Upcoming Tours
Puglia — Exploring the heel of Italy’s boot (7-17 September 2024)
Whitewashed towns, centuries-old farmland, and miles of olive groves animate Puglia's landscape while sparkling aquamarine waters wash hundreds of miles of its coastline. With a culture, history, and cuisine that is second to none in Italy, we’ll attend musical events; visit ancient buildings; enjoy the regional cuisine; and ride the Adriatic's waters on this 10-day journey. Before turning south, the tour begins in Rome for a day on which to sample the city's ancient and modern glories. Matera, one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, our next stop, is noted for his cliffside dwellings and mountaintop cathedral. Baroque splendors are to be found in Lecce, the 'Florence of the South'. Finally, we stay in Monopoli, once a medieval fortress, and now a charming Adriatic seaside town. Music from pizzica to opera will be experienced throughout our journey at a time when summertime crowds depart and cooler temperatures invigorate travelers.
Performance Reviews
New York NY
Honeck and Rana bring fresh urgency to Russian favorites with Philharmonic
Concert opens with New York premiere of Katherine Balch’s musica pyralis.
New York, NY
Heartbeat Opera breaks new ground with Daniel Schlosberg’s The Extinctionist
Infertility, dystopia and betrayal make for riveting experience.
New York, NY
Ensemble Connect at Carnegie Hall mines the Weimar Era for rare musical jewels
Music of Schulhoff, Weil, Berg & Gershwin delights and challenges.
New York, NY
Goerke, Alagna bring star power to Met’s lavish “Turandot”
Cast changes enrich Puccini's final opera set in Imperial China.
New York, NY
Jonathan Tetelman makes his Met debut in a splendid ‘Années folles’ staging of La rondine
Angel Blue is full-voiced Magda with shimmering high notes.
New York, NY
Music Before 1800 explores the kora tradition of Mali
Kora player Ballaké Sissoko and guitarist Derek Gripper conjure subtle sonoroties.
New York, NY
Leon Botstein leads the American Symphony Orchestra in a bold, beautiful Gurre-Lieder
Rare outing for Late-Romantic work of gargantuan proportions.
New York, NY
Continuum pays rich musical homage to Chou Wen-chung
Joel Sachs led Continuum in a musical tribute to composer, teacher and diplomat.
New York, NY
From blips to bliss with ‘Ensemble Connect Up Close’ at Carnegie Hall
Concert features world premieres of works by Natalie Brown and Nathalie Joachim.
New York, NY
Five Singers win top prizes at the Metropolitan Opera’s 2024 Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition
$20,000 cash prizes and so much more awarded five rising stars.
All of my reviews for Seen and Heard International can be found here
Recordings Reviews
Ventura, CA
Requiem for the Enslaved
Carlos Simon and Marco Pavé offer a searing, transcendent memorial to past sins and hopes.
Goshen, NY
Aaron Jay Kernis's Elegy (For Those We Lost)
Elegy (For Those We Lost) is dedicated to the families of those who have died from COVID-19. Aaron Jay Kernis originally composed the piece for solo piano, but arranged it for harp and trumpet was made at the request of the Grammy-nominated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis.
Berlin
Vince Mendoza's Freedom Over Everything
To the Edge of Longing for soprano and orchestra is one of the most stunning musical creations inspired by these troubled times.
Lawrence, Kansas
dwb (driving while black)
Of the three recorded versions of Susan Kander and Roberta Gumbel's dwb (driving while black), this recording is the purest one.
Chicago
Archetypes
In their new release, Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion joins with celebrated Brazilian guitarist Sérgio Assad and his daughter - vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Clarice Assad - to portray in music twelve of these universal characters that defy time and place.
Paris
The Freischütz Project
Conductor Laurence Equilbey is the first to present Carl Maria von Weber’s opera using the principles and original instruments of historically informed performance with a stellar cast.
New York
Brooklyn-based ensemble and songwriting collective Founders releases Songs for the End of Time
Ben Russell and Brandon Ridenour, members of the new music ensemble Founders, radical rework of Olivier Messiean’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps is faithful to both the spirit and the austere beauty of the original.
Warsaw
The songs of René de Boisdeffre - A nineteenth-century master of melody
Acte Préalable’s recording of reveals that at his best, René de Boisdeffre could fashion a song to rival those of his greatest contemporaries, including Fauré.
France
Contralto - Nathalie Stutzmann / Orfeo 55
Stutzmann’s last recording with Orfeo 55, the chamber orchestra which she founded and performed with as soloist and conductor simultaneously, celebrates the legacy of the great Baroque contraltos and the music that they inspired.
New York
Once and Again
Once and Again, the most recent recording of Edward Smaldone's music, features a sampling of his smaller-scaled works, including two for voice and instruments.
About
I got the travel bug from my parents. As a boy I had crisscrossed the US with them and my younger brother on the classic American Road Trip to California. At 16, I went to Europe for the first time. The destination was Germany, a country that I have returned to many times. In addition to business and personal travel, I have lived in Switzerland, Singapore and China. So far, it’s been a wonderful life of travelling the world and experiencing its wonders..
A musician for most of my life, first a trumpet player and then a singer, I have a degree in music from the University of Pittsburgh. In 2013, I began reviewing for Seen and Heard International and have posted reviews from the US, Europe and Asia. In addition, I regularly contribute program notes to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and have had music and travel articles published in the Global Times, Shanghai Daily, MusicWeb International, Broad Street Review and other publications.
Although I am thrilled to have press privileges in many of the world’s great concert halls and opera houses, it is the offerings in the more out-of-the way places that excite me the most. There one still finds great music, often at its national, indigenous best, in theaters, whether ancient or modern, that are as grand and beautiful as any in the world. More importantly, these venues not only preserve the past, they embrace the new, keeping classical music current and vital. That is the world that I invite you to explore with me on my tours.
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