Jason Victor Serinus regularly reviews music and audio for Stereophile, SFCV, Classical Voice North America, AudioStream, American Record Guide, and other publications. The whistling voice of Woodstock in She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, the longtime Oakland resident now resides in Port Townsend, Washington.
Chora Nova certainly doesn’t shy away from challenges. Since its artistic director, the conductor and countertenor Paul Flight, came on board to direct the auditioned community chorus in July 2006, it has tackled the challenging works of Kodály, a number of greater and lesser Baroque masterworks, Brahms’ “German” Requiem and Neue Liebeslieder, and the music of Michael Haydn.
When it came to the soloists, the “Show Boat in Concert/From the Jerome Kern Songbook,” this season’s American Masterworks Series installment from the Oakland East Bay Symphony, scored a well-deserved 10.
Why Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues) is so infrequently staged becomes apparent once you hear Deutsche Grammophon’s new recording.
Jake Heggie. There are few contemporary composers so loved and adored, yet so controversial. When he’s on, his music can be touching, endearing, entertaining, hilarious, and/or heart-shakingly profound by turns. As a person, he’s handsome, delightful, and admirably out about his gayness.
When it comes to classical music and opera, we enlightened ones are supposed to be color-blind. Regardless of our race, the racial characteristics of singers and musicians are not supposed to matter … some of the time.
This is a remarkable CD. At first glance, its pairing of Ambrose Field’s live and studio electronics with the voice of former Hilliard Ensemble tenor John Potter singing the music of Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) may seem like an update of Officium, the best-selling ECM early music recording from 1994 that partnered Jan Garbarek’s distinctive saxophone with the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble.
Quality is a given when it comes to the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus (GGMC). First and foremost, its director for the last 13 years has been Joseph Jennings, longtime music director of Chanticleer.
