From his place before the Boston Pops in the perfect acoustics of Symphony Hall, Ben Folds sported the face of a man who thought he'd committed the perfect crime.
From his place before the Boston Pops in the perfect acoustics of Symphony Hall, Ben Folds sported the face of a man who thought he'd committed the perfect crime.
Boston's sons and daughters proudly proclaim their city to be the best, but let's be honest: we have an awful lot of competition. We're not the biggest city (New York), the most logically designed (Washington D.C.), the cleanest (Portland), or even the weirdest city (Austin). Sometimes it's difficult to think about what sets Boston apart from the rest of the urban field.
"I lived in Boston for four years and I was never here. Call it what you will. But I'm glad tonight is the first night." On Friday night, Josh Ritter began his set in Boston's most esteemed concert hall (lined with statuary of "huge, intimidating, partially-clad figures") by singing about his native Midwest: "Idaho," Illinois in "Best for the Best," and the whole region as "story we made up to erase" in "Other Side."
The Boston Pops announced today that Symphony Hall will, on June 27, play host to a show that could very well be one of the highlights of the summer concert season here in Boston.
Upstairs was the teeming Cambridge Common; outside, the usual smokers' conversations. "Dude, you spit on my nachos." "No, I spit next to your nachos." And downstairs, Opera Boston Underground had returned to the Lizard Lounge for another well-attended performance.
Bostonist was on the phone with our buddy Keith on Thursday, chatting about the upcoming Boston Pops spring season. The initial season announcement had just crossed our desk at Bostonist HQ, and we wanted to see what Keith thought of a spring and summer that will include jazz, Broadway, a season-long tribute to Leonard Bernstein, and appearances by Natalie Cole, Natalie Merchant, and Amanda Palmer.
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Some people dig Beethoven. Others love Beethoven. Astronaut Stephanie Wilson apparently thinks Beethoven and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are so out of this world that she's determined to take the music into orbit.
Bostonist knew that with Wednesday night's Boston Pops EdgeFest finale would come a chance to see local talent (and Bostonist favorites) Mieka Pauley and Chad Perrone, but it wasn't until shortly before we braved the heat en route to Symphony Hall that we discovered that we were in store for another Boston music treat - three-fifths of the Ryan Montbleau Band (guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Ryan Montbleau, bassist Matt Gianarros and Laurence Scudder on viola), who closed out the night at the hall with a post-Pops performance.
The Boston Pops are mixing things up with the lineup for EdgeFest, the now-annual collaborative endeavor between indie/alternative musicians and the symphony. The Pops sent out a news release today that said the planned "M Ward and Friends" shows on June 26 and 27 have been postponed, so as to allow everyone to have enough time to "create the best possible arrangements for this unique collaboration."
After a few weeks of uncertainty, the legal battle between the two men involved in the Brawl at the Hall last month took about as much time to resolve in the courtroom as it took for the pair to be escorted out of the Boston Pops' opening night festivities - about ten minutes.
Get 'em in. American Idol is over for this season, but the Popsearch is just beginning. The Boston Pops PopSearch2007 has extended the deadline until midnight tonight. In case you forgot to mail your entry into the talent competition, or you just now realize that you really want your moment in the spotlight, you've got about eleven hours to get it in. As we've mentioned before the ages old organization of the Boston Pops has...
The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get...
It seems safe to assume that opening night to the 122nd Boston Pops season could be described at least as somewhat of an abnormality. A shout of "Rock This Bitch" doesn't typically ring through the perfect acoustics of Symphony Hall, let alone serve as an acquiesced song request. We've never heard anything about traditional Opening Night audience fistfights. And, with all due respect to those who have sat in with conductor Keith Lockhart and his...
First Keith Lockhart got himself an official website. Then the Boston Pops started teaming up with pop/rock/alternative musical acts. Now Keith and Company are taking to YouTube for some "American Idol"-style action. The Boston Pops - not your average orchestra!
We were starting to worry that the day's music news would contain little but the downright nasty word that Keith Richards cut his father's ashes with cocaine and actually snorted the concoction up his million-years-old nose. Thank you, Boston Globe, for allowing us to turn to a different Keith. A local Keith. A younger Keith. A Keith who, as far as we know, hasn't snorted anyone up his nose. Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops...
Bostonist didn't realize that the news about Keith "I wear leather pants" Lockhart and Ben "I don't wear pants" Folds' Boston Pops partnership was new -- word of the May concert at Symphony Hall has been circulating through Folds fan circles for some time now. But Sarah Rodman's news on Boston.com's Exhibitionist blog today did set our hearts aflutter. With all the early buzz, there was a worry that perhaps tickets had already gone on...
Garrison Keillor will be at Symphony Hall tomorrow at 3pm. Tickets are available through the celebrityseries.org website.
It may be the holidays, but it's been a terrible weekend for the entire city. First was Friday night's Dorchester drive-by that left three wounded, one critically. Last night, two people were stabbed outside Symphony Hall while the Holiday Pops merrily carried on. And then there's yesterday's news of some idiot who held up a priest with a hunting knife - inside the St. Francis Chapel. On top of that incident is the attempted kidnapping...
It's a good week to take the whole week off. Well, is there such a thing as a bad week to take off? Grilled meats will be invading your pores for the first time in such a heavy dose since Memorial Day, which was only about a month ago. In addition to this weeks picks for some of the great shows creeping up on us in Boston we'd like to point you over to a little fifty state musical roundup on the internets. Trees lounge has gotten 23 states done in the 50 state project. Celebrate your independence my checking out some Massachusetts themed tunes (some of them are pretty borderline on the whole "theme" but we'll cut him some slack for finding 60 songs with MP3s to download)
Last week My Morning Jacket played two dates with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. A small set of the Pops had been on Letterman backing up the Pops earlier in the month for a preview performance. The CBS set is a far cry from the Symphony Hall setting the full Pops gig allowed. After Wednesday's show a couple of recordings were floating around the internets, but they went up and down. Thursday's show new recordings surfaced – and some of them even stuck around. There are now a handful of video clips of My Morning Jacket playing with the Boston Pops. We bring you here one of them with better sound quality than the rest. You can find others with a full stage perspective, poor image quality, and even from the Late Show.
Located a the intersection of Symphony Hall and BU’s Huntington Theater, it’s a mystery why, on a recent Friday night, Betty’s Wok and Noodles was nearly empty. Could it be that the “Bernstein on Broadway” series is putting the population off their dinner? Do thespians dislike fusion cuisine? No immediate answers present themselves, but nevertheless the truth remains: empty restaurant + Friday night = bad sign.
Monday 6/19:
Tuesday 5/30
There is only so long that we’re going to be able to hold out before the entire list of the week’s picks will be outdoor venues. Well, that’ll probably never happen until they dome the roof at Paradise and we can rock under the stars. We are, however, ecstatic about the warmer temperatures and the daylight which stretches until late – it helps us gear up for the night’s show. After a weekend of...
Yesterday the employees of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were steps away from the Red Sox and Fenway Park when the first pitch was thrown at home for the Sox’s 2006 season. Long noted as a rather eccentric, er, crazy woman Isabella Stewart Gardner did have one thing right – a passion for the Olde Towne Team. After sporting a white headband with the words “Oh you Red Sox” written in red lettering to a BSO concert at Symphony Hall (audacity in 1912, today we seem to see folks with Red Sox hats pretty much every time we go to Symphony Hall – so much for fancy dress) Town Topics had this to say:
It looks as if the woman had gone crazy. With this band bound like a fillet around her auburn hair, she appeared in her conspicuous seat at a recent Saturday night Symphony Concert, almost causing a panic among those in the audience who discovered the ornamentation, and even for a moment upsetting Dr. Muck's men so that their startled eyes wandered from their music stands.Yeah. We knew she was a little bit odd. You can visit her house turned museum where here eccentricity lives on with constraints on what can and can’t be changed with the layout, lighting, and installations in the museum. If you go between today and April 20, 2006 leave the fancy dress at home, don a Red Sox hat and get in for $2 off admission. An extra bonus – if your name is Isabella click here and sign up for free lifetime admission. We promise not to call you crazy.
Admittedly we’re a little low on the Saturday evening picks for this week. Mostly because we know we’ll still be swigging green beer by the pint – or at least too hung-over from Friday night to make it out to a show. Again this week we’ve put a little classical music for those of you that feel a little culture is good for the soul. Monday 3/13: Dilated Peoples and Little Brother Rakaa, Evidence...