Stepping out of Butterfly’s shadow
The Bard Music Festival opens this year with Mascagni’s Iris, an opera that has one of the most lurid tales ever set to music. It’s verismo (real-life opera) with a vengeance, the story…
HVP performs Borealis with Northern Lights projections at Bardavon
Canadian composer John Estacio had a startling experience when he moved to the city of Edmonton. It was “the first time ever I experienced the glorious spectacle of the Aurora Borealis. Up until that…
Poets Mark Wunderlich & Eamon Grennan coming to New World Writers’ Night
For nearly a decade, the series now known as New World Writers’ Night has been tapping into the mid-Hudson Valley’s long tradition of area poets and prose writers. Two outstanding poets are on…
“This Land is Your Land” turns 75
Hudson Valley Philharmonic pays tribute to an American anthem with works by David Amram and Dust Bowl projections this Saturday Leonard Bernstein chose David Amram as the New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence. “David,”…
Helena Baillie & Babette Hierholzer to open Rhinebeck Chamber Music Series
The first time that Helena Baillie and Babette Hierholzer performed together, they were in prison – not as inmates, though. It was a performance under the auspices of the Bard Prison Initiative. Although…
Drum Boogie Festival in Woodstock
Is Garry Kvistad a businessman who plays percussion, or a percussionist who runs a business? In recent years, the percussionist, who was always active to the extent that his business permitted, has been…
The return of Israeli pianist Elisha Abas
When he was 11 years old, Israeli pianist Elisha Abas performed at Carnegie Hall. The legendary Arthur Rubinstein was in the audience. Rubinstein was so impressed that, after praising the boy, he gave…
Les Gerber’s Maverick Memories
During my first season reviewing Maverick Concerts, in the mid-1970s, I was surprised and gratified by the quality of the series. However, one concert turned out to be a serious disappointment. It was…
Maverick turns 100: Centennial season for Hervey White’s “Cathedral in the Pines”
One hundred years! That’s the age both of Hervey White’s magnificent Maverick Concert Hall and of the concert series that he originated to be presented in it. In some ways a century…
Love songs & anti-love songs concert by Ars Choralis in High Falls
Ars Choralis celebrates its 50th anniversary season this year with an expanded series of performances. On February 21, the chorus will become one of a series of invited vocal ensembles to perform at…
