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December 2016

Bard Music Festival
Giacomo Puccini. © Frank C. Bangs, Library of Congress.

2016 in retrospect — The Bard Music Festival: Giacomo Puccini and his World

December 31, 2016Michael Miller

If advance gossip is any indicator, this year's Bard Festival, devoted to Giacomo Puccini and his World, was one of the most controversial. "Puccini! Controversial!" You say, "There's not really enough in him to have a controversy about, is there? Those sappy tear-jerkers speak for themselves." In fact there was a lot of grumbling. Some festival regulars stayed away, or dragged themselves to only one concert, the one that included pieces by Dallapiccola, Pizzetti, and Petrassi. Even with these absentees the Festival sold out, or came close to selling out. Most of the concerts and the panel discussions were packed.
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Music
Malcolm J. Merriweather, Music Director of the Dessoff Choirs.

The Dessoff Choirs’ Messiah Sing, 2017, Malcolm J. Merriweather, Music Director, Conducting

December 30, 2016Mari S. Gold

For me, the holiday season is officially here when I sing the Messiah, George Frederic Handel's oratorio composed in 1741 that has become one of the most performed works in Western choral music. This year I was fortunate enough to join the Dessoff Choirs under the direction of Malcolm J. Merriweather, Musical Director. Some of the group that assembled at Union Theological Seminary regularly sing with Dessoff; others, like me, were rank amateurs whose voices have darkened over the years but whose enthusiasm remains robust. It doesn't matter in the least and there are enough strong voices to mask any missed notes from people like me.
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Film
Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea.

Manchester by the Sea, Written and Directed by Kenneth Lonergan

December 20, 2016Huntley Dent

A plot about the walking wounded is an indie staple, and Manchester by the Sea wears no external garb beyond the stereotype. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) isn’t an Iraq War vet or a widower whose dead wife has left him bereft. At first we don’t know why he’s wounded—the opening scenes are of a taciturn, truculent janitor in a small apartment building in Quincy, outside Boston. Lee is thirty-something, scruffy, eyes averted, and armed with a huge chip on his shoulder that causes him to lash out at a bitchy tenant with a defiant lack of remorse. In his psyche the tarp is nailed down at all four corners unless a gust of wind flaps one up.
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Coming Up and Of Note

I Giullari di Piazza and Alessandra Belloni to Perform La Cantata dei Pastori (The Shepherd’s Cantata) at the Theater for the New City, December 16-18, 21, 22

December 14, 2016The Editor

Come back in time to Southern Italy with Alessandra Belloni and I Giullari di Piazza, the renowned Italian music/theater/dance company, when they present their traditional Southern Italian "La Cantata dei Pastori," (The Shepherd's Cantata) a musical family holiday delight, at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th Streets). Five performances, December 16 & 17 at 8 PM; December 18 at 5 PM; December 21 & 22 at 8 PM.   Starring as Mary in this unique production is the internationally renowned singer, percussionist, author, and director, Alessandra Belloni, an acknowledged authority on traditional Southern Italian arts, co-founder of I Giullari di Piazza (The Jesters of the Square), and solo guest performer in venues around the world.
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New York Arts

Rascals, an Inspired Restaurant and Performance Space in the Crossgates Mall, Albany (Permanently Closed)

December 14, 2016Michael Miller

(Permanently Closed) In cooking, as in any art, you have to know the rules—the more profoundly the better—to break them. While en route, appropriately enough, to Albany, I heard a radio interview with the manager and the chef of a new restaurant near the University of Albany. As I threaded my way through the rolling hills and forests that separate the capital of New York State from the Berkshires, slowing in all the notorious speed traps, I found this interview unusually absorbing. The chef, Nicholas Armstrong, was impressively articulate about the science of cooking
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Art

B. F. Kiefrich, Spam Artist, Remembered

December 1, 2016Michael Miller

You may wonder about my interest in this traditional American delicacy. It comes not from the interests I share with Sgr. Rossini, but from my experiences as a curator in the Cleveland Museum of Art. As my colleagues and I pushed papers and watched western civilization melt into Lake Erie, a remarkable artist from Akron came to our attention. This artist, who worked under the name B. F. Kiefrich, produced sculptures from Spam®, among them an exquisite gilt miniature Book of Hours, known as the Codex Spambergensis and a porcine version of Nefertiti’s lips.
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