CHAMBER MUSIC CHARLESTON (CMC) continues to be one of the finest musical experiences in the region, as well as one of the best values for the money. The music and musicians are top rate, and the venues emanate a familial, relaxed ambience—the essence of “chamber” music. This is true not only of the CMC... Read »
THE VERDI REQUIEM and I go way back. Like all the way back to the first time I heard it performed in Vienna in the 1960s, as a thunderstruck boy of 14. Since coming home to Charleston in the... Read »
NEXT SATURDAY, APRIL 20, Chamber Music Charleston (CMC) will bring the spirit of Austria to Memminger Auditorium for the finale of its Kuhn & Kuhn Law Firm Memminger Concert Series. The concert will focus on Austria with special guest... Read »
One of the first things I learned when I arrived at the Sottile Theatre last Tuesday evening for the final recital of the College’s International Piano Series was that the evening’s distinguished pianist, Chu-Fang Huang, had changed her program... Read »
In Charleston Music Fest’s third concert of the 2012-13 season, a varied program from J.S. Bach’s “Chaconne” to Myroslav Skoryk’s “Karpathian Rhapsody” provided a sure-fire vehicle for the 26 year-old violinist Nazar Pylatyuk, a native of the Ukraine. The... Read »
THE CHARLESTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA delivered the fifth and final concert of their Chamber Orchestra series on Tuesday evening, delighting their sold-out Dock Street Theatre audience… despite a few problems. Their program, entitled “Postcards from Abroad,” offered a choice array... Read »
CHU-FANG HUANG, who will perform at the Sottile on Tuesday, April 2 as part of the International Piano Series, burst onto the music scene as a brilliant finalist in the Van Cliburn Piano Competition and won First Prize in... Read »
WHAT TURNED OUT to be a barn-burner concert of works by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev on Friday night began benignly with Gabriel Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande Suite, Op. 80—a piece (or combination of pieces) with an unusual history of transmutations.... Read »
IN THE THREE PLUS YEARS that I’ve been in Charleston, I haven’t laughed this hard in the audience of a production. The Importance of Being Awkward is the Charleston Acting Studio’s irreverent Sketch Comedy Troupe, and the performers are... Read »
CHARLESTON MUSIC FEST performed on Friday, February 22 at the Recital Hall of the Simons Art Center at the College of Charleston. Lee-Chin Siow, violin, Natalia Khoma, cello, and Volodymyr Vynnytsky, piano provided sterling readings of two rarely heard... Read »
A BEAUTIFUL, IRREPRESSIBLE, and beloved young woman makes selfish choices that impact her family and community, while uttering lines like, “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful, than a lifetime of nothing special.” Steel Magnolias, now at The... Read »
EMERGING URUGUAYAN PIANO VIRTUOSO Ciro Foderé delivered a magnificent recital on Tuesday evening at the Sottile Theatre as part of the College of Charleston’s dependable International Piano Series. Foderé—one of Artist-in-Residence Enrique Graf’s most accomplished and promising protégés—is a... Read »
THIS PROMISES TO BE a Baroque banquet that you don’t want to miss. On March 1–3, First (Scots) Presbyterian Church will sponsor the third Bach Festival of Charleston. Festival Director Dr. JeeYoon Choi and Choirmaster Ricard Bordas have scheduled... Read »
THERE IS AN EXTRAORDINARY EVENT happening in North Charleston, and if you are even nominally interested in viewing the best of what live theater offers, you owe it to yourself to get to South of Broadway Theatre Company. Located... Read »
FIFTY-FIVE JEWELS of Impressionism are on display at the Columbia Museum of Art (until April 21). There are no renowned masterpieces in the exhibit entitled from Monet to Matisse, but don’t let that fool you. These gems offer a... Read »
THE INTERNATIONAL PIANO SERIES at the College of Charleston is heating up again. Ciro Foderé’s latest performances have been described as “masterful, electric, fiery and lyrical” and “edge-of-the-seat thrilling.” As a First Prize winner of the Bartok-Kabalevsky-Prokofieff International Competition,... Read »
THE TAN AND SEE PIANO DUO gave another spirited performance at the Simons Center on Monday night, this time in traditional native outfits. The occasion was the 101st birthday of College of Charleston music sponsor, John Zeigler. The celebratory... Read »
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, now playing at What If? Productions, is a 1982 comedy-horror-rock musical, by composers Menken & Ashman (the pair who later would pen Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast) about a hapless florist... Read »
THE SOTTILE THEATER saw a different CSO crowd this past weekend. After all, people came to see the circus as much, if not more than, the symphony—and they got a delightful dose of both. Cirque de la Symphonie was... Read »
