Louisa May Alcott was born in 19th-century Massachusetts into a family whose intellectual liberal circle included Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. Educated and opinionated, her semi-autobiographical novels, starting with Little Women , were written … » Read

LENOX, MA-- A Standing Witness is a collection of powerful, serious, and important political poems by Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, composed by Grammy-winner Richard Danielpour. Both attended its performance July … » Read

The one-off concert in Caramoor’s Spanish Courtyard on July 21 was titled for its trio of composer/performers--Caroline Shaw, Angélica Negrón, Raquel Acevedo Klein—but might have more aptly been called “Songs from … » Read

Lincoln Center has adopted a new look for its inaugural Summer for the City festival. The once postcard-perfect plaza is now a vast party space bedecked in electric violet, a quadruple-sized disco ball hanging over the iconic fountain. Organizers … » Read

In January 2022, the National Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Gianandrea Noseda launched a project to perform and record George Walker’s five Sinfonias, a series of works written between 1984 and 2015. The first release features … » Read

Opera Parallèle’s new production of Philip Glass’s 1994 opera La Belle et la Bête ( Beauty and the Beast ) is, writes Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle , “a wondrous artistic hybrid combining film and … » Read

If not Leon Botstein, then who?  Nobody but this venerable impresario/conductor—president of Bard College and its annual music festival, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, author, scholar, etc.—regularly sets out … » Read

AIX-EN-PROVENCE— The Aix Opera Festival is thriving under the artistic direction of Pierre Audi, now in his fourth summer at the helm, and the riches on offer in 2022 are copious indeed. That’s not to suggest that everything in the … » Read

LONDON--Anna Netrebko’s latest  shameful shenanigans aside, blackface in opera seems thankfully to be a thing of the past. Fortunately, such is the depth and power of Verdi’s Otello that in recent years we’ve had ample … » Read

On July 8 the Boston Symphony launched its first full Tanglewood season since 2019. On the podium was Music Director Andris Nelsons, and on the program were Opening Prayer , a brief work by Leonard Bernstein written for the reopening of Carnegie … » Read