Robert Orth is splayed on his back, flailing his arms and legs from side to side with big, heavy flops. “Rememmmmberrr!” he wails in a rich, lyrical voice. “The memory chamber! Touch, too much. Too much unremembered!” He uses his legs to drag his body across the floor of the…
Composer Tod Machover is a musical mad scientist. The MIT professor and technology whiz has wowed audiences in Europe, Boston and Chicago with his futuristic opera Death and the Powers. Now it’s our turn. On Wednesday, The Dallas Opera will open its production of Machover’s sci-fi tale inside the Winspear…
She has won Tony and Grammy awards (plural) and dazzled on both stage and screen for decades. Thursday through Saturday at the Meyerson Symphony Center, you can hear Bernadette Peters’ silky, perfect voice live and watch her iconic red curls bounce as she performs some of Broadway’s biggest hits, all…
OK, nerds, it’s February and those money-hungry card and candy companies are at it again, reminding you that just having a profile on OKCupid isn’t the same as actually going out with your crush IRL. So stop obsessively checking that special someone’s online profile and impress them with tickets to…
The AT&T Performing Arts Center (2403 Flora St.) is upping Dallas’ classical music game with a brand-new recital series featuring big-name soloists. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, American piano superstar André Watts will take the stage for the series-opening concert in a solo recital featuring the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin…
This Friday night, the AT&T Performing Arts Center was to have opened its brand new Winspear Opera House Recital Series with a solo performance by renowned American pianist André Watts. Unfortunately, the organization has just announced that because of illness, Watts will not be able to perform and the recital…
So far in 2014, The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has been solidly stuck in the late Romantic period. Of the five pieces the orchestra performed last week and this, four were composed in the final two decades of the 19th century. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In the late 1800s,…
In February, The Dallas Opera is producing Death and the Powers, a modern, tech-savvy opera by composer/MIT professor Tod Machover. The details of what goes on behind the scenes of any opera are fascinating, but production design takes on a whole new dimension when an opera involves robots. At 3…
Pianist Hélène Grimaud has just finished a mentally and physically demanding rehearsal of the first two movements of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. Wearing unremarkable dark street clothes and no makeup, she still somehow pulls off that chic, effortless beauty that only French women can. She settles on the couch in…
Classical musicians sometimes have a warped sense of time. For instance, as Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya reminded his audience on Saturday night in his introductory comments, Sergei Prokofiev — a composer often considered “modern” and whose music was featured on this weekend’s program — was actually…
My sinuses are finally clearing from the Christmas vacation flu/cold/snot/crap that’s been going around. And just in time, too, because there are some great concerts coming up in the next few weeks and it’s impossible to fully appreciate the delicate vibrations of the world’s most expensive violin or catch all…
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra announced Tuesday morning that American conductor Karina Canellakis will join the orchestra as assistant conductor beginning in 2014. Canellakis, a New York native, comes to Dallas with an impressive resume as both violinist and conductor. She studied violin at the elite Curtis Institute of Music and…
“It’s funny to me when I see films of parades and there are people standing on the sidewalks waving. In New Orleans,” Ben Jaffe explains, “everybody is in the parade. There is nobody watching because they are just in it.” Ben Jaffe knows a thing or two about New Orleans…
Christmas music: You can love it or hate it, binge on it or complain about it, but even the grumpiest Grinch can’t resist indulging in it a little. If you’re one of those bizarrely merry humans who just can’t get enough melodic cheer and wants to cram every last jingle…
This week it seems that everyone is struggling with how best to commemorate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. What if it was your job to create the right music for this weighty occasion? Which notes would you choose and how would you arrange them? How would you use sound…
2015 is shaping up to be a good year for fans of new music and opera in Dallas. Last night The Dallas Opera announced that acclaimed American composer/librettist Mark Adamo has been commissioned to compose what they are calling “a holiday opera.” The new work is scheduled to be premiered…
Next Friday is composer Gunther Schuller’s 88th birthday, but he hasn’t planned a celebration. “I’ve had so many birthdays,” he explains, “I suppose something will come up.” It doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask an almost 88-year old about his retirement plans, especially since he’s in Dallas preparing two area colleges…
On Sunday, new Dallas Symphony Orchestra pops conductor Jeff Tyzik brings the sounds of Harlem to downtown Dallas for an afternoon of suspender-snapping, skirt-swinging entertainment. Classic blues, jazz and swing standards by Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, George Gershwin, Louis Armstrong and others round out the program for the orchestra’s “Night…
Violin superstar Joshua Bell joins the DSO in this month’s JFK memorial concert. This November, Dallasites will inevitably be bombarded by more than their fair share of words about the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Speeches, articles and commentary are essential to any memorial. Sometimes, though, words fail…
Last night at Fort Worth’s Bass Hall, classic horror film geeks and avant-garde minimalist music fans united in nerdom to do what they do best: sit in the dark, watch, listen, and quietly freak-out in the presence of their idols. The occasion was a screening of the classic Bela Lugosi…
French mezzo Clémentine Margaine bolted on stage at the Winspear opera house this weekend and stole the audience’s attention with effortless sensuality and a strong, smooth voice. Making her American debut in The Dallas Opera’s season-opening production of Bizet’s Carmen, Margaine also brought depth and complexity to the classic title…
This weekend the musicians of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra are being led by a familiar figure at the podium. Andrew Litton, the DSO’s Music Director from 1994 to 2006, returns to the Meyerson to conduct a program featuring Igor Stravinsky’s ballet scores. The Firebird was Stravinsky’s breakout hit. Composed just…
