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Choral

'EXCLUSIVE: Kurt Gottschalk's Orchestral Dispatches from Ostrava Days 2015

While the biannual Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic features, primarily, a wide array of post-1950 solo and small ensemble pieces, it is, at its heart, a symphonic endeavor--founded and curated by Czech composer/conductor Petr Kotik. Over the course of nine expansive nights in August, running this year from the 21st to the 29th, the festival hosted three different orchestras, and all three together on the first night. The Ostrava-based Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and resident ensemble Ostravská Banda did plenty of heavy lifting over the course of the fest, with the Miners Band from Stonava (a brass group from that nearby town in coal-mining Moravia) joining them on opening night.
By Kurt Gottschalk

  • 'REVIEW: Jazz Pianist Tigran Hamasyan Proffers Armenian Hymns on 'Luys i Luso'

    Genre fusion clearly knows no bounds in the 21st Century. In 'Luys i Luso' ('Light from the Light'), jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan is peeling back the layers of the Soviet Union and "a hundred years of atheism" to reveal the most ancient, and so far, stagnant, motifs of Armenian hymns.
    By Steve Nagel

  • 'EXCLUSIVE: Classicalite Q&A with André "King of the Waltz" Rieu

    By now, we all know André Rieu. That exceptional Dutch violinist and impresario who has made a name for himself, near literally, as the, quote, "King of the Waltz." However, if you've somehow not yet had the pleasure to take in all that maestro Rieu and his 60-piece Johann Strauss Orchestra (founded 1987) are about, you're in luck, indeed. This Tuesday, October 20, all that musicianship and magic that was on stage for Rieu and band's one-night-only "2015 Maastricht Concert" is coming to movie theaters all across this country.
    By Ian Holubiak
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