Philadelphia Orchestra Saratoga Performing Arts Center August 4-21, 2010 After the Philadelphia Orchestra abruptly parted ways in 2008 with its seventh music director, Christopher Eschenbach, it turned to Charles Dutoit to fill in as chief conductor.  It’s a mighty long interim status for Dutoit, who will depart in 2012 with the arrival of Yannick Nezet-Seguin. The connection that made the Dutoit-Philly alliance a natural...

A piece of American music seldom stays fresh, even surprising, to succeeding generations of audiences. Datedness sets in so quickly, while nostalgia takes a long time to show up. George Crumb’s “Black Angels” is an exception. Written almost 40 years ago during the height of the Vietnam War, “Black Angels” is scored for electric string quartet and is subtitled “Thirteen Images from the...

It’s difficult categorizing the new disc “Three Fervent Travelers” from the young string trio Time for Three, on E1 Entertainment. Is it blue grass or country, jazz improvisation or some new kind of classical?  One thing’s for certain. It’s fabulous. Time for Three is made up of violinists Zachary De Pue and Nick Kendall and bassist Ranaan Meyer.  They started improvising together in the halls of the Curtis Institute...

David Leisner can’t escape Spanish music. He’s a guitarist. “It’s been a crusade since early in my career to demonstrate that guitar programs don’t need to have Spanish music,” says Leisner.  “Most of the guitar repertoire is not Spanish at all! The pieces most people think of by Albeniz and Granados were originally piano pieces. “The majority of music written for the guitar before the 20th century...

Composer Robert Baksa readily admits that he writes music in which the underlying intelligence and rigor is not always apparent on first listen. And he’s comfortable with that — mostly. “A review of my first Flute Sonata said that the harmony was so simple it would make Mozart or Handel climb the walls,” Baksa says. “Actually, there’s polytonality in that piece, it just doesn’t sound that way.” Baksa’s...

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,...