Report: Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä, 28, whose meteoric rise on the international concert scene has electrified audiences and elicited rapturous critical praise, was named April 2 as the 11th music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The appointment will put Mäkelä in charge of two of the world’s preeminent orchestras, starting simultaneously in September 2027 when his Chicago directorship will be twinned with his new post as principal conductor of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Read the full story »Australian drama troupe transcends handicaps with serio-comedy full of backstage laughter
Review: If the title “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich” provokes more than the usual curiosity about fresh dramatic fare, the play itself — presented by the ensemble that created it, Australia’s Back to Back Theatre – leaves one hardly less perplexed upon emerging from the experience. “Ganesh” displays a singular aspect of beauty, even sweetness, until it takes a bitter turn and dissipates as if into a vacuum, into nothingness. ★★★
Sparked by belief in music’s healing power, Civitas lights up hospital and concert hall
Concerts by the chamber music ensemble Civitas are as likely to take place at Lurie Children’s Hospital as they are on a concert stage, and perhaps that focus helps to explain the particular warmth and humor of the group’s programming sensibility. Its performances radiate joyful vigor, a happy blend of virtuosity and camaraderie. ““The last thing we want to be is stodgy,” says founder Yuan-Qing Yu.
Latvian Andris Nelsons follows James Levine as Boston Symphony Orchestra music director
Report: Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons was named Thursday as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nelsons will become officially installed as the BSO’s 15th music director effective with the 2014-15 season, but meanwhile will act as music director-designate for the 2013-14 season.
Role Playing: Eva Barr explored two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’
Interview: To watch Eva Barr play out the progressive, early-onset dementia of the woman at the center of “Still Alice” at Lookingglass Theatre is to forget you’re looking at the subtle, skillful work of an actor. Yet hardly less remarkable is the way Barr arrived at the role: She began, in first readings with playwright-director Christine Mary Dunford, by taking a different part, an alternate Alice – a separate character Dunford identifies simply as Herself.
CSO Rivers Festival explores the enchantment of waterways, their impact on human history
Preview: Literally and metaphorically, rivers seem to flow in every direction across our lives; indeed, across life. It’s not hard to see how the Chicago Symphony Orchestra might have hit on the concept of its Rivers Festival, a multifaceted month-long exploration and tribute that opens musically May 9 at Orchestra Hall.
It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty
Review: After the third encore in pianist Evgeny Kissin’s recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall, the hundreds of listeners still on hand switched into an insistent, stentorian applause. The Russian virtuoso came through with one last bonus, a thundering roll through Chopin’s Prelude in D minor, Op. 28, No. 24; and with that, another phenomenal exhibition was over. ★★★★★
Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue
Review: Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat isn’t known as the “Rhenish” for nothing. I felt very much like Schumann’s Rhine-journeying companion Thursday night, listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s radiant performance of the Third Symphony conducted by music director Riccardo Muti. ★★★★
‘Still Alice’ at Lookingglass: When dementia seizes a woman’s life, a family is measured
Review: In her play “Still Alice,” author and director Christine Mary Dunford employs a graphic metaphor to illustrate the disintegrating world of Alice, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Throughout the play, now in its world premiere run at Lookingglass Theatre, Alice’s kitchen appliances disappear one by one, until nothing remains – until the locus, the defining “here,” of this woman’s life is no longer there. ★★★★
Role Playing: Darrell W. Cox sees theater’s core in closed-off teacher of ‘Burning Boy’
Interview: The central character Larry, an English teacher, in David West Read’s “The Dream of the Burning Boy,” is a smart, inspiring mentor to the kids around him. But when they need him as consoling father-figure, after one of their classmates dies, Larry can’t engage their pain or embrace them emotionally. For Darrell W. Cox, who delivers a wrenching portrait of the teacher at Profiles Theatre, such a closed-off, deeply complicated soul is the touchstone of great drama.
Love, loss and broken souls framed in tangos: COT etches dolor of ‘María de Buenos Aires’
Review: Bittersweet remembrance with a tango pulse hangs over the surreal mindscape of “María de Buenos Aires,” the operatic love story created – perhaps the right word is insinuated – by composer Astor Piazzolla and poet Horacio Ferrer, and staged with bold, evocative imagination at Chicago Opera Theater. ★★★★
As dancing dame on high seas, Rachel York heads up motley tour crew of ‘Anything Goes’
Preview: Rachel York, slyly sinful Reno Sweeney in the Roundabout Theatre production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” headed for Chicago, sees herself in the proud line of those indomitable dames of 1930s Hollywood.
With Muti back at helm, Chicago Symphony applies classic touch to Mozart, Beethoven
Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mozart-Beethoven concert Thursday night with music director Riccardo Muti felt like one long “aha!” moment. Here was the full measure of finesse, composure and pliancy the orchestra had expected to put on display for audiences in Southeast Asia with Muti at the helm, but in his absence never entirely achieved. ★★★★★
Alison Balsom, mistress of Baroque trumpet, will flash that golden sound at Logan Center
Preview: Alison Balsom, the British classical trumpet star who brings her blazing sound to Chicago in a concert with the Scottish Ensemble, knew which instrument had her name on it the first time she heard Dizzy Gillespie on a recording. She was 8 years old.
Youths at detention center set lives to music with aid of CSO musicians, praise from Muti
Report: The first time Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti visited the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, in September 2012, it was to offer a concert to more than 100 youths awaiting trial for serious crimes. For his return visit on April 14, the music was provided by juveniles with help from CSO musicians, and it was Muti who took a turn in the audience.
Riccardo Muti honors Boston Marathon victims with dedication at Chicago Symphony concert
Asks silence before Bach Mass
‘Big Fish’ star Butz calls the fanciful story-teller his dream role — and that’s no exaggeration
Preview: Norbert Leo Butz plays Edward Bloom, a Herculean story-spinner who supersizes his own legend in the musical “Big Fish.” We caught up with Butz at the Oriental Theatre, where the two-time Tony winner is trying this fabulist father-son story on for size. Butz talks about his role in the Broadway-bound musical, now in Chicago previews. We sneak a listen, too.
Adolph Herseth dies at 91; honored trumpeter was Chicago Symphony principal five decades
Burnished glory of Chicago brass
Opera stage resounds in Bach’s Mass as Muti brings personal authenticity to CSO account
Review: The decidedly Italianate, essentially operatic treatment of Bach’s Mass in B Minor offered this weekend by conductor Riccardo Muti and forces of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra may have little to do with the elusive question of Baroque performance practice, but it has everything to do with spiritual authenticity, conceptual integrity and musical wisdom. ★★★★★
Berlin Aisle: It’s magical Mozart when Rattle leads Philharmonic in concert ‘Zauberflöte’
Review: The Berlin Philharmonic delivered a concert performance of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” April 7, simultaneously broadcast in Europe, that seemed to waft in like a spring breeze. The concert’s now being edited for streaming to internet audiences via the Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, and there’s much to recommend it, including a delightful Papageno new to American opera lovers and a sneak peek at a Queen of the Night who makes her Met debut in 2014. Above all, front and center, was an orchestra such as you will rarely hear in an opera pit. ★★★★
Riccardo Muti, fit and jovial, pitches CSO’s agenda from Verdi to Canary Islands tour
Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced a bundle of developments at a press conference Wednesday morning, but the best news may have been the vigorous appearance and high spirits of music director Riccardo Muti.
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Recent Posts
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