Huang Ruo and a Monkey King puppet at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco; Cayce Clifford
My New York Timesfeature on Huang Ruo and his brand-new opera “The Monkey King,” with a libretto by David Henry Hwang – opening tonight at San Francisco Opera.
Inside a cavernous rehearsal space near the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, the singer portraying the monk-like sage Subhuti was wielding a golden kung fu staff with serene precision. “Power alone is not enough” he intoned to the trickster hero of “The Monkey King,” Huang Ruo’s opera, which premieres this month at San Francisco Opera.
Debra Nagy, Tekla Cunningham, Hannah De Priest and Tyler Duncan
The second of this past weekend’s wonderful Baroque programs, courtesy of Seattle Bach Festival – my review of Tekla Cunningham and friends’ ‘The Eloquent Oboe’ for the aptly named Bachtrack:
Launched as recently as January, the Seattle Bach Festival is already becoming a force in the Pacific Northwest’s Early Music landscape…
Rachel Podger with members of Tafelmusik; photo: Jorge Gustavo Elias
Early Music Seattle presented a stimulating evening with Tafelmusik and the inimitable Rachel Podger. My review for The Strad:
Early Music Seattle, the region’s principal presenter of period performance, welcomed Tafelmusik for the Seattle stop on its twelve-city tour of the North American West Coast – aptly titled ‘Brilliant Baroque’. With principal guest director Rachel Podger leading from her baroque violin, the sixteen-member ensemble offered a sequence of works shaped, in part, by an aesthetic of translation and rearrangement – whether from solo to chamber forces or from the opera stage to more intimate instrumental settings. continue
Here’s my profile of mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu, Musical America’s New Artist of the Month for November:
When Hongni Wu bounded across the stage as Cherubino in Santa Fe Opera’s Marriage of Figaro last summer, she seemed to compress a teenager’s swirl of conflicted emotions into a single breath. …
My review of San Francisco Opera’s new production of Parsifal has been posted on the Opera Now website:
Time moves differently in San Francisco Opera’s Parsifal. Under Eun Sun Kim’s baton, Wagner’s score breathes with a kind of suspended inevitability, while movement and light unfold in ritual slow motion, evoking a theatre of Baudelairean correspondences, where sound, image and gesture seem to mirror one another in continual exchange.
The New York premiere of “Music for New Bodies” at Lincoln Center as part of the Run AMOC* Festival at Summer for the City. (Lawrence Sumulong / Courtesy of Lincoln Center)
On November 1, Meany Center for the Performing Arts presents Matthew Aucoin’sMusic for New Bodies, a “vocal symphony” based on the poetry of Jorie Graham and staged by Peter Sellars — in other words, not to be missed. I spoke with Aucoin about New Bodies for The Seattle Times:
“The voice of the bottom of the ocean. The voice of the medicines moving through your veins. The voice of the core of the Earth.”
Composer Matthew Aucoin names them like a spell — presences that inhabit “Music for New Bodies,” his 70-minute vocal symphony that will receive its West Coast premiere at the University of Washington’s Meany Center on Nov. 1. ..
After a dazzling performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, the 29-year-old French Canadian was named 2025 Honens Gold Laureate in Calgary last night. She takes home CAD $100,000 and a three-year career-accelerator program valued at more than $500,000. She also swept up the Audience Choice Award (worth $5,000 CAD).
The final round featured all three finalists, each in a different concerto, with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra led by Elias Grandy.
Hearty applause as well for Silver Laureate Carter Johnson (29) and to Bronze Laureate Anastasia Vorotnaya (30) – and for all seven semifinalists who made this year’s Honens an inspiring, memorable festival. They included Ádám Balogh (28), Elia Cecino (24), Giorgio Lazzari (25), Sandro Nebieridze (24), Chaeyoung Park (28), Derek Wang (27), and Yuanfan Yang (28).
With performances this bold and individual, the Honens ideal of the “Complete Artist” feels alive and well.
The Isidore Quartet at Honens: Adrian Steele, Phoenix Avalon, Joshua McClendon and Devin Moore, with finalist Carter Johnson in the centre; photo: Jorge Gustavo Elias
–> Follow the final round and announcement of awards starting at 7pm MDT on the Honens livestream here.
For a string quartet, sharing the spotlight with fellow chamber musicians is second nature – but not usually in circumstances like this. The New York City-based Isidore Quartet took the stage last night (23 October) for the chamber-music final of the 2025 Honens International Piano Competition, held at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in the Werklund Centre, downtown Calgary, Alberta. ..
A recommendation for this weekend in Seattle: “Witness to Courage” — Music of Remembrance, 3pm Sunday, Oct 26
MOR opens its new season with the West Coast premiere of “Crossing Borders” by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer (librettist of the Met’s hit “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”). The song, for mezzo and piano, draws from a secret diary kept by a teenage girl escaping Nazi-occupied Paris.
Also featured: works by Géza Frid and William Hilsley, written in prison and exile, and Paul Schoenfield’s “Sparks of Glory,” inspired by Holocaust resisters.
Linking music born of exile to today’s immigrant realities, MOR partners with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Jewish Family Service—donating 50 percent of ticket sales to support legal aid for immigrants across Washington, including those detained by ICE.
Born just months apart in 1925, Luciano Berio and Cathy Berberian formed one of the most daring creative partnerships of the 20th century. Together, the Italian composer and American mezzo-soprano blurred the lines between composer and performer, intellect and emotion, experimentation and play. They expanded our understanding of what a voice could do and reinvented the relationship between music and theater itself.
The Seattle Chamber Orchestra opens its fourth season on Friday 24 October with acentenary tribute to these two kindred spirits. The program, designed by SCO Founder and Music Director Lorenzo Marasso, features Berio’s beloved Folk Songs, Sequenza for voice, and Sequenza for harp, alongside works by John Cage, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Claudio Monteverdi that were signatures of Berberian’s repertoire.
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 