Reviews

At the Days and Nights Festival, Philip Glass conjures distinct sound colors as his musical fingerprint in music heavy on the synthesized organs.

Trinity College Choir’s pure, warm vocalism distinguishes its disc of a cappella works, most of them explicitly Christian, by eight North American composers.

Steve Reich’s tribute to those who died at Ground Zero involves prerecorded speech and evokes emotions of sadness and transcendence.

It was well worth the wait, to hear the Pražák Quartet’s fleet take on the Borodin Second Quartet.

A true-to-the-original production of Gershwin’s masterwork is blessed by four outstanding women singer/actors, but marred by lax baton work.

The Grand Finale of the Merolini serves as a coming-out party for singers who may rise to the top of the operatic world or settle in the middle ranks.

Carmel’s new Days and Nights Festival embraces the idea of repetition, with brilliantly played works by founder Philip Glass, Schubert, and Shostakovich

Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts receives a colorful, if often inscrutable, remounting at Yerba Buena Center.

Cabrillo wraps up its season with new works that surprise, delight, and sometimes frustrate.

Ample musical excerpts plus intriguing interviews (in German and English) distinguish a DVD on the life and works of a great American composer.