“The Rite of Spring” served up 3 ways: shaken, straight up, and blended (c/o Ojai, Pacific Symphony, and UCI)
June 14, 2013 Leave a comment
At the opening talk of this year’s Ojai Music Festival last Thursday, Ara Guzelimien (Provost & Dean of The Julliard School and former Artistic Director of the Ojai Festival) astutely observed that The Rite of Spring has become big business. What used to scare audiences now regularly packs houses. With all of the buzz surrounding the 100th anniversary of the seminal work’s premiere, some at Ojai even suggested that it’s becoming over-exposed.
Please. Justin Bieber is over-exposed. Beyoncé is over-exposed. Cats doing stupid things on YouTube are over-exposed. In the classical music space, perhaps Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is over-exposed.
For my time and money, too much Sacre du Printemps is never enough — a sentiment I believe so whole-heartedly that I braved the drive between Ventura County and Orange County in order to see three very different versions of The Rite on two back-to-back nights, before eventually driving back to Ojai Saturday morning.
It’d be tough to find a more diverse set of Sacre experiences in such a short time-frame. Vive le différence.
Here’s how it went down, care of The Bad Plus at Ojai on Thursday, followed on Friday in Costa Mesa by the Pacific Symphony and UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of Arts:
My two-part review of this past weekend’s
When the
Late last week, multiple sources started buzzing with word that the Los Angeles Philharmonic had finally filled their vacant Principal Flute chair. According to those sources, French flutist 

Heading up the festival since 2004 has been 

If I were to look up “diva” in the dictionary, I’d half expect to see one of the definitions — maybe THE definition — to be “Floria Tosca.” The character after which Puccini named his famous opera has all the attributes that would come to mind when I think of a diva: petulant but passionate, jealous but loving, a general pain in the ass but someone you’d definitely want on your side in a fight, and most importantly, a singer with the grandest of voices.

Word comes from Paris that French composer Henri Dutilleux has died at the age of 97.

: a backstage pic of Dorothea Röschmann (Countess), plus a photo of Simone Osborne (Barbarina) by Mr. Molina.

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