With its ever growing arts district, the City of Dallas continues to think big. The same can be said for the Dallas Opera and its new Winspear Opera House. For the second half of its first season in the new house, the company commissioned and premiered Jack Heggie’s “Moby-Dick.” I attended the performance on Saturday May 8. The massive scale and varied themes of Melville’s classic novel have flummoxed many who’ve...

They’re a small town family. Robert, Tony and Annamaria. Maggio is on the faculty at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia. His partner Tony La Salle is an artist. They’ve been together since 1991 and adopted a daughter, Annamaria La Salle Maggio in 2001, when she was one month old. In 2003, they settled in Lambertville, New Jersey. “We wanted to live in a small community where we’d be known by everyone,”...

As a trombonist and composer Monique Buzzarté has performed in traditional orchestras and chamber music settings and collaborated in the most advanced realms of new compositional and experimental techniques.  Based in New York, she was dubbed a “Soloist Champion” by Meet the Composer in 2008 for her long advocacy of contemporary works.  Since 1983, her project New Music from Women: Trombone has commissioned...

“Moby Dick,” the latest opera from Jake Heggie (“Dead Man Walking”) premieres Friday April 30 at the Dallas Opera in its spiffy new Winspear Opera House. Ben Hepner leads the cast as Capt. Ahab.  Libretto is by Gene Sheer.  Patrick Summers conducts. Stage direction by Leonard Foglia. I’ll be attending a performance on May 8, as part of the annual convention of the Music Critics Association....

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...

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...

I’m proud to introduce HudsonSounds.org, a new online resource for music in the upper Hudson Valley, New York’s Capital Region and The Berkshires. HudsonSounds.org provides calendar listings for hundreds of classical music events, and blogs by a dozen prominent and insight folks from the local musical community. There’s also links to music news headlines and a CD and DVD store. The listings are already full...

Raise your hand if you can name a GLTB community orchestra. (And it doesn’t count if you or your spouse is a member of one!) Sure, there’s lots of gay choruses. Here in little Albany, New York we’ve actually go two. And GLTB marching bands usually show up out of the woodwork when it’s time for a parade. But gay orchestras?? Well, I can find ten.  They’re located in five countries, with two launched...

Douglas Quint can’t remember which came first in life, ice cream or music. But he’s made both into professional pursuits. As a bassoonist he’s got an active freelance career across the northeast and a fine pedigree, having studied at Tanglewood and earned a bachelors from the Manhattan School of Music and a masters from The Juilliard School.  He’s a member of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston and with his long-time...

Jennifer Higdon can add the 2010 Pulitzer Prize to her ever-growing list of accolades. She received the award today for her Violin Concerto, which was premiered by soloist Hilary Hahn (her former student at the Curtis Institute) in 2009. It was commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and The Curtis Institute of Music. The concerto is published by Lawdon Press,...