In Review: A Night of Women Composers
Vivien Schweitzer reviews the opening night National Sawdust’s fifth season, a mix of compositions and improvisations honoring Clara Schumann, Meredith Monk, Mary Lou Williams, and other distinguished creators.
Vivien Schweitzer is a New York based writer and pianist. She was a freelance music critic for The New York Times between 2006-2016, and is now writing an introduction to opera for Basic Books, scheduled for publication in 2018.
Vivien Schweitzer reviews the opening night National Sawdust’s fifth season, a mix of compositions and improvisations honoring Clara Schumann, Meredith Monk, Mary Lou Williams, and other distinguished creators.
Vivien Schweitzer reviews ‘Blue,’ a timely new opera by librettist/director Tazewell Thompson and composer Jeanine Tesori, staged in its world-premiere production at the Glimmerglass Festival.
Video, dance, live-action painting—even moving seats and craned necks—were part of what Vivien Schweitzer experienced witnessing Anthony Roth Costanzo’s ‘Glass Handel’ at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Vivien Schweitzer reviews “History’s Persistent Voice,” the first event presented by soprano Julia Bullock in her ambitious five-program MetLive Arts residency.
Vivien Schweitzer reviews “Sanctuary,” an evening of music and talk meant to spark dialogue about racial and social injustice, presented on July 27 by The Dream Unfinished and Contemporaneous.
Producing opera in unusual venues has become commonplace, but there was a particular resonance between location and story when David Hertzberg’s ‘The Rose Elf’ had its premiere at Green-Wood Cemetery.
“Resist!” could be the 21st-century motto of Handel’s serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, a mythological story of steadfast love cleverly interpreted by the director Christopher Alden as a modern-day tale of bullying and manipulation. The staging, co-produced by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, Cath Brittan, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and National Sawdust, completes its brief run this week.