Upcoming Tours
Turin
Northern Italy - Opera, Wine & Food (May 2020 - CANCELLED)
This is a trip for connoisseurs of music, food and wine. The operas will be Donizetti’s comedic masterpiece, Don Pasquale, at Turin’s Teatro Regio, Weill’s Mahagonny at the Teatro Municipale in Reggio Emilia and Montemezzi’s rarely performed L'amore dei tre re at La Scala Milan. The tour begins in Como, one of the most beautiful and picturesque places in Lombardy, and continues on to Emilia-Romagna, famous for its rich culinary traditions. En route we will stop in Alba, a picturesque town in the heart of Piedmont renowned for its velvety red Barolo and Barbaresco wines. CANCELLED.
Glimmerglass
The Glimmerglass Festival (August 2020)
Cooperstown is more than just baseball. The village at the southern tip of New York's Otsego Lake is also home to the Glimmerglass Festival, known for exciting opera productions that feature singers, directors and designers from around the world. At Glimmerglass, we will see two highlights of the 2020 festival, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s beloved The Sound of Music and Wagner’s rarely staged Die Feen. We will be staying at the historic Otesaga Resort Hotel, a Cooperstown landmark noted for its impeccable hospitality, first-class accommodations and fine dining. Other highlights of this tour include visits to sites linked to the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, two of the most celebrated families of the Gilded Age. (August 19-22, 2020)
Prague
Czech Magic - Music, Wine and Castles (May 2021)
Prague is the starting point for this exploration of Moravia. Musical highlights will include performances at Prague’s ornate National Theatre and Brno’s Janáček Theater, the largest in the Czech Republic. We will also visit Český Krumlov, one of the most picturesque towns in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as Olomouc, where Beethoven intended his Missa Solemnis to be performed and Mahler worked early in his career. For wine enthusiasts, there will be a visit to Valtice, the center of the Moravian wine industry situated on the Czech-Austrian border. (9 days)
Reviews
New York
All the colors of the rainbow in Louis Langrée’s debut with the New York Philharmonic
Light and lush - Louis Langrée and the New York Philharmonic in the music of Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin.
New York
Vocal perfection from The King’s Singers at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue
The King's Singers combine music and social consciousness in program of their beloved standards and selections from their recently released recording Finding Harmony.
New York
Ann Hallenberg and the Venice Baroque Orchestra pay tribute to Jenny Lind at Carnegie Hall
The extraordinary Swedish Ann Hallenberg makes rare New York appearance with the Venice Baroque Orchestra.
New York
Glorious, triumphant Ninth Symphony caps the ORR’s Beethoven series at Carnegie Hall
As with the Fifth Symphony, the final notes that sounded in Carnegie Hall at this final concert by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique were those of triumph and hope.
New York
An operatic take on The Halloween Tree delights at InsightALT 2020
Composer Theo Popov and librettist create a spooky, fast-paced tale of time travel as entertaining as it was educational in The Halloween Tree.
New York
The ORR’s Beethoven at Carnegie Hall celebrates nature’s beauty and the triumph of the human spirit
Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique played the orchestral music most associated with the heroic genius of fact and fiction in the second and third concerts of their Carnegie Hall Beethoven cycle
All of my reviews for Seen and Heard International can be found here
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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