American soprano Patricia Racette was honored at the sixth annual Opera News Awards, sponsored by the magazine, which is affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera. The event took place on April 17 at the Plaza Hotel.  Other honorees were tenor Jonas Kaufmann, conductor Riccardo Muti, soprano Kiri Te Kanawa and bass-baritone Bryn Terfel. In an essay giving lauds to Racette, writer Oussama Zahr touches on Racette being out in...

Eighty-eight keys just aren’t enough for Jaroslaw Kapuscinski. He knows his way around the black and white notes of a tradition piano keyboard plenty well, having studied at the Chopin Academy in his native Warsaw. But for the last 20 years he’s created and performed original works that combined the piano with video. Kapuscinski will appear at EMPAC on Saturday night (4/16) in a program titled “Catch the Tiger.” “I...

LIAISONS: Off to a Good Start Saturday April 2 University of Maryland Anthony de Mare kicked off his American tour of LIAISONS: Re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center with fine performances of 14 new works. LIAISONS will eventually include short piano pieces written by 36 stylistically diverse contemporary composers, each work based on a Steven Sondheim...

Ailing elder pianists have given Jeremy Denk new opportunities. So what if he’s a substitute. This month he made his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel (replacing Martha Argerich) and on Sunday (3/27) he made his Carnegie Hall solo recital debut (replacing Maurizio Pollini).  Denk played Ives’ “Concord” Sonata and Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations.  Anthony Tommasini...

Twenty-five year old Cleveland violinist Andrew Sords has already appeared as a soloist with over 60 orchestras across the country and internationally.   During the current season will perform the concertos of Dvorak, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky.  He’s also made the rounds with some of gltb orchestras and this summer will be on the faculty of Cleveland Institute’s chamber music festival....

Pianist Anthony de Mare has been a champion of contemporary music of many sorts. Yet his trademark is the amazing things he can do at the piano besides play the keys, namely talking. The pinnacle of his accomplishments, in what might be considered a new genre of works, is Frederic Rzewski’s “De Profundis,” an amazing setting of portions of Oscar Wilde’s letter from prison that de Mare commissioned and...

It’s no secret that British composer Thomas Ades is gay and if you research just a bit it’s easy to find that his partner is the video artist Tal Rosner. They collaborated in 2008 on a piano concerto with video, “In Seven Days.” The piece was performed January 6-8 by the New York Philharmonic, with Ades as soloist and music director Alan Gilbert conducting.  Unfortunately there’s no mention...

It’s not just stars of popular culture who are the subject of “worship sites.”  An on-line tribute to the late American composer and pianist Robert Helps (1928-2001) is nothing less than pious veneration.  While including the required list of compositions plus a timeline and discography, the site is an interactive, dynamic progression – obviously the work of loving care.  It was conceived by Andrea Infamosa...

To my surprise and pleasure, last year’s Music Quiz for World AIDS Day is one of the most visited posts on this site.  So here’s another round. Match the artist on the left with his (or her!) album/song/ensemble/venue on the right.  Answers follow. share: Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook Buzz it up Tip on Hyves Share via MySpace Share on Orkut share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it...

Steven Blier on “Manning the Cannon,” an upcoming program with the New York Festival of Song: “This is a program I’ve been longing to do for about two decades. It explores two centuries of gay composers and gay-themed songs, and presents a wide variety of characters: experienced guys on the prowl for a good time; sensitive men grappling with their sexuality; hyper-males and drag queens; ecstatic lovers and...