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.

Opera Review: A One Man Revolution

The Center for Contemporary Opera presents El Cimarrón
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Esteban Montejo, the subject of Hans Werner Henze's El Cimarrón.

The death of German composer Hans Werner Henze was one of the significant events of 2013. A cosmopolitan figure of towering influence, Henze's operas and symphonies pointed a way forward in the latter half of the 20th century, and yet his vast output for the stage remains mostly unknown to the average opera-goer.

This week, to celebrate Henze's memory, the Center for Contemporary Opera offered two fully staged performances of El Cimarrón, ("The Runaway Slave") a demanding, but compelling hybrid between opera and song cycle written during Henze's two-year residency in Cuba. This was the first performance of this score in a New York stage since 1986.

Opera Review: Sudden Death, Over Time

Pocket Opera Players premieres two new works.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The composer Anton Webern at the piano. 

The sudden failure of New York City Opera caused a tectonic shift in the landscape of New York's opera community. Suddenly, the spotlight has fallen on Pocket Opera Players, John Eaton's smart little shoe-string company working out of the Thalia Theater on the lower level of Symphony Space. On Saturday night, POP (as they style themselves) offered the third performance of its season-opening double bill: The Death of Webern by Michael Dellairia and ReRouted, a farce by company leader John Eaton.

Opera Review: Possession Obsession

Opera Moderne presents The Turn of the Screw.

by Paul Pelkonen

Promotional art for The Turn of the Screw. Image © 2012 Opera Moderne.

On Saturday night, the Opera Moderne, a modest Manhattan company new to this publication ended its 2012 season with a taut performance of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw at Symphony Space.

Britten's opera (the libretto is by Myfanwy Piper) is not a straightforward adaptation of  Henry James' ambiguous ghost story. In Ms. Piper's version, the ghosts Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are actual supernatural forces, preying on two innocent children at the Essex country estate of Bly. (James' novella leaves the reader unsure if the Governess is seeing things or slowly going insane.)