Find articles | Kay Kempin

Nils Frahm and Dawn of Midi delivered an enchanting, dramatic pair of sets at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

Part of the Next Wave Festival, 21c Liderabend achieved a delicate balance that, more times than not, New York’s larger performing arts venues fail to accomplish: an intimate experience in an extravagant, larger-scale setting.

There was an oriental rug on the stage, centered and towards the front, with one stool in the far left corner and a single microphone, dead center. Clearly the makings of a solo show, Chris Thile made a joke about the “International Committee of Solo Performers” – you must play at least one, but no more than three, songs about the civil war.

Rarely does one see five grand pianos in one room, let alone on one stage. Enter the 5 Browns, a classical piano quintet. Siblings and Juilliard graduates – they were the first family to be enrolled at the Juilliard School simultaneously – it is clear this family has talent. Performing individually and together, this young ensemble has a vivacious and affable approach to classical music.

Formed under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma, the Silk Road Ensemble, a collective of distinguished performers and composers from more than 20 countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas, took to the stage at Carnegie Hall Wednesday evening. Looking up at Perelman stage, you'd never guess the group was no more than a small ensemble.

Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member band whose name has become synonymous with new and emerging contemporary classical work. Whether the music is playful of spiteful, dramatic or lighthearted, Alarm Will Sound nails the performance – just as they did Saturday night in Zankel Hall.Opening with Journeyman, a New York première by John Orfe, Alarm Will Sound immediately made their presence known.

Sitting in the majestic Carnegie Hall, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra almost looked dwarfed by the sheer size of the stage. Cristi Andrews Cohen’s voice echoed as she recited the poem by Richard Dehmel. But then soft hums emanated from the strings, incessant but quiet at first, slowing building to a larger, richer sound that enveloped the hall.

(Le) Poisson Rouge is always an exciting venue for classical music, but to have John Adams in the house Tuesday night was a real treat.The Attacca Quartet, comprised of violinists Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga, violist Luke Fleming and cellist Andrew Yee, began the concert with absolutely no pretenses.

Regular concert-goers are used to hearing the harp on a church altar or mixed in with a large symphony, barely audible above the mass of strings, bass and brass. But the St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble put the harp center stage, in an evening of 20th-century French music, no less.

Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall is by no means a modest-sized concert stage, and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra seemed to take up every square inch of it. The sheer size of the orchestra is initially what struck me, until the opening lines of Rolf Martinsson’s Open Mind, Op. 71.

On the morning of 12 February, President Obama announced the return of 34,000 troops from Afghanistan by January, 2014. This pronouncement made the concert at Carnegie Hall that night especially poignant.

No ordinary youth orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra causes quite a stir wherever it performs. Comprised of a mix of Arab, Israeli and Spanish musicians, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is committed to coexistence and a peaceful solution to the violent conflict in the Middle East.

Elliott Carter was a real maverick composer. Born into the era of Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives and Arnold Schoenberg, Carter went onto to create an exciting world of new music in the 20th and 21st century. Never slowing down, Carter composed over 40 new works between the ages of 90 and 100. The result: Carter’s music is current and exciting today... and he has an incredible repertoire of music.

At once, Max Richter’s avant-garde remix of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is both strange and familiar. Poised atop the stage at (le) Poisson Rouge sat the LPR ensemble – complete with a harpsichord! – ready to begin their performance. But something curious happened: the players remained silent as an electronic hum radiated out of a laptop on stage.

Crossing 9th Avenue to walk even further west, I deplored my lengthy commute from the A train.  'People live this far west?', I said to myself.  I didn't realize I said the question out loud until my friend Emily replied, 'Sure, you can make any neighborhood hip in Manhattan.

Kicking off its 5th year, the World Science Festival had their opening night performance in the historic United Palace Theatre. The last of Marcus Loew’s vaudeville theatres from the 1920s and 30s, the United Palace Theatre is now home to the United Church Science of the Living Institute, and sometimes alternative rock concerts.

Believe all the hype: Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe—more famously called Anderson and Roe—are electric. At Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, this piano duo did more than celebrate the launch of their new album; they fashioned an entirely new concert experience.

In 1857, downtown Brooklyn—now fondly referred to as DUMBO—was a sleepy, riverside village. It was also the inaugural year for the Brooklyn Philharmonic. When Bizet, Berlioz and Wagner were the creative voices of the generation in Europe, the Brooklyn Phil was right there with them, launching a classical music culture in the heart of Manhattan’s borough.

After 25 years at the helm, John Daly Goodwin, Music Director of the New York Choral Society (NYCS), gave his final concert Friday night at Carnegie Hall. Titled ‘American Reflections’, all five works had an historical relationship with the New York Choral Society, three of which were commissioned and premiered by the NYCS: Paulus’ Whitman’s New York, De Cormier’s Legacy and Gould’s Quotations.

The stage was set at (Le) Poisson Rouge: a royal blue curtain and a brilliant red light contrasted nicely with the shine of the black and white piano. Simple yet bold, the stage was akin to a Mondrian painting. And as Scarlatti’s notes rolled off Alexandre Tharaud’s fingers, this striking visual matched the crisp performance perfectly.

With the sun shining bright and the waning winter months feeling more like spring, it seemed like all of Astoria was out on the streets this past Sunday. Still, the Astoria Symphony Orchestra enticed some of the locals indoors, delighting us with Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.

The first thing that caught my eye Wednesday night was the sheer size of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; they took up every inch of free space atop the Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall. So when the first note from Hector Berlioz’s Overture to Benvenuto Cellini rang out, the sound enveloped the hall, inserting itself into every nook and cranny.

Playing a programme inspired by Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, the Kronos Quartet re-imagined music from our past for a contemporary audience.Taking us back to 1926 and the newly independent country of Ireland, Kronos first performed Donnacha Dennehy’s One Hundred Goodbyes (Céad Slán). Built around Dr.

The Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall is enough to catch anyone’s breath. But it wasn’t the grandeur of the hall that struck me; it was the fact that the conductor’s podium was missing from the stage. A bold statement: it was clear Sir Roger Norrington was going to conduct the Orchestra of St. Luke’s his own way.Kicking off the evening’s performance was Haydn’s Symphony no. 39 in G minor.

‘There's no such thing as new music, just music’, Bruce Levingston remarked halfway through the 10th anniversary gala concert for the ‘Premiere Commission’ Monday night. After hearing the evening’s performances, it feels impossible to disagree.The two opening piano pieces were like impressions, snapshots of emotions from a particular place or time.

Celebrating the worldwide release of his first orchestral album, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn: Violin Concertos, Ray Chen presented a fairly typical selection of classical music: Bach, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns. But from the moment Chen took to the stage at (Le) Poisson Rouge, it was clear the evening’s concert was bound to break a few rules.

As I settled into my seat in the Kaufman Theater at the 92nd Street Y, the man next to me turned to his wife to say: “This concert is going to be quite the journey.” Snickering to myself, I dismissed the man’s comment as trite. But by the end of the all-Liszt program, I felt bulldozed by Garrick Ohlsson’s performance.

A happy few: that was how Gabriel Kahane referred to his cohorts on stage at the Galapagos Art Space. But there was more than met the eye to Sunday night’s performance.The curtain opened to reveal the stage at the Galapagos Art Space, and there sat the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, without a conductor. Truthfully, the effect was strange at first.

Sitting in the seats at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts auditorium in Astoria, the boisterous, catchy tunes of Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to West Side Story rang out. Crisp, clean, and excitedly performed, it was a great start to an evening of what Maestro Silas Nathaniel Huff called ‘Riffs and Dances’.

The moment the first chord rang out in the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall Monday night, the audience caught their breath. Opening with Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Sonata in F Major, violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Sam Haywood set the tone for the rest of the evening.Mendelssohn’s Violin Sonata in F Major was performed with a controlled frenzy throughout.

Classical music is the last thing one would expect to find behind the historic Village gate at (Le) Poisson Rouge. Don’t let the venue fool you; (Le) Poisson Rouge regularly plays host to a myriad of performers. Thursday night, it was the Takács Quartet.

There is no better way to pass the lazy summer hours of a bank holiday Monday than to listen to Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott perform live classical music at the BBC Proms. Opening the performance at Caodgan Hall was the London première of Graham Fitkin’s L.

An evening of French music, the notes from Debussy, Ravel and Dutilleux lingered in the sticky summer air long after the concert finished.Making their BBC Proms debut, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, conducted by Donald Runnicles with chorus-master Christopher Bell, took command of the stage.

Kicking off the concert with Richard Strauss’ epic Also sprach Zarathustra, followed closely by the Horrible Histories theme tune, Aurora Orchestra, the Kids Company Choir and Choirs from the Music Centre, led by conductor Nicholas Collon and presented by Louise Fryer, performed the best bits of the history of music at this year’s Family Prom.

Thursday night’s BBC Proms was a celebration of Sibelius, Bartók and Janáček, composers who mastered the classical music tradition and put their home countries on the map.Summoning images of the Finnish countryside, Scènes historiques, Suite No. 2 displayed a range of orchestral colours.

As you round the corner of Prince Consort Road, you raise your head to catch a glimpse of the tip of the Royal Albert Hall dome. But just as you do…SMACK! You’ve collided with a stranger’s back. Reorienting yourself you realise there’s a queue a mile long, winding down the steps outside the Royal Albert Hall and stretching all the way to bus stop down the road.

Walking down the steps to the Old Vic Tunnels, which were covered in graffiti and grime, it felt like a grungy, punk rock club lay at the end of this lackluster pathway. But once inside the Tunnels, it was clear that these dark, stone caves were the perfect space for a performance of Jessica Curry’s new choral work, Perpetual Light: Requiem for an Unscorched Earth.

First published in 1759, Voltaire’s Candide was re-imagined for the concert stage by Leonard Bernstein in 1956. An operetta whose aim was to mock the belief that everything—literally, everything—is for the best, Candide was an ideal medium through which to critique the excesses of McCarthyism and the complacency of the Eisenhower administration in 1950’s US politics.

Ambassadors of string quartet repertoire, La Catrina Quartet is a dynamic group of musicians. Performing music from Puerto Rico to Mexico to Argentina, La Catrina Quartet presented audiences with a fresh Mexican and Latin American sound.La Catrina Quartet began Thursday night’s concert with Metro Chabacano by one of Mexico’s most prolific composer, Javier Álvarez.

Combining Bartók’s second Violin Concerto with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony was a bold move for Alan Gilbert. Bartók’s music is rough around the edges, abrasive and severe but also tepid in parts. Beethoven, on the other hand, is wild and bombastic; The Eroica Symphony is a larger than life work. Performing the two pieces in a single evening was ambitious, but proved triumphant.

No ordinary string quartet, Turtle Island Quartet (TIQ) performed a vast array of musical styles Friday evening: rock, folk, blue grass, jazz, blues, even Indian. Building upon their masterful technique and commitment to improvisation, TIQ was able to craft fresh, new melodies out of popular music.

For those of you who think classical music just isn't your thing, think again. Limelight brings classical music underground to the 100 Club, inviting audiences to experience what classical music can sound, look and feel like.

As the sun dipped below the horizon Sunday afternoon, The Chopin Society UK enticed classical music enthusiasts inside Westminster Cathedral Hall with a glittering performance by Italian pianist Alessandro Taverna. Presenting Chopin, Liszt, De Falla, Satie and Stravinsky all in one programme, Taverna re-imagined his piano recital as a ballet: Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes.

Love may be a familiar feeling, but the passion Aurora Orchestra unleashed at LSO St Luke’s was enough to leave audiences wild with desire. Exploring the darkest undertones of love—anguish, jealousy, remorse and regret—Friday night’s programme, Jealous Guy, was woven together by tango music interspersed with tragic love stories from across musical history.

A powerful voice in classical music, American conductor Marin Alsop, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, challenged audiences at the Royal Festival to engage with contemporary classical music in an imaginative way.

Sir Colin Davis is a man whose name has become synonymous with exceptional classical music. And after over 50 years with the London Symphony Orchestra, the nuances of performance have become second-nature to him. But audiences were in for a treat Sunday night: the LSO offered audiences a rare opportunity to experience new music by two exceptional young musicians.

Saturday night, The Grainger Elastic Band, with members of the Royal Artillery Orchestra and The Fitzwilliam String Quartet, and conducted by Roger Montgomery, put on an all-Percy Grainger concert at King's Place.

Performing works by Maurice Ravel and Hector Berlioz Wednesday night, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), conducted by Yannik Nézet-Séguin with guest soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, captivated audiences with both charming, childlike prose and chilling orchestral music.

When Evgeny Kissin first walked on stage at the Barbican Centre, his gentle smile and humble demeanor seemed ill equipped for the exuberance of Liszt’s piano works. But from the moment notes first spilled out from the piano, Kissin had the audience transfixed.

London’s Wigmore Hall, famous for its elegant concert hall and outstanding acoustics, has become synonymous with exceptional piano music. Having played host to a number of celebrated performers and composers, from Arthur Rubinstein to Saint-Saëns, Benjamin Britten to Joshua Bell, Wigmore Hall also ushers in today’s latest classical stars.One such star is Boris Giltburg.