by | Mar 26, 2024 3:16 pm | Comments (6)
Maya McFadden Photo
Alejandro Zacatelco: "I was really confused and scared."
Wilbur Cross junior Alejandro Zacatelco offered advice to 100 middle-schoolers transitioning to high school — advice he never got due to the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading ‘High Schoolers To Middle Schoolers: Get Involved, Be Yourself’
by | Nov 21, 2023 8:58 am | Comments (1)
Composer Daniel Bernard Roumain.
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra, one of a few American orchestras working to address injustices in the past and present of professional classical music, made two important — and increasingly common — choices at their Sunday afternoon concert at SCSU’s Lyman Hall.
by | Nov 6, 2023 8:48 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
The 2023 Arts Awards recipients.
On Saturday night, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s 43rd annual Arts Awards honored six of New Haven’s creative minds — Juanita “Sunday” Austin, Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez, Adrian Huq, Sun Queen, Possible Futures/Lauren Anderson, and William Graustein — at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University.
In the shadow of a multitude of changes this year in the city’s arts scene, which continues to be reimagined and restructured, these six recipients — who have each added to that scene in multiple ways far beyond their own creations and personal accomplishments — offered speeches that touched upon the personal, the profound, and the importance of caring for one another in the local arts community and around the world.
Continue reading ‘Arts Awards Fetes Creative Futures Amid Arts "Crisis" And "Renaissance"’
by | May 16, 2023 8:29 am | Comments (0)
MIchelle Cann and Alisdair Neale.
An historic premiere. Significant anniversaries and, in some cases, a final concert for several members of the orchestra. An orchestra program featuring works entirely by Black American composers, not presented in February, when one of those composers was in the audience. Another work performed by a Grammy-winning classical pianist.
Friday night’s final concert for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s 2022 – 23 Classics season at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts was loaded with significance.
by | Apr 14, 2023 8:24 am | Comments (0)
Allison Stock Photo
Symphony director hopeful James Blachly.
For New Haven Symphony Orchestra Music Director candidate James Blachly, conducting was partly about finding a listener’s perspective. “What drew me to this field in the first place was a magical experience as a listener, and I spend my career trying to continue that experience for other listeners and musicians, in every hall I enter.”
Continue reading ‘NHSO Music Director Hopeful Interrogates The History’
by | Mar 14, 2023 8:54 am | Comments (0)
Guo, Miller, and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
There are two responses to the notion that classical music’s canon is too narrow. The first is to turn one’s back on the canon entirely, and the second is to dig deeper into the canon, looking for lesser-known works from famous composers.
by | Mar 8, 2023 8:35 am | Comments (0)
Tania Miller.
“When programming for an orchestra, I believe in curating experiences that will have a profound impact. Programming in a way that brings people in,” said Tania Miller, candidate for music director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. “So we don’t start with music that is unreachable.”
Continue reading ‘NHSO Music Director Candidate Finds The Thread’
by | Feb 22, 2023 8:42 am | Comments (0)
Linda Mickens
Sisters (detail).
Sisters is a sculpture that gets its effect in its details. Its creator, Linda Mickens, has the obvious skill to capture the girls as individuals, the contours of their faces, the wry, open expressions that are the gateway to seeing their personalities. Keeping the finest details a little vague has its own effect; it’s as though we’re seeing them in motion, just two girls walking down the street. What’s the nature of their kinship? Do they share a biological mother? Are they close friends? Or have they just met, but already feel a familial bond between them? The sculpture suggests the distinction is unimportant; what matters is that they’re sisters because they call each other that.
Continue reading ‘Artists Explore The Power In The Ordinary’
by | Nov 14, 2022 9:07 am | Comments (2)
Lisa Reisman photo
Marine Corps veteran Dennis Bardelli: "We all take care of each other."
“Elbows out wide, snap your wrists!” Paul Weiland called to his fellow disabled veterans amid the thud of basketballs bouncing off the hardwood floorboards under the bright lights of Southern Connecticut State University’s (SCSU) Pelz Gymnasium.
by | Nov 14, 2022 8:20 am | Comments (2)
Aleks Karjaka Photo
Orli Shaham.
It is one thing to go to a performance by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, or any other orchestra, to witness a subdued spectacle — 50 to 60 musicians on one stage, working to convey a piece of art with sometimes dizzying levels of interconnected parts. That was of course on display in Friday’s performance, featuring works by Coleridge-Taylor, Chopin, and Brahms, featuring Orli Shaham as the soloist for Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor.
