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American Players Theatre offers Shakespeare, Friel, Stoppard in a festival mix in the woods

American Players Theatre offers Shakespeare, Friel, Stoppard in a festival mix in the woods

June 14, 2013 – 11:40 pm | No Comment | 158 views

Preview: What’s in a name? American Players Theatre, which has been filling summers with drama since 1980 in the woods of Spring Green, Wis., doesn’t trade on the Shakespeare brand. But in every aspect of making theater, from staging to vocal delivery to its choice of plays, this ambitious enterprise hews to the Bard as its reference point. In the 2013 mix of eight plays, which opens June 15, APT includes a typical infusion of Shakespeare, a stylistic sweep from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Hamlet” to “Antony and Cleopatra.”

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Role Playing: Ora Jones had to find her way into Katherine’s frayed world in ‘Henry VIII’

June 11, 2013 – 3:05 pm | No Comment | 107 views

Interview: From doubting she had won the part, the actor has brought the Bard’s embattled queen to a fine pitch at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Through June 16.

By Lawrence B. Johnson

Ora Jones, so assured and imposing as Queen Katherine in “Henry VIII” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, was just as confident she had blown her audition for the part. And that wasn’t such a bad thing, she thought – because Katherine’s great speech in her trial scene, the very audition piece that Jones would come to deliver with authentic majesty, had left the actor essentially mystified. Read the full story »

Muti and Chicago Symphony embrace spirit, time-stretching cosmos of ‘Divine’ Scriabin

June 7, 2013 – 6:59 pm | No Comment | 200 views
Muti and Chicago Symphony embrace spirit, time-stretching cosmos of ‘Divine’ Scriabin

Review: There’s a hypnotic enchantment about Alexander Scriabin’s sprawling, sensual “Divine Poem,” and its magic worked at full pitch in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s luxurious performance with music director Riccardo Muti Friday afternoon at Orchestra Hall. ★★★★

Stellar cast of Chicago jazz musicians tunes up for free summer concerts on museum terrace

June 3, 2013 – 8:14 am | No Comment | 195 views
Stellar cast of Chicago jazz musicians tunes up for free summer concerts on museum terrace

Preview: When Chicago bassist Junius Paul opened the Museum of Contemporary Art’s outdoor jazz series Tuesdays on the Terrace last June, he met a new definition of hot jazz.“It was 100 degrees. It was sooo hot,” he recalls with a laugh. “But we still packed in a good crowd. It’s always good. People come from everywhere.” This year’s summer-long lineup of 17 concerts featuring Chicago jazz musicians, all free to Illinois residents, kicks off June 4 with trumpeter Corey Wilkes and friends. And while the jazz will cook, the air temperature should be nowhere near triple digits.

Role Playing: Kareem Bandealy tapped roots, hit books to form warlord in ‘Blood and Gifts’

June 1, 2013 – 10:31 pm | No Comment | 541 views
Role Playing: Kareem Bandealy tapped roots, hit books to form warlord in ‘Blood and Gifts’

Interview: Our guy – the American – in J.T. Rogers’ play “Blood and Gifts,” about the United States’ clandestine effort to blunt the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, is a CIA agent. We see the unfolding events through his eyes. But the character who elicits our sympathy and commands our imagination is an Afghan warlord called Abdullah Khan. He is made credible flesh and elusive spirit at TimeLine Theatre in a riveting performance by Kareem Bandealy, who says his portrait reflects both his own cultural heritage and the desperation that drives this unpredictable warrior.

Van Zweden, Chicago Symphony bring heat with torrid Bartók concerto, Mozart and Bates

June 1, 2013 – 12:01 pm | No Comment | 243 views
Van Zweden, Chicago Symphony bring heat with torrid Bartók concerto, Mozart and Bates

Review: On the last day of May, full summer beckoning, Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of fresh abundance, showcasing the virtuosity of the CSO musicians themselves in Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and also turning the spotlight on two youthful artists of distinction — composer Mason Bates and pianist David Fray. ★★★★

Davis’ ‘The Chicago River’ is a natural tributary of Chicago Symphony’s diverse Rivers Festival

May 26, 2013 – 9:13 am | No Comment | 359 views
Davis’ ‘The Chicago River’ is a natural tributary  of Chicago Symphony’s diverse Rivers Festival

Review: Each year in the late spring, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra embarks upon themed programs that seem to be as much about reaching deep into the community, and becoming energized by the community in turn, as they do about any particular theme itself. This year’s festival, called “Rivers,” features the world premiere of “The Chicago River” by Orbert Davis. Inspired by late-19th and early-20th century photographs of the elaborately engineered reversal of the river’s flow, it underscores the notion that a cultural landscape is indeed much like a river — alive, ever present and ever changing.

Australian drama troupe transcends handicaps with serio-comedy full of backstage laughter

May 19, 2013 – 6:12 pm | No Comment | 270 views
Australian drama troupe transcends handicaps with serio-comedy full of backstage laughter

Review: If the title “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich” provokes more than the usual curiosity about fresh dramatic fare, the play itself — presented by the ensemble that created it, Australia’s Back to Back Theatre – leaves one hardly less perplexed upon emerging from the experience. “Ganesh” displays a singular aspect of beauty, even sweetness, until it takes a bitter turn and dissipates as if into a vacuum, into nothingness. ★★★

Sparked by belief in music’s healing power, Civitas lights up hospital and concert hall

May 18, 2013 – 4:35 pm | No Comment | 503 views
Sparked by belief in music’s healing power, Civitas lights up hospital and concert hall

Concerts by the chamber music ensemble Civitas are as likely to take place at Lurie Children’s Hospital as they are on a concert stage, and perhaps that focus helps to explain the particular warmth and humor of the group’s programming sensibility. Its performances radiate joyful vigor, a happy blend of virtuosity and camaraderie. ““The last thing we want to be is stodgy,” says founder Yuan-Qing Yu.

Latvian Andris Nelsons follows James Levine as Boston Symphony Orchestra music director

May 16, 2013 – 1:02 pm | No Comment | 233 views
Latvian Andris Nelsons follows James Levine as Boston Symphony Orchestra music director

Report: Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons was named Thursday as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nelsons will become officially installed as the BSO’s 15th music director effective with the 2014-15 season, but meanwhile will act as music director-designate for the 2013-14 season.

Role Playing: Eva Barr explored two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’

May 15, 2013 – 3:24 pm | No Comment | 237 views
Role Playing: Eva Barr explored  two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’

Interview: To watch Eva Barr play out the progressive, early-onset dementia of the woman at the center of “Still Alice” at Lookingglass Theatre is to forget you’re looking at the subtle, skillful work of an actor. Yet hardly less remarkable is the way Barr arrived at the role: She began, in first readings with playwright-director Christine Mary Dunford, by taking a different part, an alternate Alice – a separate character Dunford identifies simply as Herself.

CSO Rivers Festival explores the enchantment of waterways, their impact on human history

May 9, 2013 – 4:29 pm | No Comment | 340 views
CSO Rivers Festival explores the enchantment  of waterways, their impact on human history

Preview: Literally and metaphorically, rivers seem to flow in every direction across our lives; indeed, across life. It’s not hard to see how the Chicago Symphony Orchestra might have hit on the concept of its Rivers Festival, a multifaceted month-long exploration and tribute that opens musically May 9 at Orchestra Hall.

It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty

April 28, 2013 – 11:34 pm | No Comment | 524 views
It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty

Review: After the third encore in pianist Evgeny Kissin’s recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall, the hundreds of listeners still on hand switched into an insistent, stentorian applause. The Russian virtuoso came through with one last bonus, a thundering roll through Chopin’s Prelude in D minor, Op. 28, No. 24; and with that, another phenomenal exhibition was over. ★★★★★

Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue

April 26, 2013 – 12:32 pm | No Comment | 362 views
Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony  translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue

Review: Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat isn’t known as the “Rhenish” for nothing. I felt very much like Schumann’s Rhine-journeying companion Thursday night, listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s radiant performance of the Third Symphony conducted by music director Riccardo Muti. ★★★★