Davóne Tines has built much of his career around social engagement. The American bass-baritone has fostered projects like The Black Clown , a cabaret-like theatricalization of Langston Hughes’s poem, and VIGIL , a pandemic-era video … » Read

The hottest opera ticket in Paris is  Eugene Onegin at the Opéra Garnier. Long planned with Semyon Bychkov at the helm, the arrival of a new production fortuitously coincided with the conductor’s appointment last month as music … » Read

Andre Previn’s 1994 setting of Toni Morrison’s “Shelter” contains the phrase “Under your wings/I will find shelter/from ordinary things.” Together with cellist Seth Parker Woods and pianist Conor Hanick, Julia … » Read

The title of So Percussion’s January 23 Zankel Hall program, “American Flow (Vol. 1),” came from hip-hop, where the word “flow” describes the interaction of rapped, percussive lyrics with their musical backing. In … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—Mark Morris is one of, if not the single most prolific modern dance maker on earth, so it was probably only a matter of time before he sought other worlds to conquer. Moon , which had its West Coast premiere January 23-25 at … » Read

LONDON—On paper, this January 23 BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at London’s Barbican Centre was a smart piece of programming. Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring , located at the verdant heart of an American idyll soon to be … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—With Finnish conductor John Storgårds making his San Francisco Symphony debut on January 22 and a work by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen on the Davies Symphony Hall program, it was hard not to think of the Finn who got … » Read

NEW YORK—Thomas Adès was 28 when the New York Philharmonic first programmed his music on a major subscription concert. Commissioned by the orchestra as part of a series marking the threshold of a new millennium, America: A Prophecy … » Read

LONDON—The U.K. is well served when it comes to contemporary music, but any list of the most stimulating practitioners would have to put Riot Ensemble pretty near the top. Winners of the 2020 Ernst von Siemens Ensemble Prize, its … » Read

The intrepid Igor Levit offered two mammoth sets of piano variations in his January 22 Carnegie Hall recital. It was a physically ambitious program: both Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will … » Read