Stunning talent, a likable personality and lots of embarrassing but hilarious personal anecdotes were packed into Alan Cumming’s cabaret show Sunday night at Club Helsinki in Hudson (12/2/12).          Though he’s gone on to triumph in television and film, it was a Broadway role — the emcee in “Cabaret” — that made Cumming famous.  He offered one selection from that show, “Mein Herr.”  Otherwise,...

Cabaret sometimes includes more than just theater songs, but it seems to always mean nostalgia. References to the past — movies, musicals, celebrity biographies — were laid on thick by Charles Busch during his new solo show Sunday night (11/11/12) at Club Helsinki. It was part of the venue’s successful new Broadway series. Appearing in drag, Busch offered a mostly scripted but still free flowing mixture of monologues...

Bach and Vivaldi never sounded so sensual.  Rhiana and Lady Gaga have seldom been so classy. Well-Strung, an all-male string quartet, offered serious masterworks alongside clever arrangements of some current pop hits during an enjoyable and surprisingly well executed program at the Art House in Provincetown.  A team of talented young guys – hunky, cute, flirtatious – they sing as well as play string instruments and seem...

Lovely and lengthy report from CBS Sunday morning on the latest with Rufus, who’s getting married this week.

Saratoga Performing Arts Center Wednesday, August 8, 2012 The promise is being fulfilled.  Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has got the goods and a new era is truly at hand for the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was more than two years ago that the French Canadian conductor, now 37, was named music director of the orchestra, a post that he’ll finally and officially assume in October.  What a coup for SPAC to present him on...

With the arrival of its new music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the fall, the dawn of a new era is at hand for the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Audiences at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center this week will get more than a sampling of what’s in store. Starting on Wednesday (8/8/12), the 37-year old French Canadian conductor leads three consecutive nights of performances at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.  The enticing...

One couple met at the Eastman School, another at the Seagle Colony. James Raymond Hirschfeld, trombonist, and John Pickford Richards, violist (Jack Quartet) Steven William Bryant, costume designer, and Darren Keith Woods, impressario (Fort Worth Opera)  

Is there any career that gives better birthday celebrations than being a composer? Pauline Oliveros turns 80 later this month and RPI, where she teaches, pulled out all the stops on Thursday night (5/10/12) at EMPAC in Troy. There was music and speeches, cake and champagne, plus party favors (a newly issued DVD). The vaunted acoustics of the EMPAC concert hall were even spiffed up for the occasion. A computer-aided loudspeaker...

I’ll just assume my invitations got lost in the mail.  Nevertheless, I’m happy to read, here and there, about the following nuptials: Steve Blier (pianist,

Matthew McCright‘s advocacy of American piano music has brought him into collaboration with lots of composers and his standard bio starts with this list: Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, August Read Thomas, Paul Dresher, and Michael Gordon – some experimental and free thinkers, to be sure. So it was an interesting departure for McCright that his latest recording project was of music by Gene Gutche (1907-2000), a German...