Reviews |
Read what the critics have to say about our concerts...
but remember: there's no substitute for being there!
|
July 8, 2007
Jake Heggie
Let Her Entertain You. Please!
THE Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra was tuning up one day last month at the Ravinia Festival in suburban Chicago when Patti LuPone walked onstage in her let’s-get-serious glasses and prepared to sing from a score plastered with Post-it notes. Among the ensemble’s strange, outmoded, “original” instruments — the feral horns, sour violins, wooden flutes, cellos without endpins — she seemed right at home, despite her Broadway provenance. She too is a strange, outmoded, original instrument: a musical star built for another age, an Ethel Merman without portfolio. Which partly explains what she was doing there: following the
unpredictable trail of interesting work wherever it led. In this case
that meant “To Hell and Back,” by the composer Jake Heggie and the librettist Gene Scheer. Reframing the Persephone myth as a contemporary tale of domestic abuse, they had conceived the 38-minute operatic piece with Ms. LuPone specifically in mind to sing the role of the battered wife’s mother-in-law. READ MORE
|
 |
| January 28, 2007
Emil Miland, Sarah Cahill, Carey Bell and Paul Ehrlich
The Attraction of the New
It's probably time to lay to rest the myth that contemporary concert music is box office suicide. Of course, it still matters exactly what types of "new music" are being offered. The term can be ridiculously broad, encompassing everything under the sun in the 20th and 21st centuries. The Noe Valley Chamber Music concert on Sunday offered a slate of neoconservative — or vanguard (or a combination thereof, depending on the point of view) — composers that filled the Presbyterian sanctuary to capacity. The recital starred the wondrous duo of cellist Emil Miland and pianist Sarah Cahill, and it featured vibrant contributions by clarinetist Carey Bell and violist Paul Ehrlich. READ MORE
|
 |
May 9, 2004
Jorja Fleezanis and Karl Paulnack
Seriously Passionate
Toward the end of a mostly glorious recital on Sunday, the fresh breeze blowing through the open windows at Noe Valley Ministry playfully flipped through the pages of violinist Jorja Fleezanis’s music, interrupting a flawlessly projected melody. Fleezanis smiled faintly for a moment and quickly turned back to the right page, barely missing a beat. The breeze fit right in this concert billowing with fresh programming, but the smile itself was a rare break in the otherwise ardently serious playing. READ MORE
|
 |
December 7, 2003
Mysteries of the Spirit
Volti Turns a Page
At Sunday's afternoon concert in the Noe Valley Chamber Music Series, conductor Robert Geary demonstrated that he is a master of first — and last — impressions. He led Volti, the superb a cappella chorus of 20 singers, in a varied and difficult program of secular and sacred American music. He did so with a compelling sense of design and perspective. By the end, he had demonstrated his ensemble's command of many sounds, sources, and periods. He began each work with a moment of enchantment which immediately summoned a wish to hear more. He concluded each with an exquisite gesture of shining polish and release. This is a cagey program-builder. It all began with welcome. READ MORE
|
 |
November 23, 2003
Good Friends, Great Music
All Among Friends
The Noe Valley Chamber Music Series produced an embarrassment of musical riches Sunday afternoon with a program entitled Good Friends, Good Music. That turned out to be too modest a name. Good friends they may be, but the program consisted of not merely good,but great music in performances which would do honor to Europe’s finest summer festivals. READ MORE
|
 |
February 10, 2002
Chamber Ensemble of the Pacific
Brahms and Faure in First Class Performance
While the Bay Area is host to a wonderful assortment of fine and longstanding chamber groups of all kinds, that doesn't prevent their members from cooking up special projects on a regular basis. Noe Valley Chamber Music, which hosted Sunday's performance by the Chamber Ensemble of the Pacific in particular seems to provide a home for many of the ad-hoc groups that rise up each season. But do we need yet another group of freelancers coming together for what seemed to be a one-shot concert, and to play standard repertoire, no less? The answer, in response to Sunday's moving concert, is a resounding Yes. READ MORE
|
 |
