Guides
You'd have to dig deep into the history books to find a season like this one. In the coming months, the unveiling of two massively renovated concert halls will coincide with a startling venue change for Rochester's premier early music series. Players could perform last year's repertoire all over again
Music Articles
Michael MacLeod wishes you would stop watching TV, get off your butt (as he puts it), and go see the opera. The blunt, engaging artistic director of Glimmerglass Opera is passionate about the art form he considers the most immersive and emotionally satisfying of all. Plus, he's facing a tough
Choice Concerts
You might look at the standards on this program and miss the sizzle. First, this will be the debut of Madrigalia's dynamic new music director, Lee Wright. Second, jazz pianist Tony Caramia will stream in like fresh air, and third, the program will highlight mystical texts by Hildegard of Bingenin
Choice Concerts
This is your last chance to hear the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra play in Eastman Theatre before major renovations. There are two works on the program. In "The Planets" by Gustav Holst, the orchestra shoots sparks, spins joy, and ignites terror in Mars, The Bringer of War. Music Director Christopher Seaman
Choice Concerts
There's plenty of jazz, blues, and rock to go around, but Rochester is a choral town. Thousands of people belong to choirs and sing for fun. A few serious vocalists have resurrected the Bach Choir, and with organist/conductor James . Bobb, they'll present Bach's motet "Komm, Jesu, komm." Flutist Bonita
Choice Concerts
French pianist Pascal Rogé is a wood thrush among goldfinches. His burnished interpretations of French pieces move listeners with elegance, style, and thoughtful phrasing. His exquisite recordings of Saint-Saëns' piano concertos are considered by many to be the best on record, so it'll be a treat to hear him perform
Music Articles
When Michael Barone boarded a plane from Minnesota to Rochester in February, he didn't know exactly what he was getting into. Barone, the host of the nationally syndicated public radio show "Pipedreams," felt pretty confident he would hear adrenaline-pumping performances from Eastman School of Music faculty and students during a
Choice Concerts
For the longest time, he's been the piano man of the baby grand, Captain Jack, and paramour of the Uptown Girl. And so it goes that Billy Joel's music will say goodbye to Hollywood and hello to an Eastman Theatre crowd in a concert featuring the RPO, conductor Jeff Tyzik,
Choice Concerts
It's the simplest thing, really - just a metal tube with holes. But in the hands of Nina Assimakopoulos, the flute is a kite, a nymph, a bolt of lightning. The Bowling Green professor shows off the whole spectrum of sounds possible on the contemporary flute in a program of
Choice Concerts
On the surface of things, "Le Nozze di Figaro" ("The Marriage of Figaro") is all froth and sweetness. But Mozart's opera about smart servants who outclass the aristocracy actually helped fan the flames of discontent that ignited the French Revolution. Eastman Opera Theatre presents Mozart's beautiful, elegant, and fast-paced opera
Music Articles
If the death of classical music is its oldest, finest tradition, no one has bothered to tell Ossia. The members of Eastman School of Music's student-run new music ensemble taste possibility. They grab at the inventive, the strange, and the original with a shared conviction that the line from J.S.
Choice Concerts
In the beginning, deep, murky notes burble in primordial slime. Discord dissolves into a blaze of sound. The word "light" explodes, and you're off on a journey of wide-eyed wonder in Haydn's "The Creation," a colorful oratorio celebrating the making of the world described by John Milton and biblical writers.
Choice Concerts
What would you do if you wanted to paint, but couldn't find the exact colors you needed? You'd invent your own hues. The most influential violin-clarinet-piano group on the planet has does the same with music. The Verdehr Trio has commissioned more than 200 new pieces, and this week the
Choice Concerts
If you can't make it to New York for a dose of alvo, take heart. New York City-based contemporary music ensemble Sequitur is coming at you with a headstrong, imaginative program including "This Powerful Rhyme" by Andrew Waggoner for two actors and nine instruments; "The Cinnamon Peeler" by David Crockett
Choice Concerts
If you haven't experienced a prism concert before, it's an immersive event during which you'll hear voices from all directions singing all kinds of music. At the very least it's interesting. In its best moments, you'll marvel at the effects of wind vibrating though bodies. This week's choral prism concert
Music Articles
Arguably the hottest classical ensemble in the world, the Grammy-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet gives the East Coast premiere of "Interchange for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra" by Sergio Assad this week with Christopher Seaman and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. City interviewed guitarist and founding member Bill Kanengiser. An edited transcript
Choice Concerts
A three-day organ festival? What does it mean? It means it's your chance to hear some of the most amazing pipe organs in town revved up like shiny Lamborghinis, singing, shouting, wailing, whispering, and casting spells on audiences from lofts of the Paul Fritts Opus 26 at Sacred Heart Cathedral,
Music Articles
I first heard Julianne Baird on CD in the 80's, and I was instantly transfixed by her clear, honeyed voice. She sang English lute songs celebrating woods, flowers, and nymphs. I used to listen lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling and imagining that such a voice, once described
Choice Concerts
Many people of a certain age credit the late Leonard Bernstein for sparking a love for classical music through his televised Young People's Concerts. Around the 90th anniversary of his birth, New York City is now in the midst of a three-month Bernsteinpalooza, and orchestras around the world are playing
Choice Concerts
What will Leila Josefowicz do with half a million dollars? The violinist didn't win the lottery: she's getting a 2008 Macarthur Foundation no-strings-attached grant for her advocacy and commitment to music. You have the chance to see one of music's rising stars show off her dazzling technique when Josefowicz
