CITY CENTER THEATER

A Bed and a Chair - A New York Love Affair
Wynton Marsalis, Bernadette Peters

'Before he began work on "A Bed and a Chair," Wynton Marsalis had played Sondheim only once, as the third substitute trumpeter for "Sweeney Todd." Now Mr. Marsalis has put his spin on more than two dozen Sondheim songs in a new work designed to express their mutual love of New York City. With a score performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the story follows two couples played by Bernadette Peters, Norm Lewis, Jeremy Jordan and Cyrille Aimée, a young jazz singer whose voice, upon discovering it, feels like a real discovery. And while we're on the topic of love stories, this season, Jazz at Lincoln Center and musical theater are having quite a romance: "After Midnight," a show first developed at City Center in their "Encores" program, is a hit on Broadway. Depending on its reception, "A Bed and a Chair" could follow the same path."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303789604579200241648146008?KEYWORDS=sondheim

ROAD TRIP NEW ENGLAND

We rented a car and drove to Lenox, Massachusetts where we stayed in the Garden Gables Inn. Lenox is the home of Tanglewood Music Center which is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Stockbridge, Massachusetts, immediately adjacent to Lenox, was the home of Norman Rockwell.

http://www.gardengablesinn.com

We drove the following day to Millbrook, New York and the Millbrook Inn.

http://www.themillbrookinn.com

Both were great inns, the weather was beautiful, and we saw the last of the autumn leaves.

While in Millbrook we ate at the Serevan Restaurant.  It has earned a 28 by Zagat!

http://serevan.com

TOP OF THE ROCK

We visited the top of the main building of Rockefeller Center.  While there we saw the recently arrived Christmas Tree for Rockefeller Plaza.





LINCOLN CENTER

The Allen Room
Ladies Sing the Blues

Vocalists Catherine Russell, Brianna Thomas,and Charenee Wade will channel the independent, liberated spirits, and pioneering vocalizations of 1920s blues divas Bessie Smith ("the Empress of the Blues"), Mamie Smith ("the Queen of the Blues"), Ma Rainey ("the Mother of the Blues"), and of the legendary icon of stage and film, Ethel Waters. Featuring arrangements of this era, pianist Mark Shane takes the reins as Music Director, enlivening this important strain of American music and demonstrating the ageless relevance of this century-old transcendence of love's follies through innuendo, revelation, and stomping the blues away. These performances also feature trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso, saxophonist and clarinetist Mark Lopeman, trombonist Harvey Tibbs, guitarist Matt Munisteri, bassist Tal Ronen, and drummer Mark McLean.

LECTURE

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rubens

Jerrilynn Dodds, Dean, Sarah Lawrence College.

The Baroque period yielded some of the most vital and brilliant artists of all time. Opulent courts, powerful patrons, colliding cultures, strengthening religions, and increasingly complex politics provided the backdrop for painting to become a potent expression of the moment. This series explores a work from the Met’s collection by each of three monumental figures of this remarkable age—Caravaggio, Velázquez, and Rubens. From different corners of Europe, these great masters provide three different interpretations of Baroque art.

LINCOLN CENTER

Koch Theater
American Ballet Theater

LES SYLPHIDES
Choreography by Michel Fokine
Music by Frédéric Chopin
Amid a moon-drenched forest glade, a romantic reverie springs from the sublime music of Chopin to evoke an image of classical beauty in its most ethereal form. If Fokine had never choreographed another step, this ballet would have established him as a genius of dance.

THE MOOR’S PAVANE
Choreography by José Limón
Music by Henry Purcell
Limón's masterwork beautifully distills in one act the passion and dramatic arc of Shakespeare's Othello. Performed to a stately Renaissance court dance, this psychological thriller reaches its heartbreaking climax as the noble Othello succumbs to Iago's treachery.

GONG
Choreography by Mark Morris
Music by Colin McPhee
Suffused with orientalism, Mark Morris’ Gong playfully melds modern and classical dance, gamelan-inspired music, and Isaac Mizrahi’s rainbow-hued costumes into a kaleidoscope of innovative movement that is both tongue-in-cheek and grandly serious.

CONCERT

Carnegie Hall
Andras Schiff - Piano

• Bach - Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
• Beethoven - Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120

"András Schiff would make Bach proud," proclaimed New York magazine of one of his recent performances. In fact, "there is nothing more reliable in the world of classical music today than pianist András Schiff playing Bach" (The New York Times). The peerless pianist comes to Carnegie Hall to perform one of the composer’s most beloved series of keyboard works, theGoldberg Variations, as well as its counterpart from the Classical period, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH  Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

The Goldberg Variations is a monumental work, displaying superior compositional craft through a tight-knit formal framework. Every third variation is a canon at a progressively larger interval: Variation 3 at the unison, Variation 6 at the second, Variation 9 at the third, and so on. Since Bach composed the work for harpsichord, these knotty variations are usually written for two separate manuals on the instrument, thereby necessitating much hand-crossing and overlapping when played on the modern piano.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120

In 1819, publisher Anton Diabelli asked several Austro-Hungarian composers to pen one or two variations on a waltz that he had written. Beethoven boorishly declined, commenting that the waltz was nothing more than a simplistic stringing-together of clichés. Yet he must have recognized its potential for adaptation when he returned to the waltz three years later, planning to write a handful of variations but ending up with no fewer than 33. The flabbergasted Diabelli decided to publish the set on its own, declaring it "a great and important masterpiece worthy to be ranked with the imperishable creations of the Classics."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3nwoWiR4Z-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWOhm5iXxs

Here Schiff plays Bach.  The Goldberg Variations lasted one hour and twenty minutes long!  Then he played the Beethoven which also lasted over an hour!

His one encore lasted fifteen minutes!

The guy can memorize and he likes to play!

The concert was a tour de force by both the composers and the performer.