left me punchy drunk on music. It’s easy to forget, when one lives mainly on small group and solo performances, how exhilarating the ride can be...
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Seamless Join: JazzGrass with Bela Fleck and The Marcus Roberts Trio
Bela Fleck, photo courtesy Duke Performances. Duke Performances brought a jazz concert to a right-sized community venue again on November 8, when the Carolina Theatre hosted the fabulous quartet of...
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Belcea Quartet Plays Late Beethoven at Duke
After the exciting, edge-blurring jazzgrass music of the Bela Fleck/Marcus Roberts Trio quartet, heard earlier in the week, the strictly classical Belcea Quartet initially seemed…a little staid. Fresh...
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Joy, only briefly interrupted: CPA brings the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et...
Sir John Eliot Gardiner leading the ORR. Photo courtesy of Opus 3 Artists. “I should like to go,” she said. “I have never heard a symphony, not with an orchestra. I have read about the Ninth. They say...
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Debussy in full color: Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s poetic piano at CPA
Sonia Delaunay. Simultaneous Contrasts, 1912. La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France, written by Blaise Cendrars and painted by Sonia Delaunay, 1913. The first time I can remember...
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Passion at the Piano: Joyce Yang at Duke Performances
Joyce Yang. Her playing is equally showy. Photo: Larry Ford. These sections taken from my review published 1/21/13 in the online journal CVNC. Duke Performances began the spring half of its recital...
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Angela Hewitt: The Pleasure of Her Company
Angela Hewitt. Photo: Bernd Eberle. The superb pianist Angela Hewitt was scheduled to arrive in Durham a day ahead of her Feb. 17 recital, but weather delays kept her in Toronto until just five hours...
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Power Violin: Leila Josefowicz at Duke Performances
Leila Josefewicz I went for the John Adams, but came away with a new appreciation for Robert Schumann. In a variation on its piano recital format, Duke Performances presented the powerful violinist...
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Faith, Fate, Fado: Queenly Ana Moura in Durham
I fell for fado when I visited Portugal nearly 14 years ago. I went after the Lisboa Olympics, and before Portugal went on the euro and was still very affordable–and before fado had become a world...
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Angels of NIGHT: Tift and Simone at the First Presbyterian
Tift Merritt. Photo: Duke Performances Tift Merritt, rocking Americana singer-songwriter from Raleigh, and Simone Dinnerstein, spell-weaving classical pianist, had met briefly during a Gramophone...
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Beautiful Dreamers: The Stray Birds give a high-flying concert at the ArtsCenter
A young band came to the Carrboro ArtsCenter on May 4, and the 80 or so avid listeners in the audience got a big delicious taste of the famousness sure to come. The Stray Birds are a remarkable trio...
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Rite, It is still Spring: NC Symphony’s Impressive Program
The NC Symphony will perform a lovely program including Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring tonight and Saturday night in Raleigh. I heard it last night in UNC’s Memorial Hall, where I’ve heard MANY...
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The Tetzlaff Quartet: Crystal-Clear in Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium
Tetzlaff Quartet, 2010 Photo: © Alexandra Vosding, courtesy Duke Perfmormances. It’s easy to decide to go a concert when you already know and love the music that will be played, but how much more...
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Variations on the Piano
Andras Schiff. Photo: Nadia F. Romanini. I heard two solo piano recitals this week–two very different musicians, in quite different halls, but both playing Steinway concert grands. In Chapel Hill,...
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Jus’ a couple o’ white boys lost in the blues: Lovett and Hiatt at UNC
As much as I am disinclined to choose only one kind of music in actual life, I do enjoy playing the game of ”if you could have only one, which would it be?” I was thinking about that Sunday night,...
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Mad Mandolin Genius: Chris Thile Solo at UNC
Looks innocent, doesn’t he? But Chris Thile is a dervish, a MacArthur Genius Grant-winning musical dervish, and on the “29th day of Oktoberfest, 2013, ” he whirled onto the Memorial Hall stage with his...
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Kirill Gerstein Piano Recital
The Duke Performances piano recital series continued in Baldwin Auditorium Nov. 9, with Kirill Gerstein playing a well-considered program that began delightfully and progressed toward the sublime....
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Blues With a Feeling: Taj Mahal and Friends at UNC, “Thank you very please”
Carolina Performing Arts continued its American music series and its world music explorations simultaneously on Nov. 12 with the superb bluesman Taj Mahal, his trio, his daughter Deva and her...
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