For 35 years, Peter Haley has been the Pied Piper of opera in the Capital Region.  As founder of the 400-member Siena Opera Club, he teaches classes on the art form, leads dozens of bus trips every year to performances across the east coast, and organizes European tours. Preparing for it all means long days immersed in music and logistical details. And Haley doesn’t even get to take the summers off. That’s because the...

Tchaikovsky Spectacular Albany Symphony Orchestra, David Alan Miller, conductor with Joshua Roman, cello Palace Theatre, Albany, NY April 23, 2010 Spectacular. Advertising copywriters often use that adjective to describe concerts of Tchaikovsky, especially when his 1812 Overture is performed, with or without real cannons. The Albany Symphony Orchestra’s “Tchaikovsky Spectacular” Friday night at the Palace Theatre didn’t...

Perhaps there’s something about the humble guitar that brings people together. Take the case of Sharon Isbin.  Though widely regarded as the top classical guitar soloist of our time, she keeps teaming up with other artists, often from far a field the traditional realm of so-called concert music. One of her most recent collaborations is with heavy metal guitarist Steve Vai, better known for his work with Frank Zappa, David...

Ten years ago pianist Christopher O’Riley needed something to play as filler for the “station identification” breaks during the first season of “From the Top,” the weekly syndicated radio show about young musicians.  He started dabbling with piano arrangements of songs by Radio Head, the alternative rock band.  His imaginative treatments of the music — ruminative, stirring and colorful — opened up an...

SCHENECTADY – It was 30 years ago that Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin opened in the Broadway production of “Evita,” and earned Tony Awards for their efforts.  With their reunion tour that arrived at Proctors Theatre on Saturday night, they could have coasted through some chestnuts and reminisced about the good old days and still probably have sent the near capacity crowd home plenty happy. But that wouldn’t have...

Except for my ears, there’s nothing gay here (at least as far as I know). These are my reviews for the Times Union (Albany, NY) from last weekend. I’ve decided to start posting more of this sort of thing, since these assignments are what can keep me from providing more original content on here. Daniel Bernard Roumain & The Mission January 22, 2010, The Egg, Albany Daniel Bernard Roumain, also known as DBR,...

Is Margaret Cho not getting it enough? Because she sure talks about it an awful lot. Sex that is. When she walked on stage of the Swyer Theatre in The Egg on Saturday night in Albany, she got down on her knees to discuss — and demonstrate — the difficulty of maintaining proper ergonomics when pleasing a man.  Intimate acts and private body parts continued to be the overarching theme of the night.  For an anatomy...

Margaret Cho made her reputation with her mouth, which is as funny as it is foul.  The stand up comic, who appears Saturday night at The Egg in Albany, has developed a cult following through live performance, various television appearances and several concert films.  Through it all, she’s found humor in cringe inducing topics like exploring her bisexual side, the embarrassment of returning rented porn videos late, and...

ALBANY – Words and Music, a vocal quartet based in Washington D.C., takes its bipartite name seriously. For a Sunday afternoon recital in Albany, where many of the singers have roots, the group performed a single work of nearly two-hours in length. Ned Rorem’s “Evidence of Things Not Seen” is comprised of 36 distinct songs for solo and ensemble, and can be considered both a model of quality, succinct art song...

There’s more than just music in the Wainwright gene pool. Also, self-deprecating humor and the general ability to entertain. All this came through Saturday night at The Egg, in the concert by Rufus Wainwright with an opening performance by his half sister Lucy Wainwright Roche. (Their father is the folk singer Loudon Wainwright.) Lucy offered a handful of fine original folk ballads but she could consider working in stand...