November 28, 2025 • 3:35 pm Comments Off on Gathering around the Hearth: Inside the Miró Quartet’s New Holiday Album
I interviewed John Largess, violist of the Miró Quartet, about the ensemble’s new holiday album:
Celebrating 30 years together, the Miró Quartet swaps concert halls for the fireside with Hearth, a collection of festive songs newly arranged by fifteen leading composers. Violist John Largess talks about collaboration, nostalgia and what togetherness means after three decades on the road….
Filed under: holiday, string quartet, The Strad
November 26, 2025 • 3:32 pm Comments Off on Richard O’Neill and Jeremy Denk in Recital
Seattle Chamber Music Society presented Richard O’Neill and Jeremy Denk in a sold-out recital Sunday. Here’s my review for The Strad:
Seattle Chamber Music Society brought the inaugural season of its new Signature Series to a compelling close with this sold-out recital by violist Richard O’Neill – best known as a member of the Takács Quartet – and pianist Jeremy Denk.
Filed under: Beethoven, review, Seattle Chamber Music Society, The Strad, viola
November 25, 2025 • 9:57 am Comments Off on Music For Saxophone Evokes Emotional Swirl Summoned By The Wind
A wonderful new saxophone concerto by Steven Mackey featuring Timothy McAllister and some classic John Adams from Seattle Symphony – my review for Classical Voice North America:
SEATTLE – Rather than propose a grand narrative of American music, the Seattle Symphony’s all-American program on Nov. 20 with guest conductor Lawrence Renes set three sharply contrasting voices side by side: Copland’s atmospheric Quiet City, Steven Mackey’s brand-new saxophone concerto Anemology, and John Adams’ ever-astonishing Harmonielehre — a lineup that underscored how differently American composers have approached the orchestra over the past century….
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Filed under: American music, commissions, John Adams, review, Seattle Symphony
November 18, 2025 • 2:51 pm Comments Off on ‘The Monkey King’: Opera Now Review
Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s The Monkey King is a very palpable hit at San Francisco Opera. The rest of the run appears to be already sold out, but a livestream of tonight’s performance at 7.30 PT will be available here starting at 7.30 pm PT ($25); the stream will also be available on demand from 23 Nov at 10am PT to 25 Nov at 10am PT.
My review for Opera Now:
Just after singing what may be the most beautiful music in The Monkey King, the opera’s irrepressible hero promptly marks his territory with a triumphant stream of urine. It’s an indelible assertion of Monkey’s contradictions – and a characteristic example of Huang Ruo’s assured pacing. His underlying musical control gives this sweeping, adventure-driven tale cohesion, navigating its comic and sublime registers with unforced confidence. The transitions are so natural they scarcely call attention to themselves. …
Filed under: new opera, review, San Francisco Opera
November 14, 2025 • 9:12 am Comments Off on A Shape-Shifting Hero for a ‘Third Culture’ Opera
My New York Times feature 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.
Filed under: new opera, New York Times, San Francisco Opera
November 12, 2025 • 10:35 am Comments Off on Breath and Soul: Bach’s Eloquent Oboe at the Seattle Bach Festival
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…
November 11, 2025 • 12:56 pm Comments Off on Concert review: Tafelmusik with Rachel Podger
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.
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Filed under: early music, review, The Strad
November 2, 2025 • 5:22 pm 1
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. …
Filed under: Musical America, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, singers
November 1, 2025 • 9:45 am 2
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.
Filed under: review, San Francisco Opera, Wagner
October 30, 2025 • 11:39 am Comments Off on Matthew Aucoin and a New Generation of Composers Are Giving 21st-century Music a Body Again
On November 1, Meany Center for the Performing Arts presents Matthew Aucoin’s Music 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. ..
Peter Sellars on Music for New Bodies
Filed under: American music, American opera, Meany Center for the Performing Arts, Peter Sellars, Seattle Times
Arts & Culture Stories from NPR
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 