Music Scene

Leonard Bernstein would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. Alas he only made it to 72, dying in 1990, the year after I saw him at Carnegie Hall. Throughout 2018 symphonies across the country […]

Sun News Austin was on the scene for the 40th anniversary concert of Kansas in Pittsburgh, where they first made it big onto the music scene in 1975. After more than 40 years and 30 […]

When one thinks of Rachmaninoff, ‘drama’ is a typical word association. In his very first symphony, however, we see a mellower side of the great Russian composer. Interpreting Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Long […]

Gustav Holst is most famous for his symphony The Planets, composed just over a century ago. Notably absent from that symphony was the Earth! Holst wrote extraordinary music for seven planets, but omitted our own. […]

The Long Center for the Performing Arts is pleased to announce the Austin premiere of National Geographic: Symphony for Our World, a new partnership between National Geographic Partners and Jason Michael Paul Entertainment, Inc., on July 28 […]

After more than 40 years and 30 million albums sold, the rock group Kansas has a whole new audience thanks to the TV show Supernatural. Their smash hit Carry On Wayward Son has been used […]

The Austin Symphony performed an all-Russian concert as the closer of their 2017-18 season. First up was a piece known in the trade as a “real knuckle-buster,” the fiendishly difficult Piano Concerto No. 3 by […]

A serenade inspired by the Greek philosopher Plato put Leonard Bernstein in the spotlight at the Austin Symphony Orchestra this weekend. While it may have been the marquee event of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony that resulted […]

For the second time in three years, a composition by Dame Ethel Smyth was performed by the first-rate Chamber Music group Chameleon in Ft. Lauderdale. Her Sonata for Cello and Piano dates from 1887, long […]

Not since Virgil Fox has a concert organist so captured the public imagination as Cameron Carpenter. His latest album, All You Need is Bach, reached no. 1 on the Billboard Classical charts in the US […]