Category: Chicago, IL
-
I am headed to Indianola this week for Des Moines Metro Opera’s production of Szymanowski’s King Roger, a piece I recently previewed for Seen and Heard alongside the rest of the company’s festival season. There is a small irony in this trip. I spent seven years in central Iowa, four at Iowa State and three…
-
Throughout June, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been celebrating American music for the nation’s 250th birthday. Current events and today’s political climate make for an unusual backdrop to such a survey. This is especially true for the program performed on Thursday evening, which at times painted an idyllic vision of the American idea — celebrating…
-
Central Iowa in July is not a place most people associate with opera. The corn and soybean fields south of Des Moines run flat and full beneath a wide sky, the heat presses down, and the towns along Highway 69 move at the pace of a long summer. Indianola has a grain elevator, a small…
-
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened its month-long celebration of America’s 250th anniversary with a program that traced a century of the nation’s musical lineages. The concerts to follow will feature an eclectic lineup, from pianist Conrad Tao and mandolinist Chris Thile, to Leonard Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety. But by uniting the voices of John…
-
When I moved to Seattle in the summer of 2004, I had never seen a live opera. It wasn’t for lack of interest; classical music had taken hold of me during my student years in Iowa, and opera was part of that passion from early on. The first I ever heard was Salome, followed by…
-
There is an old home video of Conrad Tao that captures the modest beginnings of a prodigy. In the footage, a very young Tao sits at the piano, pawing out “Mary Had a Little Lamb” one note at a time. He does not actually remember a time before playing the piano. “We had a piano…
-
Thursday’s program for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was originally meant to spotlight the conductor and violinist Pekka Kuusisto, whose curiosity and range have made him a rare figure on international stages. His program would have traced a neat line between old music and the new works inspired by it. Kreisler’s Violin Concerto in C major,…
-
Elim Chan is set to be the San Francisco Symphony’s next music director starting in 2027. It’s a smart choice for the orchestra roiled by the pandemic, artistic shuffles and institutional belt tightening.
-
For their final program of the 2025–26 season, the Rembrandt Chamber Musicians—drawn from the Lyric Opera Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—offered a thoughtful look at how geographic displacement can refine a composer’s identity. The concert, performed May 17, was delivered with the poise of musicians who thoroughly understand the mechanics of ensemble playing. Dvořák’s…
-
My colleague Louis Harris at Third Coast Review has written a lengthy profile of Chicago composer Stacy Garrop, whose music he loves. Garrop is one of many excellent contemporary composers who call Chicago home. Interestingly, when she listens to music, it’s not usually classical. “One of my approaches to that is I do listen to…