Christina Kobb Talks to Michael Miller about Historical Keyboard Technique

Early Music, etc.

Christina Kobb Talks to Michael Miller about Historical Keyboard Technique

June 11, 2016Michael Miller

The Norwegian pianist and scholar Christina Kobb came to wider attention in the United States when a New York Times writer picked up an article in a Scandinavian science magazine about neurological research carried out on her to analyze her movements as she played an electronic keyboard using modern and nineteenth century technique, which she has researched in her dissertation.

Music

San francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, 2014. Photo Kristen Loken.

The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Donato Cabrera, conductor, with Chen Zhao, violin, and Katie Kadarauch, viola in Mason Bates, Mozart, and Bartók

June 5, 2016Steven Kruger

Mason Bates will surely forgive us--if I suggest the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra out-deviled everyone at this concert! For a Saturday afternoon in May, Davies Hall was well attended, with a more jovial parental buzz than usual. Lots of children were in the audience. Hope springs eternal they won't fidget--utopian when dealing with three-year-olds inclined to crawl. One of the forward boxes resembled a puppy-pen throughout, with lots of motion, aleatoric burbling and various appendages attempting to escape the banister. But no matter.The music won.

Bard Music Festival

Giacomo Puccini. © Frank C. Bangs, Library of Congress.

The Bard Music Festival and SummerScape Opera 2016: Puccini and his World, with Pietro Mascagni’s Iris

June 1, 2016Michael Miller

The Bard Music Festival, every year since 1990, offers music-lovers a splendid gift in its weekends of immersion in the music of some major composer and others related to him, the intellectual and artistic life of his time, and the legacy that connects us to it all. It equally presents us with a powerful challenge—a challenge to overcome our preconceptions about this partly familiar, partly unfamiliar music, chiefly the product of famous composers. In some cases we discover that a composer's most popular music is not in fact his best, and our estimation of him rises significantly, as in the case of Sibelius and Prokofiev, or in others, like Schubert, we can become acquainted with genres like the part song, which have fallen out of the repertory because the social context for their performance has become obsolete. Many music-lovers divide Franz Liszt's output between serious music of high quality and shallow, flashy display pieces. Again, the Bard Festival challenged its audiences to reconsider.

Uncategorized

Edvard Munch, Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones, 1905. Oil on canvas. 80 x 100 cm (31 ½ x 39 3/8 in.). Lynn G. Straus. 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Edvard Munch: Alone in the Crowd

May 27, 2016William Harrison

Though it is difficult to determine when exactly Edvard Munch was first exposed to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, one cannot help but think of Existential philosophy’s mustachioed poster boy when considering the Norwegian painter’s work. As with Nietzsche, Munch’s public legacy is colored by an emphasis on his psychological torments and eventual nervous breakdown. His acutely personal exploration of formidable themes such as angst, vulnerability, sin, and alienation only amplify the connection.

Dance

Ariel Rivka Dance 9th Season Festival—A Mixed Bag of Modern Dance: Works by Ariel Grossman, Pascal Rioult, Heidi Latsky and Elisa King

May 23, 2016Mari S. Gold

Strong women are the hallmark of this modern dance program featuring works by Ariel Grossman, Pascal Rioult, Heidi Latsky and Elisa King. Male dancers also take the stage, notably in Grossman's Variations on a Box, the final piece, and one of the most powerfully engaging, as the dancers push and shove one another, abruptly fall to the ground, rise and move as a group with small, shuffling steps.

Film

Discoveries and Restorations from Universal Pictures at MoMA, beginning with King of Jazz

May 20, 2016Michael Miller

Dave Kehr, the curator of MoMA's fascinating series of recently rediscovered and restored films from Universal Pictures, has decided to bookend the month-long event with musicals, the last genre most people would associate with the studio that produced Dracula and Frankenstein. It begins with the much-anticipated premiere of the restoration of King of Jazz (released April 19, 1930), a musical review dominated by the expansive figure of Paul Whiteman, the band leader, today best remembered as the patron of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The audiences at the two sold-out screenings this past Friday and Saturday—at least on Saturday, when I was present—applauded with a warmth that went beyond the aesthetic or the historical. Each one of the twenty individual acts in the movie received its own applause, as if we were back in a vaudeville house of yesteryear. We even laughed at the jokes, some of which were decidedly musty.

Arts Press

Mount Greylock, Early Spring, 2008. Photo © Michael Miller.

Support New York Arts and The Berkshire Review!

May 19, 2016Arts Press

Our publications continue to be widely acclaimed by leaders in the arts and our readers. Artists in all disciplines have expressed their gratitude for our reviews, articles, and interviews, and so have our readers, in a most gratifying way. We are constantly reminded of the value of our mission to promote the arts and educate audiences around the world.

Dance

South of Gold Mountain by H.T. Chen & Dancers

May 16, 2016Mari S. Gold

The history of the Chinese in the American south prior to World War lI is an under-told story that South of Gold Mountain seeks to rectify. Using images, recorded voices, music and dance, H.T. Chen & Dancers set out to show the collective journey of a group of people who quietly made a big difference to their communities.