Luckily the Boston area is home to a considerable number of world-class pianists. Among them is Victor Rosenbaum. An honors graduate of Brandeis University, he was chair of the piano faculty at the New England Conservatory before heading the Longy School of Music for 16 years. He currently is on the Conservatory faculty as well as that of the Mannes School of Music in New York, and gives performances and master classes around the globe.

Victor Rosenbaum displays superb pianism in his latest CD (more…)

The local choral group called the Boston Secession has recently issued its second CD recording, entitled “Surprised by Beauty: Minimalism in Choral Music.” Founded in 1996 by conductor/pianist Jane Ring Frank, who had moved east from California in 1991, this professional chorus consists of two dozen singers – six sopranos, six altos, five tenors, and seven basses. The group’s name was modeled on that of the Vienna Secession, a progressive cooperative formed in 1897 by the painter Gustav Klimt and several Austrian colleagues.

The new Boston Secession CD manifests plenty of beauty
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The Cambridge Community Chorus (CCC) was founded in 1990, and has in the past 18 years grown in size and skill under the leadership of William Ethaniel Thomas. Thomas is retiring from his post and led his farewell concert in Sanders Theatre on May 25 before an enthusiastic audience. For his final program Thomas chose two large works: one by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), and one by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912).

William Ethaniel Thomas (more…)

A concert in memory of composer-teacher Edward Cohen (1940-2002) took place in the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on April 27. The participants included instrumentalists, vocal soloists, and the M.I.T. Chamber Chorus, led by Dr. William Cutter, director of choral programs at the Institute.

Eddie Cohen

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Two important twentieth-century pieces and a work-in-progress made up the final program of the season offered by the New England Philharmonic at the Tsai Performance Center on April 26, with Richard Pittman on the podium.

A painting by E. Prampolini inspired by Bela Bartok’s “The Miraculous Mandarin”
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“Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR

Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with a link to the piece, is part of an invitation to an Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston workshop on April 23 where, for $50, attendees can listen to experts talk about ways that we can “create for Boston and Massachusetts what Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have successfully done” to encourage cultural tourism. The latest news out of Philadelphia is that Boston has its work cut out for it — Philly is surging ahead. (more…)

The Spectrum Singers, founded in 1980 and still led by John W. Ehrlich, presented a concert on March 29 entitled “An American Sampler.” Taking place in Emmanuel Church, the program was devoted to six composers of distinction, with particular emphasis on Aaron Copland (1900-1990) and Irving Fine (1914-1962).

American composer Aaron Copland (more…)

A recent study in Editor & Publisher delivers the lowdown; with its circulation down about 20% in four years, The Boston Globe is in free fall. Two major investors in The New York Times, which owns the Globe, are “challenging the company’s investment decisions, including its commitment to the struggling newspaper industry beyond the flagship New York Times. Like many analysts, they see The Boston Globe and a group of 15 local papers as a drain on the company, which should, they argue, be focused on extracting the greatest possible advantage from the Times brand.” Bloomberg reports the taxman may be the paper’s savior: “The Times’ low tax basis on the Globe makes a sale unattractive because a large portion of proceeds would go to the government, she [NYT Chief Executive Janet Robinson] said.” (more…)

The most enterprising program offered by any of our local orchestras in years took place on February 23 when the New England Philharmonic presented a concert at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center. Founded in 1976, the orchestra is composed of both professional and non-professional musicians, led by Richard Pittman. The evening offered music by four important composers, with Pittman making brief remarks about each.

The enterprising evening ended with a composition by Boston native Irving Fine (more…)

This review/commentary will focus on Coltrane’s recordings with the Miles Davis Quintet for Columbia (in October 1955 and June and September 1956) and Prestige (in November 1955 and May and October 1956), as well as a variety of sideman dates and nominally leaderless sessions, many of which have recently been reissued by the Concord Music Group in the compilation entitled Interplay (with insightful notes by Coltrane scholar Lewis Porter). Part 2 will deal with the subsequent period of Trane’s emergence as a leader and as a key member of Monk’s quartet and then Miles’s sextet, a period in which his musical development became much easier to follow–and his discography much less.

The evolution of John Coltrane’s music from 1959 through 1967 can be neatly mapped to the output of just two labels, Atlantic and Impulse, augmented by a handful of recordings with Miles Davis — most notably, Kind of Blue — and one anomalous intervening date for Roulette. (Posthumous Impulse releases–supplemented by Atlantic outtakes, a fascinating series of early sixties live dates issued by Pablo, and a motley assortment of bootlegs–have enriched our understanding of Trane’s evolution, but not fundamentally altered it.)

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