Category Archives: Uncategorized

My following reviews were published in an alternative paper over the past few years and I can’t help but recommend each splendid CD again. So here we go -unedited, from the originals, so please excuse the occasional bit of information … Continue reading →

The narrative line of Cirque du Soleil’s  Quidam is thus described: “Young Zoé is bored; her parents, distant and apathetic, ignore her. Her life has lost all meaning. Seeking to fill the void of her existence, she slides into an … Continue reading →

On the Hamilton-Toronto bus, en route to see Canadian Opera Company’s Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss, there is time to re-dip into Wilhelm Furtwangler Notebooks 1924-54 and read what this truly legendary conductor has to say about tonight’s composer. … Continue reading →

Gluck’s down-to-basics reformist opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, is a very human and sublimely musical rite that explores humanity’s most fundamental and blunt existential condition: we die. Or, more painfully for us, those we love deeply die before we do, and … Continue reading →

Alex Pangman’s new CD, titled 33, begins at speeding ticket tempo with I Found a New Baby and it sits comfortably in memories of the instrumental 1937 Teddy Wilson Orchestra recording. After all, Pangman’s band, the Alleycats, are an ace … Continue reading →

At the outset, under conductor Leonardo Vordoni’s baton, the overture to Canadian Opera Company’s current La Cenerentola seems more a reticent sigh than a twinkle of fun one expects in Rossini. What hint of playfulness there is seems outside the … Continue reading →

A composer friend and occasional collaborator, Barend Schipper in The Netherlands, once explained to me how the modern ear, with its reverential and oh-so-serious attitude toward Mozart, often missed the humour in his essence. Tragedy and humour are not separate … Continue reading →

In 1939, when William Saroyan won both the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Time of Your Life, a civilization pummeled by the Great Depression now had the unimaginable carnage of World War Two … Continue reading →

About two years ago I notified the online All Music Guide that their biography of Hamilton’s Jackie Washington contained a number of errors because its author had mixed biographical information of two Jackie Washingtons. I explained further that I, with … Continue reading →