The enthusiasm of post-pandemic audiences for a return to live performances has thus far been less than full-throated. The ready availability of streamed concerts and plays has disrupted long-established patterns of cultural consumption and … » Read

Jean Kellogg, who joined the Merola Opera Program in 2011 as its first executive director, will officially retire as of January 1, 2024. She has agreed to serve as a consultant to the Merola’s board until a successor is found, hopefully by … » Read

French conductor Lucie Leguay has joined Askonas Holt for worldwide management. Having won the 2023 Victoires de la Musique Classique “Révélation, Conductor” award, she is making a series of major debuts in the current … » Read

Aigul Akhmetshina likes to describe herself as “just an ordinary girl from a small village in the middle of nowhere in Russia.” Not quite. Akhmetshina started performing folk songs of her native Bashkortostan while still a toddler. … » Read

Enticing an orchestra to step outside its comfort zone and program new or obscure repertoire is no easy feat. “It takes a long time to build trust,” says cellist Alisa Weilerstein. “Usually, you build a relationship… with … » Read

There is podium news at the Gothenburg Symphony: Chief Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali will exit his post at the end of 2024-25, having been in the job since 2017. He says he wishes to spend more time with his family in Tampere, while also … » Read

There is much high-level music-making in Boston, so it was hard to choose only ten items. Here are my personal standouts. 10. Virtuoso pianist Daniil Trifonov returned to Boston in the Celebrity Series, but it wasn’t his rushed, unfocussed … » Read

I n late January the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR) will premiere the world’s first hologram symphony concert at the 12 th artgenève , a contemporary and modern art fair. The ensemble’s 73 musicians will appear virtually … » Read

After its world premiere on Christmas Eve 170 years ago, one listener characterized the new symphony as “hardly a composition to be gravely criticized like an earnest work of Art.” And the work fared no better more than a century … » Read

CHICAGO—Like bringing up politics at a family dinner, tinkering with a classic-among-classics like Handel’s Messiah is guaranteed to crack some unbridgeable divides. Hark, then, ye skeptics, to Sir Andrew Davis’s twist on the … » Read