Blog

15 Feb 2015, Article
Boston Musical Intelligencer Review of "To D.R. in Holloway"
I had some anxiety about attending a concert by a women’s vocal ensemble. Would it involve choreography and costumes verging on kitsch? Surely the lack of any real bass would be a limitation.? My fears were unfounded. Anthology, an all-female vocal quartet, offered an evening of engaging and serious new music, varied with a few folk and traditional arrangements. The artistic standards were high; these professional singers have aesthetic sensibilities and as well as impressive technical chops. ...

15 Feb 2015, Article
Boston Musical Intelligencer Review of "Against the Grain"
The Community Music Center of Boston presented an evening of Boston premieres by young composers performed by the new music ensemble Dinosaur Annex. The program presented an of John Adams’s chamber music. The piece very successfully maintained momentum and energy through rhythm and repetition despite a fairly limited and harmonic language, while at the same time causing some moments of rhythmic drive to lose their potency. Yvonne Lee gave an enrapturing performance of Trevor ...

15 Feb 2015, Article
Keep Louisville Literary Review of "Emily"
Opera generally greets a very specific clientele. Operatic performances tend to only grace the stages of large cities on a frequent basis and mid sized cities a couple times a year. They’re expensive due to the their grand design with heavy production, stage craft, costumes, large casts, and full orchestras. Thanks to fragmentation some composers are composing shorter, smaller, more fiscally manageable chamber opera’s. There are still big budget opera’s, like Michel van der aa’s 2006 ...

15 Feb 2015, Article
Louisville Public Radio Review of "Emily"
It’s possible you’ve not seen opera quite like this. Thompson Street Opera Company opened its second season last night with a regional premiere of Eva Kendrick’s chamber opera “Emily,” a satisfying peek into the family dynamics and dramatic social life of one of America’s most intriguing foundational poets. Staged in the as-yet-unfinished theater at Vault 1031, a new performance space on the edge of Old Louisville (1031 S. 6 th Street), this is opera stripped down to its bare ...

15 Feb 2015, Article
"Emily" Review—Arts Louisville
Opera is big, perhaps even grandiose. Except when it is not. The adjective “operatic” depends upon that perception of larger-than-life melodrama, and is not appropriate to Emily , which makes virtue out of understatement and low-key, even ordinary moments in the life of poet Emily Dickinson. The action, if you can call it that, turns on one particular poem, If you were coming in the fall , and the manner in which it is misunderstood by family and friends close to Dickinson. We learn about ...