Similar Posts
Her Majesty’s Music: Celebrating the 90th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II
Sydney and Melbourne will soon be savouring some of the best of English music as the Sydney Symphony Orchestra celebrates the Last Night of the Proms on March 18 and 19 at the Sydney Opera House and BBC Proms comes to Melbourne for 4 days in April. In a timely release, ABC Classics presents Her Majesty’s…
The BBC celebrates Brett Dean
A performance of Brett Dean’s Grawemeyer Award winning composition “The Lost Art of Letter Writing” in London, has been warmly received. Featured in a recent BBC Total Immersion day at the Barbican Centre, the four movement concerto for violin and orchestra was composed in 2006 and won the award in 2009. The concerto was premiered by the…
A Change of Seasons for Vivaldi
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, composed in 1723, is so ‘accessible’, it has suffered the fate of overexposure. Its four heady concerti pass through summer, autumn, winter, and spring, depicting folk life and evocative landscapes in bite-sized chunks. Some of its passages are so instantly recognisable that they have suffered the ignominy of being used as background music in commercials. Enter German-born…
Spectrum: creative collaboration realised
London based pianist Zubin Kanga presented his recital Spectrum to an admiring and dedicated audience at the Independent Theatre in North Sydney recently. I was fortunate to speak with Zubin Kanga after the concert to reflect on its content and creation – a process substantially more enlightening than a preview or critique. Kanga performed 7 works…
Hiromi Omura In Extra Performances Of ‘Butterfly’
Japanese soprano Hiromi Omura returns to the Sydney Opera House to perform the title role in five extra performances of Opera Australia’s production of Madama Butterfly in 2015. Ms Omura was an impressive ‘Butterfly’ when she first sang the role in Sydney in Moffatt Oxenbould ‘s 2012 production. She returned in 2013 to sing the role…
DocsVox – Medics Turn To Music
The late neurologist Oliver Sacks described a patient with Alzheimer’s who had little recollection of his life, but who remembered the baritone part to almost every song he had ever sung. “Music,” said Sacks, “was one of the only things that kept him grounded…” For many who were immersed in music during school years, entry…