I’ve seen two operas in the past few weeks, and both were beautifully performed, Mozart’s Don Giovanni by the Atlanta Opera and John Adam’s The Flowering Tree by the Atlanta Symphony. One was an utterly satisfying experience, and the other quite a bit less so. Yeah, well, it was Mozart wasn’t it? Well, yes, it was, but John Adams is a very fine composer who has written some operatic works that look as if they will stay in the repertoire – a pretty major feat without having to...
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Last week my husband and I trekked to Marietta to see Thoroughly Modern Millie at the Strand Theater where the Atlanta Lyric was producing the show.  I have a lot of fondness for the Lyric, having been around at the founding of the Southeastern Savoyards, and I thought that in most areas they did a fine job with Millie. 

Everyone in the show was in great form to do justice to a really fun show.  I was so happy to see Andy Dahn, whom I remember as a Shorter student at the NATS State Student Au...

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Saturday night we headed over to Glenn Memorial on the Emory campus to hear one of Atlanta's best pianists.  Todd Skrabanek does not do recitals very often because he's so busy accompanying the ASO Chorus, Glenn Memorial choirs, and lucky students from Agnes Scott and Reinhardt.  Todd is never one to let five notes do when fifty may be played, and all four of the works on his concert were stunningly brilliant.

My favorite was the Bach Partita No. 4 in D, BWV 828.  Not only were all the notes t...
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It's been probably 25 years since the last time I visited Brevard.  Inge was still teaching there in the summers, and I was young and foolish enough to slide down Sliding Rock.  I'm not sure that I ever saw an opera there, and when I realized that they were doing Alcina, getting myself there was more about seeing a Handel opera that I've never seen than really having high expectations.  Well, no matter how high my expectations might have been, they would have been justified by the production ...
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Such an amazing thing happened at the Atlanta Symphony concert last night!  Actually several amazing things happened.  First of all the whole concert was music written within the last 75 years, the first half and part of the second half of the program was music written since 1987, and three of those pieces were written this year.  Two of them were two of the fanfares that the ASO has commissioned to celebrate Robert Spano’s 10^th anniversary with the Orchestra.  One was Tenfold by Jennifer H...

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This week my family made our annual Shakespeare Tavern visit for Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  We have been Tavern regulars for at least ten years, maybe a lot longer than that, and one of the reasons is the music.  It's not often that you get to hear well performed, acoustic music that is not church music and not performed in some stuffy recital setting.  The Tavern's small size and excellent acoustics along with the actors' skills make such a performance possible.

As a voice teacher I have to...
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