First Contact and the havoc that follows, viewed from a perch of postapocalyptic desolation: such, in a nutshell, is the bitter substance of Sweet Land, the latest project of The Industry, the MacArthur "genius" impresario-director Yuval Sharon's Los Angeles-based think tank for operatic R&D. Premiered on February 29, the production closed halfway through a scheduled four-weekend run, a casualty of Covid-19. Yet there's good news here. Already Sweet Land has risen from the ashes on vimeo,($14.99).

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

However talented, musicians who walk away from a budding career can expect no second chance.

In her native Kazan, in the Russian republic of Tatar­stan, the concert pianist and pedagogue Damira Feldman, familiarly Mira, flew through the conservatory with high honors. But when she moved to Israel as a young wife and mother, friends said not to look back.

"Everyone who emigrates to Israel is a lawyer or a musician," they told her. "Take anything practical."

Wise words. She had mouths to feed.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Hannover, in the German state of Lower Saxony, lies on the 52nd northern parallel, way up there with Lake Baikal and Alaska's Kiska Island, still a whisker south of the Scandinavian capitals. By May, the days start seeming endless there. Readers of these posts may recall how stoked I was last year to discover and participate in the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Ingo Metzmacher's cutting-edge performing-arts festival in and around the palace that was once the haunt of that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, torchbearer of the Enlightenment, widely acknowledged as the last Universal Genius.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Isn't the real sport in juried art shows second- guessing the jury? Hence, the grand tradition of the "Salon des Refusés," or showcase for rejects, going back to 1863, when the tony but hidebound official Paris Salon, sponsored by the French government and the Academy of Fine Arts, shut out the progressive likes of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet.

What, I wonder, might a gathering of rejects look like on Maui in the year 2020?

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

This recap runs from the first Sunday in October 2019 to the fourth Sunday of the new decade—four months averaging a fraction over one show each, rather than the regulation two. For that and other reasons, I've been experimenting with the playlists to get more new releases on the air—which can entail jumping to more speculative conclusions on sketchier evidence. So, I put my faith in satori, the flash of Zen enlightenment I recently learned the word for while watching "Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time" (ありがとうございました, Ken Jennings-sama).

Overall, the quality has been astonishing, with very few disappointments. But if it's just peaks you want rather than the tour d'horizon, here's are some places to start:

Continue to the full article  |  More articles