Venue: Harris Theater, Millennium Park, Chicago

 An unusual double bill of operas by Joby Talbot and Sergei Rachmaninov under conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya in Chicago.  

The powerful and appealing Hubbard Street contemporary dancers took audiences on a journey through the innards of Chicago's Harris Theater, in an 'immersive' experience choreographed and creative-directed by Peter Chu.  

The Bruckner Orchester Linz’s Chicago appearance was centered on American music with music director Dennis Russell Davies and vocalist Angélique Kidjo, rounded off by a Zemlinsky song cycle based on African-American poetry.

Itzhak Perlman led the Juilliard Orchestra in a program of Tchaikovsky touchingly dedicated Pierre Boulez.

As a title for the opening performance of MusicNOW’s 2013-2014 season, “Vaporized” is somewhat misleading. It comes from the evening’s first piece, and it makes for a tidy, catchy branding for a new music concert. Yet the other two works are steeped in a density and concreteness that are counterintuitive to the abstract, amorphous implications of that title.

“Love conquers all.” Too often this phrase has been repeated, yet too true this statement has proven. Rather than just being a passionate emotion in which desires of the world and flesh prevail, true love is a genuine feeling which trials or extreme evil cannot break, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Two years ago, my voice teacher invited to my very first Messiah performance with the Downers Grove Choral Society, of which he was the director. During the three-hour performance, I vividly recall feeling incredibly uplifted in indescribable spiritual bliss for the whole time I spent in the seat, intensely listening to the historically-informed rendition.