Saturday, February 1: Joshua Bell has not let the “world’s greatest violinist” meme fluster him much at all. He just keeps on playing the music he wants to play with the people he wants to play with.
You might expect that the woman pianist who has played the most solo recitals on the main stage at Carnegie Hall would be an internationally known celebrity who lives in some major metropolitan area. But Katya Grineva, who holds that distinction, leads a relatively quiet life just outside of Woodstock, and she has no plans to change her life.
“Our percussion world is pretty tight-knit,” musician/ Woodstock Chimes founder Garry Kvistad says. “The first person I called was [jazz star] Jack DeJohnette… When I told other players that Jack was going to be there, they wanted to join in also.”
Reviews of some recent local classical musical performances, plus a look forward.
A review of the summer concert series, so far.
Last season, Aston Magna tried out various venues in the Berkshires and the Hudson Valley. One of the most successful was the theater at Time & Space, Ltd. in Hudson.
PianoSummer founder and director Vladimir Feltsman describes the soon-to-perform pianist Vadym Kholodenko “one of the strongest pianists of his generation.”
The series, which features world-class jazz and classical music in a sylvan setting, has proceeded uninterrupted for over a century.
Optimism rules at Ars Choralis. The chorus’s program last week, which I heard at Overlook Methodist Church on March 30, was entitled “The Poets Speak: Mending a Broken World.” The musical selections were interspersed with inspirational poetry, well read by Gilles Malkine, and included numerous brief works with positive themes.
Previous winners of this award include Aaron Copland, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonard Bernstein, Beverly Sills and John Williams.