Concert Review: Songs For An Empty Pocket

Musicians gather at Symphony Space to celebrate John Eaton's birthday.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson pays tribute to the late John Eaton, using the sound-box
of a Steinway piano as a natural onstage amplifier. Photo by Jeremy Tressler.

It was part birthday party, and part wake for a composer who died in 2015. On Saturday night, composers, music lovers and the curious gathered at the Leonard Nimoy Theater at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side to commemorate what would have been the 84th birthday of John Eaton: composer, inventor and iconoclast.  Mr. Eaton was a well-loved teacher and creator of the "Pocket Opera" series, which offered quirky, chamber-sized stagings on the little downstairs stage at Symphony Space. He was a kind, gentle and towering figure and his students came forward to create this evening of their work. The concert, "Celebrating John Eaton's Legacy" was presided over by the composer's widow Nelda Nelson-Eaton.

Concert Review: Solemnity Now

The Metropolitan Opera mounts an old-fashioned Verdi Requiem.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

James Levine in his element.
Photo © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera Press Department.

The fifty-one year-old auditorium of the Metropolitan Opera has certain drawbacks. Those became visible on Monday night as the venerable opera company presented the second performance this season of the Messa di Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi. This is a colossal setting of the Latin Mass for the Dead, the standard service for funerals in the Roman Catholic Church until 1970. (Like all the performances this week, this one was dedicated to the memory of the baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.)