Jon Sobel

1 month ago | blogcritics.org | Jon Sobel

The website of composer Susan Botti describes her River Spirits as a “theatrical motet” and a “futuristic abstract fable.” Those two phrases nicely encapsulate the fusion of past and future one can discern in both the instrumental parts and the vocals in this four-movement work. It calls for three voices plus an ensemble of contemporary and early music instruments, including one I’d never encountered before: an electric viola da gamba.

1 month ago | blogcritics.org | Jon Sobel

Then and Now collects five chamber works by Richard Festinger dating from the past two decades. Amid the shatterings of classical convention that have characterized the 20th and 21st centuries, Festinger’s work has remained stubbornly tonal and chromatic. He composes melodies, builds harmonies, and writes in phrases – all in a distinctive and, based on these selections, a very likable voice.

1 month ago | blogcritics.org | Jon Sobel

Music, we say, is the universal language. Still, it’s often a particular place that inspires a composer. Felix Mendelssohn and the Hebrides. Jordan Nobles and his homeland of Canada. Lou Reed and New York City. Composer-conductor Bahman Saless of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra took the Rocky Mountains for his muse for “Ode to the Rockies,” his craggy mini-suite that kicked off the orchestra’s 20th-anniversary celebration concert at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on May 18.

1 month ago | blogcritics.org | Jon Sobel

Debates about the appropriateness of artistic responses to tragedy and destruction won’t be settled in one night at Carnegie Hall. But “The Pacific Has No Memory,” which bloomed from the musical pen of Eric Whitacre after he witnessed the Los Angeles-area wildfires of January 2025, showed one thing without a doubt at its May 17 New York premiere with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra: that such responses can carry notes of both melancholy and hope.

1 month ago | blogcritics.org | Jon Sobel

With musical wizard Dan Schlosberg on a break, would Heartbeat Opera’s latest production, a reimagined Faust, offer the musical magic that has made its predecessors so deliriously impactful and fun? Happily the answer is yes, thanks to skillful and imaginative arranger Francisco Ladrón De Guevera, the rest of the Heartbeat Opera team, and a terrific cast with thespian skills to match their singing voices. Shadow screens. Puppetry. A silent-movie sequence.