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Kathryn Farmer at Swing 46
Cabaret
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

Kathryn Farmer at Swing 46

If the 17-piece Kevin Blanq big band and Kathryn Farmer were not enough to get you in the mood for smooth swinging and dancing, the urbane, bespoke, and suave dancer extraordinaire Manuel Rojas appeared to deliver a dance lesson at 8:30 as a second band, Swing a Delic arrived on stage. With Rojas, it was time to revel in the legacies of Al Minns and Frankie Manning with Lindy Hop, swing outs, tuck-in-turn, jazz, tap, sugar foot walk, breakaway, and swing dance….dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum. Revelers thronged to the dance floor as the buoyant and joyous Rojas drew them in.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
Wendy Moten at Birdland
Cabaret
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

Wendy Moten at Birdland

Wendy Moten ascended to the Birdland stage with a smile and charm that lit up the room. From her first words and the comfortable swing tempo of her first song, All of Me, Moten emerged as a poised, expressive, and consummate artist. She conveyed her passionate insights with a beautiful, clear voice and through her ability to command any genre she desired.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
Duke Ellington Sacred Concerts
Choral Music
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

Duke Ellington Sacred Concerts

For the first time in 35 years, Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts returned to the stage. Envisioned initially by Ellington as a “Festival of Grace,” provenance for Sacred Concerts is informed by a broad spectrum of jazz, classical and choral music, spirituals, dance, gospel, and blues. Ellington’s compositional product in this venue consisted of a triptych of 34 songs originally recorded in 1965, 1968, and 1973 respectively. It can be argued that an august Ellington facing his mortality considered his Sacred Concerts among his most significant works.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
Insomia
Chamber Music
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

Insomia

Blake Allen’s Insomnia is a cerebral, enigmatic, and mystifying artistic creation chronicling a night of an insomniac narrator. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Sleep and Waking” (1934), Allen mobilizes the power of music to dramatize and intensify the import of the conflicting tensions of the restive, lone sufferer.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
L’Amour à Passy
Off Broadway
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

L’Amour à Passy

In L’Amour à Passy, Benjamin Franklin the man emerged as a frowzy, flawed, and crafty roué, relentlessly attempting to seduce the married Mme Brillon. Franklin deftly engaged and modified his façon de parler and wits to enamor the charming Brillon while also initiating, to no avail, games of chess with personal stakes to tarnish Brillon’s marital honor.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
The Orchestra Now presents The Lost Generation
Music
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

The Orchestra Now presents The Lost Generation

The Orchestra Now presents The Lost Generation Maestro Botstein and The Orchestra Now demonstrated their capacity to express powerful rich intones, frenetic fugatos, and exquisite, intense subtleties.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
Ben Wendel Quartet at the Village Vanguard
Jazz
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

Ben Wendel Quartet at the Village Vanguard

Wendel’s songs are strikingly original, expressive, and extraordinarily inventive. His ideas and improvisations are freely chromatic, virtuosic, and organic, and he employed subtle be-bop idioms when it suited him. His facility is so commanding that he regularly reaches into the stratosphere of the tenor saxophone’s extended range. Notably, he can express ideas with the restraint of Lester Young while employing the pyrotechnics of Charlie Parker.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
FUKT at The Tank
Off Broadway
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

FUKT at The Tank

This cast deserves high praise for maintaining the challenging, complex characters and tensions while also charming and engaging viewers who could not resist being sympathetic and moved. Their performances were effective, stimulating, and inventive.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

The American Classical Orchestra presents Remember

The performance of Mozart’s Requiem, K526, was glorious and ecstatic. The sui generis admixture of rich sounds from soloists, chorus, and orchestra was superb. At the same time, the sumptuous luminosity of the famed Lacrimosa was almost more than an emotive listener could process without soulful introspection.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
MasterVoices presents Carmen
Music
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic

MasterVoices presents Carmen

With the production’s delights of flamenco dancing, passionate arias, magnificent costuming, staging, lighting, soaring melodies, and powerful drama, we ultimately gasp in awe at the power of Bizet’s Fate theme, akin to the tragedy of the last act in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with its piercing melancholy. Carmen’s impact is profound, in part due to Bizet’s launching of the verismo school, where contemporary characters live true to life.

Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
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Kathryn Farmer at Swing 46

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