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Tim Page |
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Newer stories | Older stories Another fine festival takes a bowSunday, June 7, 2009
The party's over. After tonight, the 2009 Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, which hadn't even held its first rehearsal a month ago, will cease to exist except in the memories of those who were there to play or listen during its few weeks of glory in Charleston. Read story. 'Modern' music escapes definitionFriday, June 5, 2009
Throughout much of the 1980s, I was the host of a radio program on New York's WNYC-FM that played a lot of contemporary music. One afternoon, however, I devoted an hour to works by the 12th-century composer Perotin — spare, ethereal yet startlingly intense vocal compositions based on the sound (fairly rare in Western music) of stark parallel fourths. Read story. Mature Chang lets self-expression emergeThursday, June 4, 2009
Sarah Chang has come a long way from her beginnings as a brilliantly virtuosic child prodigy who dazzled audiences with the speed, strength and sonority of her early performances in the mid-1990s. I was all but alone among critics in finding those long-ago concerts empty and meaningless studies in aggression, endowed with neither warmth nor charm. Read story. Time to tell it like it wasWednesday, June 3, 2009
Mayor Joe Riley offered a moving tribute to pianist and Spoleto Festival USA artistic director for chamber music Charles Wadsworth the other night. Read story. Wadsworth receives fond farewellTuesday, June 2, 2009
After a day when it seemed that the world had gone crazy — missile tests in North Korea, unusually heated partisan rhetoric on the morning talk shows, terrorism in a Wichita church — it was restorative to enter Memminger Auditorium on Sunday night. There, friends embraced friends, we listened to some wonderful music, and — not so incidentally — we toasted the long career of Charles Wadsworth. Read story. New styles of music genuinely artisticMonday, June 1, 2009
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet — which, despite the bucolic name, is based in New York City rather than the northern Midwest — offered some of the most musically responsive, physically demanding and intellectually satisfying dancing I've seen Saturday afternoon at Galliard Municipal Auditorium. Read story. Highs, lows of Spoleto's first 9 daysSunday, May 31, 2009
Halftime! We are in the middle of the 2009 Spoleto Festival USA, and I thought it might be a good time to take stock. As Henry James observed on the first page of "Portrait of a Lady," part of the afternoon has waned but much of it is left, and what is left is "of the finest and rarest quality." Read story. Orchestra sparkles in 'Das Lied'Saturday, May 30, 2009
What an extraordinary experience it must be for a young person to have practiced and perfected the playing of a beloved instrument, to have won hometown (or even home state) recognition as an accomplished soloist, and then to come to Charleston and team up with other brilliant young musicians as part of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra. Read story. Piccolo has a power, pull of its ownFriday, May 29, 2009
Charleston is twice-blessed at this time of year. The Spoleto Festival USA may present most of the "big-ticket" items, but the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, produced and directed by the city of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs, is equally capable of startling and capturing a visitor. Read story. 'Revelation' lives up to nameThursday, May 28, 2009
I visited the Spoleto Festival USA for the first time in 1984, and I've come back as often as I could thereafter. I can remember many magnificent performances (Gian Carlo Menotti's 1991 staging of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro" with a radiant young soprano named Renee Fleming haunts me still) and, yes, a few tepid ones. But never, until Tuesday afternoon at the Simons Center Recital Hall, had I encountered an unexpected masterpiece by a contemporary composer of whom I'd never heard. Read story. Ailey dancers offer timeless showTuesday, May 26, 2009
The company known as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has outlived its founder now by almost 20 years, yet it is no insult to Ailey's hand-chosen successor, the redoubtable Judith Jamison, to suggest that the troupe is still faithful to his spirit. It was in town this weekend — it is almost always in one town or another, having danced throughout the world and in all but two of the 50 states — and Galliard Municipal Auditorium was filled to capacity Sunday afternoon with an audience that came to cheer. Read story. 'Don John' brash, 'Rabbit' trashMonday, May 25, 2009
Emma Rice's "Don John," a brash, bawdy and vastly entertaining gloss on the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart-Lorenzo da Ponte operatic masterpiece "Don Giovanni," is one of the triumphs of the 2009 Spoleto Festival USA. It will be playing through June 6 at Memminger Auditorium and can be recommended to all but the most innocent and most squeamish spectators. Read story. Gamble on 'Louise' pays offSunday, May 24, 2009
Spoleto Festival USA took a major gamble in selecting Gustave Charpentier's "Louise" as its principal operatic offering this year. It is neither a box-office favorite, like "La Boheme" or "Carmen," nor is it a newly discovered gem that will bring critics and musical scholars from around the world to Charleston. Read story. Glorious overload of the sensesSunday, June 8, 2008
They used to say that the great jazz cornet player Bix Beiderbecke died from 'too much of everything.' I'm feeling a little bit that way right now myself after a 17-day immersion in the offerings of the 2008 Spoleto Festival USA. Read story. 2 days left to experience great musicSaturday, June 7, 2008
The 2008 Spoleto Festival USA has almost run its course. Sunday is the last day before Charleston becomes once more merely the most beautiful and altogether charming city on the East Coast, rather than the most beautiful and altogether C.C.O.T.E.C. that also happens to have a world-class arts festival exploding within its midst. Read story. Newer stories | Older stories |
