OPERA TAWK: Q&A With Bad-Ass Tenor Jason Collins

BY DAVE ALLEN Opera might be stereotyped as stuffy and uninteresting, but sex, violence and mayhem have always been part of the medium. Alban Berg’s 1925 opera Wozzeck takes these traditional elements and frames them, to startling effect, in a score of dissonant but sensual and compelling music. It’s a work that has never fallen easy on the ears of American audiences, but this weekend, Philly’s famed but deeply traditional Curtis Institute of Music, in a co-production with the Opera Company of Philadelphia and Kimmel Center Presents, is putting on this revolutionary work of early 20th-century modernism and, as a […]

215 , Culture , Music , NewsPosted on:

REVIEW: The Late Show With Jimmy Fallon

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Anybody else bother watching Jimmy Fallon’s debut last night? I did and I’ll never get that hour back — and it will be sorely missed when the end comes and I am raging against the dying of the light. First problem: Fallon’s ‘This is a pity date’ attitude. Obviously trying to lower the bar of expectation, Fallon did the whole show like he was walking on eggshells. Message: Don’t be too hard on me, I’m scared, it’s dark and there’s wolves after me. Opening monologue/stand-up? Laugh-free and utterly forgettable. The second bit, Slow-Jamming The News, wherein Fallon […]

Culture , Music , NewsPosted on:

200 YEARS AFTER THE BIRTH OF DARWIN: You Still Gotta Fight To Live On The Planet Of The Apes

DAILY MAIL: On the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, professors at Southern Oregon University will devote the week to emphasizing that evolution is more than a theory — it’s hard science.”It’s theory and it’s fact. You can say it’s ‘just a theory’ like the theory that the earth goes around the sun,” says biology professor Charles Weldon, lead speaker of Darwin Week. “In science, a theory is not speculation. It’s supported by mountains of evidence. It’s one of the best supported theories in science.” A century and a half after publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of […]

Culture , Music , News , PoliticsPosted on:

50 YEARS AGO: The Day The Music Died

THE INDEPENDENT: “That’ll Be the Day” topped both the British and American charts, incidentally topping the US chart when Holly only had 500 days left to live. Frank Allen of the 1960s band The Searchers loved the record: “To be a star, you obviously need a desirable amount of talent, but the most important factor is individuality – and Buddy was distinctive and unmistakeable, both visually and aurally. While we were skiffling away, trying to find a fourth chord, Buddy was giving us the opening bars of ‘That’ll Be the Day’ with unbelievable expertise and on an instrument that was […]

Culture , Music , NewsPosted on: