Upcoming Tours
Italy
La Bella Vita - Wine, music & more in Northern Italy (October 7-16, 2022)
Experience the beautiful sights, tastes and sounds of Northern Italy in October. This tour will take you from beautiful Lake Como to Reggio Emilia, a charming city from which we will explore Modena and Mantua. In Parma, we will enjoy a performance of Verdi's La forza del destino at the Verdi Festival. The tour ends in Milan, where we will attend the premiere of a new production of Umberto Giordani's Fedora at La Scala.
Performance Reviews
San Francisco, CA
Mozart’s Rake Prowls Crumbling Society In Futuristic ‘Don Giovanni’
Bertrand de Billy conducts a lyrical 'Don Giovanni' in line with the dashing Étienne Dupuis in the title role.
New York, NY
Violinist Richard Lin makes a captivating Carnegie Hall debut
Winner of the 2018 Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis makes his violin sing.
Fort Worth, TX
South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim takes top prize at the Van Cliburn competition
Six young pianists from Belarus, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine and US competed for the gold medal.
New York, NY
Mission Commission: demystifying the art of creating music at the source
Podcasts follow the creation of three new works by Oscar Bettison, Vijay Iyer and Kate Soper commissioned by the Miller Theater at Columbia University.
New York, NY
Met wraps an inspired season with reprise of new “Rigoletto”
Quinn Kelsey reprises his powerful Rigoletto with winning cast.
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall hosts star-studded benefit concert in support of Ukraine
Musicians respond to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine with beautiful, intense performances.
New York, NY
It’s not just the glitter that makes the Metropolitan Opera’s Turandot one of the wonders of opera
Ukranian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska joins the ranks of the Met's great Turandots.
New York, NY
Met brings together the season’s finest for a stellar spring “Bohème”
The Met is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Franco Zeffirelli’s crowd-pleasing production of La bohème.
New York, NY
Drama and strong cast, undermined by sound, fury and duration in Met’s “Hamlet”
Allan Clayton’s identification with Hamlet is complete, and he is a rare opera singer to whom speaking comes as naturally as singing.
Zurich, Switzerland
‘Rheingold’ In Zurich, Or Wagner Does Hollywood (Jean Harlow Sighting)
Andreas Homoki and Gianandrea Noseda launch Zurich' first Ring in 20 years.
All of my reviews for Seen and Heard International can be found here
Recordings Reviews
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.
Erato
Rossini - Amici e Rivali
Amici e Rivali finds Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres in excellent form as they face off as friends and rivals in the music of Rossini.
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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