Artblog’s Community Intern, Jazz pianist and Urban Studies student Ashwin Suseendran, curates a list of 9 local music events he recommends checking out this August. There’s something for everyone on this list, from DJ sets to opera concerts. Zest up your summer before it ends- check out a new local music group!
Read MoreArtblog’s new community intern, Jazz pianist and Urban Studies student Ashwin Suseendran, rounds up a list of 9 musical events he recommends checking out during this second half of July. From Salsa to EDM, you’re sure to find something that piques your interest, and something new to explore. Find your new favorite Philly music group here on Artblog!
Read MoreArtblog contributor Corey Qureshi delivers a thoughtful and heartfelt review of musician St. Sol’s EP ‘Amphibian’, followed by a short Q&A with the artist themselves where they discuss identity, alchemy, personal transformation, and more!
Read MoreDonald Hunt reviews the new resident ensemble for Bowerbird, Arcana New Music Ensemble. He details the group’s incredible stylistic range while introducing us to a few of its members, and speaks to the acoustic richness of University Lutheran Church.
Read MoreDonald reviews an eclectic evening of music composed for video games, hardly a traditional outlet for classical music–and finds a surprising amount of fun to be had.
Read MoreDonald reviews a collaboration between the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in which paintings from the collection are paired with musical compositions they have inspired. While the idea of pairing music has the potential to provoke creative dialogue, the overall result fell short of those ambitions, he says.
Read MoreDonald Hunt thinks about what defines American music in his review of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recent performance of music by Leonard Bernstein, Pat Metheny and Antonin Dvorák.
Read MoreArs Nova Workshop can be relied on to bring new music to Philadelphia audiences. Steve Lehman’s Sélébéyone, presented on March 24 at the Painted Bride Art Center, was no exception. A composer and alto-saxophonist, Lehman has received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, and has worked with major national and international artists like Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, and Meshell Ndegeocello. For this performance, Lehman brought together an innovative combination of jazz, hip-hop, rap, and electronica whose disparate parts worked together surprisingly well.
Read MoreAny fantasy you can think of has multiple dimensions to it; this is especially true in Vijay Iyer’s Bridgetower Phantasy, which premiered in Philadelphia performed by violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Shai Wosner as part of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society’s recital season. The March 21 concert at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater featuring the new Iyer work was bookended by two Beethoven violin sonatas, including the Kreutzer sonata. Iyer’s piece is titled after the African violinist to whom Beethoven dedicated his Kreutzer sonata, suggesting that Iyer sees this work as a response and a companion piece to Beethoven’s sonata. These historical and musical resonances made for a compelling program that brought together old and new.
Read MoreDonald Hunt revisits an artist he loves, José James, whose performance at the intimate club, the Foundry, surprised with the artist doing an impassioned and political rap turn in addition to his beloved R+B songs from the post-election-inspired album, ‘Love in a Time of Madness.’
Read MoreIn contrast to the typical fear associated with this day, the Daedalus Quartet embrace it wholeheartedly, using the day itself as inspiration for their sold-out concert program of mostly new works in the Penn Museum’s Chinese Rotunda (co-presented by the Penn Music Department and Bowerbird).
Read MoreFunk music has been identified as being a particular expression of music that allows the artist to confront daily events which may have been grueling or challenging. With 2016 hopefully a distant memory to the audience, Lettuce “put the stank on” the TLA crowd–transporting them to an alternative universe where the music is groovy and fear is non-existent.
Read MoreFor their December 4–5 performances at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theatre, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia opened with a pair of jovial works by Gioachino Rossini (d. 1868) and Charles Gounod (d. 1893) (two composers renowned particularly for their contribution to opera), and then dedicated the rest of the program to works by living composers–including world and US premieres.
Read MoreWhen experiencing this incarnation of “Firebird,” I couldn’t help but be immersed in all that’s going on in the storytelling. At times for a split second, I stopped noticing that the reliably superb Philadelphia Orchestra (led by conductor-in-residence Cristian Macelaru) was playing right behind the elaborate action. The orchestra was the glue that held all of the pieces together, especially in moments when the choreography and multimedia aspects didn’t always paint the clearest picture for the audience to follow along. All of the competing art forms forced me to choose which aspect of the piece to focus on and then after a while, switch over to the next aspect that caught the eye or ear.
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