On-the-go Placido Domingo has a busy month of May, and June too

Plácido Domingo has two simultaneous engagements in Los Angeles in May and early June, conducting productions of Puccini's "Tosca" at...

Review: Alisa Weilerstein's star turn with L.A. Chamber Orchestra

Appearing with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra eight years ago, 23-year-old Alisa Weilerstein was a playfully kittenish cello soloist in...

Review: With 'Dulce Rosa,' L.A. Opera takes its show on the road

While the proposed “subway to the sea” may be decades away if it ever comes, Los Angeles Opera isn’t waiting for...

Review: Pacific Symphony salute to Duke Ellington fails to swing

What do we do with the Duke? He was, most agree, the greatest jazz composer who ever lived. And more.

L.A. Philharmonic concerned about potential subway noise

Nothing in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's repertoire calls for 135-ton trains. The orchestra aims to keep it that way when Metro light...

'The Marriage of Figaro,' right in time with the 21st century

Suffice to say that Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte weren't thinking about Proposition 8 when they composed "The Marriage of Figaro."

Supertitles, once denounced, loom large in modern-day opera

"Celluloid condoms between the audience and the immediate gratification of understanding."

Andris Nelsons to succeed James Levine at Boston Symphony

Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons will succeed James Levine as music director of the Boston Symphony, the orchestra announced Thursday. The...

James Conlon to pay tribute to Colin Davis in Paris

James Conlon, the music director of Los Angeles Opera, will pay tribute to the late conductor Colin Davis in a pair of concerts this month...

L.A. Opera broadcasts set to return to classical KUSC-FM

"L.A. Opera on Air" returns to classical music station KUSC-FM (91.5) for its seventh season Saturday, beginning with a broadcast of Verdi's...

Aretha Franklin cancels Chicago Symphony Orchestra fundraiser concert

R&B star Janelle Monáe will step in for an ailing Aretha Franklin at an upcoming concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Review: Dudamel keeps things light in Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn

It hasn't always been so, but symphony orchestras these days fear Bach. Many modern philharmonics, intimidated by period-practice...

Kenneth Branagh's 'The Magic Flute' to screen stateside

After a trip to Amsterdam in the summer of 2008, Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed brought back a curious souvenir: a three-disc...

Duke Ellington's music lives to be heard

It's no big thing to play the music of Duke Ellington. That's done all the time: in cabarets, concert halls, movies, Broadway theaters and...

New West will close season with the celebratory Beethoven's Ninth

The Springs fire, which threatened Thousand Oaks last week, is over. Temperatures are down. We’ve had a sprinkling of rain. Roads...

Hollywood Bowl to debut upgraded sound system this summer

When audiences converge at the Hollywood Bowl this summer, they may notice an improvement in the sound quality emerging from speakers...

Review: Lang Lang leads the L.A. Phil on a jazzy jaunt

The famous first bars of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto summon four fortissimo horns to urgently blare a four-note descending figure and...

Piano Spheres to pay tribute to Leonard Stein with a free concert

When pianist, pedagogue and Arnold Schoenberg's former secretary Leonard Stein formed Piano Spheres in Los Angeles in 1994, he was providing...

Review: The Handel and Haydn Society's 'Jephtha' solemn and solid

The Handel and Haydn Society, which brought Handel's last oratorio "Jephtha" to Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, is not your...

Philip Glass in spotlight for CAP UCLA's 2013-14 season

The music of Philip Glass will be in the spotlight for the new season at the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. The 2013-14...

Review: A night of Riehm rattles and excites

Although Pier Paolo Pasolini was best known as an Italian filmmaker, he called himself a poet and his Wikipedia entry begins by also...

Pacific Symphony's new Wavelength Fest will meld classical and pop

Singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt will be among the artists joining the Pacific Symphony this summer in a new series intended to bridge the...

Lionel Bringuier ends L.A. Philharmonic stint on a high note

The Los Angeles Philharmonic sent Lionel Bringuier out into the world on Sunday afternoon. Lucky world.

Bernadette Peters stars as Feinstein picks Pasadena Pops season

Saturday in the park with Bernadette (Peters, that is) will highlight the summer season at the Los Angeles County Arboretum announced by the...

Lang Lang: Popular classical music is great, too

BERLIN — In a hotel in the embassy-heavy streets in the city's center, Lang Lang sits on a bright red couch, a modestly daring...

Review: Jennifer Koh shows her own genius with Bach program

With Montecito magically misted by a surprising spring drizzle Wednesday night, Jennifer Koh went, for a second time, beyond Bach. The...

Benjamin Britten's 'Curlew River' comes to Santa Monica

Benjamin Britten wrote much peculiar music but little that is stranger than “Curlew River.”  

Review: REDCAT's Christian Wolff programs a lesson in virtuosity

An authority on Euripides, Christian Wolff is a retired professor of Greek and Latin classics (along with Marxist literature), having taught...

NEA awards $26.3 million, with 122 recipients in California

Despite a federal budget crunch that has resulted in a sequester, the National Endowment for the Arts announced this week it has awarded...

Review: St. Lawrence String Quartet conjures Golijovian magic

Eleven minutes and 22 seconds of what was once expected to be a major half-hour string quartet is not, quite yet, a comeback. But a little...

Review: Aaron Copland as a hinge

Times have certainly changed in Brooklyn. Streets unsafe last decade now bustle invitingly. Composers born in the borough last century...

Music review: A howl for Allen Ginsberg — or his mom?

Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish: For Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956)" is not a great poet's loudest howl.

'Django Unchained' pays homage to Wagner's 'Siegfried'

When Los Angeles Opera presented its new production of Richard Wagner's "Siegfried" a few years ago at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the...

Critic's Notebook: Music that's all over the map

A tree grows most surely in Brooklyn. But what's in a ZIP Code?

Opera is on the Verdi Chorus' menu

Large classical music ensembles are no strangers to economic challenges, but the Santa Monica-based Verdi Chorus may be the only one whose...

Pulitzer Prize for music goes to composer Caroline Shaw

Composer Caroline Shaw has won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for music for her a cappella composition "Partita for 8 Voices."

Colin Davis, renowned conductor, dead at 85

Colin Davis, the renowned British conductor who worked with the London Symphony Orchestra for many years, has died at 85. A statement from...

Brooklyn Festival samples the new classical music of the borough

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Composer and French horn player Matt Marks, 33, has just completed writing a vocal and orchestral work for the Los...

Uncertainty around Kent Nagano's tenure at Montreal Symphony

Kent Nagano's tenure at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra appears uncertain following reports that the American conductor will depart the...

Review: Conlon conducts an inspired 'Rape of Lucretia' at Colburn

The Britten year in Los Angeles has begun with a bang. This weekend, you can hear Britten in Walt Disney Concert Hall, at Jacaranda in...

L.A. Philharmonic's young composers program fine-tunes talent

It wasn't B.J. Thomas, exactly, but musical raindrops seemed to be falling in a white-walled rehearsal room next to Walt Disney Concert...

Review: A new Cinderella at Los Angeles Opera makes an impression

Los Angeles Opera wheeled into its final three performances of Rossini’s “Cinderella” Wednesday night with a new...

Grunge-influenced Wavves and Mudhoney diverge

When Nathan Williams promises, "Still I'll be your dog," on the new album by his L.A. fuzz-punk band Wavves, he's nodding of course to "I...

San Francisco Symphony strike appears near end

Striking San Francisco Symphony musicians have reached a tentative agreement with the orchestra's management that would end their 18-day...

London opera companies' 'crisis' is others' envy

LONDON — The editor of Opera is worried.

Stolen Stradivarius violin mystery takes another twist

The strange case of a stolen Stradivarius violin belonging to London-based musician Min-Jin Kym has taken another twist. The instrument...

Rise Stevens dies at 99; mezzo soprano sang 'Carmen'

Rise Stevens, an American mezzo soprano celebrated for her earthy interpretation of "Carmen," whose career also encompassed television and...

St. Louis Symphony plays to its potential in Costa Mesa

The spirit of the St. Louis Symphony, until now, hasn't seemed quite able to handle head winds.

Rumor, legend and a tabloid report sparked 'Camelia la Tejana'

Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz's "Camelia la Tejana," which will be performed  this month at Long Beach Opera, is actually three...

'Cinderella': There's always a party at Chez Rossini

Inevitably, our tastes change as we grow older. Most of the pop songs that once served as anthems are now exercises in nostalgia, calling up...