Off the Beaten Track: Setting the Salome Record Straight With London/Karasick’s ‘Salomé: Woman of Valor’

Buckle up because we’re not just going off the beaten track, we’re going musical off-roading extreme style with “Salomé: Woman of Valor,” poet and performer Adeena Karasick’s wildly creative seven-year endeavor with Grammy Award-winning composer and horn player Frank London. The work premiered at Vancouver, Canada’s Chutzpah Festival in 2018. Now, two years later, a studio recording drops on October 13. {…}

Sep 21, 2020

CD Review: Jonas Kaufmann’s ‘Selige Stunde’

Jonas Kaufmann is a lucky man. While much of the music world has reeled during the pandemic, he has had the luxury of reflecting, recharging, and revisiting old musical haunts: Lieder. The results are exceptional; a lovely album, maybe Kaufmann’s best recital disc yet. Intimacy Be it because of these strangest of times, the uncommon recording space (it was recorded {…}

Aug 23, 2020

CD Review: Mélodies: Dussaut & Covatti

This disc is a labor of love—and it shows. Basque conductor and pianist, Iñaki Encina Oyón, has meticulously unearthed and occasionally reconstructed the music of early twentieth century composer-couple Robert Dussaut and Hélène Covatti. He learned about them through his piano teacher and the composers’ daughter, Thérèse Dussaut. His reconstruction of their work, based largely on manuscripts (some fairly rough), {…}

Aug 17, 2020

CD Review: Chandos’ ‘Thaïs’

Massenet’s opera “Thaïs,” set in 4th century Alexandria, focuses on two individuals with diametrically opposed outlooks and lifestyles. There is the hedonistic courtesan Thaïs, who seeks only love—although for no longer than a week at a time—and there is a cenobite monk named Athanaël, an ascetic, whose aim is to turn the courtesan to the path of righteousness. While he {…}

Jun 30, 2020

Off the Beaten Track: Exploring Race & Identity in Richard Thompson’s ‘The Mask in the Mirror’

As we wrap up June and African-American Music Month, Off the Beaten Track explores the 2019 recording of composer and librettist Richard Thompson’s “The Mask in the Mirror,” the story of the ill-fated romance between America’s first Black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Alice Ruth Moore, a New Orleans Creole, poet, journalist, and early civil rights advocate. For those new {…}

Jun 24, 2020

DVD Review: The Rossini Festival’s ‘Ricciardo e Zoraide’

The Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro has long championed the operas composed by Rossini, including many of his forgotten works. Among those forgotten is “Ricciardo e Zoraide,” which was first performed in 1846 before disappearing from the stage until 1990 and then 1996. The festival revived the work in 2018, promptly releasing a DVD of the production; all of these {…}

Jun 14, 2020

CD Review: Piotr Beczała’s ‘Vincerò’

Whether it is a brand new Ferrari or a Rolls Royce cabriolet – the relationship between star singers and their cars has always been something of an amour fou. Piotr Beczała is no exception and the Polish tenor drives a sleek and elegant Jaguar XK150 which, in general terms, might well serve the description of his voice. Timeless, and equipped {…}

Jun 5, 2020

CD Review: Sharon Carty & Jonathan Ware’s ‘Schubert’s Four Seasons’

(Photo: Frances Marshall ) The seasons have provided a rich source of inspiration for composers; Vivaldi’s violin concerti and Haydn’s oratorio spring to mind, but there are many others, such as Vaughan-Williams’ “Folk Songs of the Four Seasons,” and more recently Cage’s “The Four Seasons,” whilst Schumann’s “Spring” symphony and Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise” focused on a particular season. They {…}

May 20, 2020

Off the Beaten Track: David Hertzberg’s Hallucinatory ‘The Wake World’ Serves Up a Sonic Feast

This month’s Off the Beaten Track explores the newly released recording of “The Wake World: A Tale for Babes and Sucklings,” a one-act opera composed by Los Angeles-based composer/librettist David Hertzberg and inspired by Aleister Crowley’s work of the same name. The recording is the first opera released under the Tzadik label. Founder and executive producer of Tzadik, John Zorn {…}

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