Alan Artner –

MusicNOW at the Harris Theatre was edgy, irritating and provocative — all good

December 12, 2018 at 9:43 a.m.

The 21st season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW series began Monday night with a concert at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, and a provocative one it was....

Markus Stenz puts a firm mark on Grant Park Music Festival performance

December 12, 2018 at 9:51 p.m.

More than 20 years ago composer Alan Stout observed that for at least 20 years before then the contemporary work on American concert programs tended to be the first, shortest...

German pianist Martin Helmchen closes Piano Series with Orchestra Hall recital

December 13, 2018 at 6:09 a.m.

Martin Helmchen returned to Orchestra Hall on Sunday afternoon for a solo piano recital marked by many of the same qualities noted at his local debut with the Chicago Symphony...

Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>

Pianist Evgeny Kissin was large and (mostly) in charge at Orchestra Hall

December 13, 2018 at 9:39 a.m.

Evgeny Kissin's piano recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall was, as ever, marked by largeness. Both halves were massive in content. Interpretations were heroically outsized. Four encores preceded a meet-the-artist...

CSO musicians perform contemporary chamber works keyed to Art Institute galleries

December 13, 2018 at 9:13 a.m.

Monday night's concert marking the 20th anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW series provided a sure look into the past and a possible template for the future. Given in...

Evgeny Kissin and the Emerson String Quartet ride the wave to a perfect ending

December 14, 2018 at 11:37 a.m.

An encore is an audience demand made on performers through applause. It insists on something more, something added to what had been on the scheduled program. Performers usually respond to...

Review: It was Italian Baroque music, and it was spectacular

December 14, 2018 at 10:37 a.m.

In the last 30 years many of the freshest experiences in the concert hall have been provided by historically aware performances of early music. Sunday afternoon at the Reva and...

Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky plays a program featuring composers from his homeland at Symphony Center on Sunday, March 25, 2018.

Antics accompany artistry as pianist Boris Berezovsky plays Orchestra Hall

December 14, 2018 at 5:33 p.m.

At the end of Boris Berezovsky’s recital Sunday at Orchestra Hall, the Russian super-virtuoso announced he would perform as encores three waltzes by Frederic Chopin. Then he played two. It...

Mark Haddad solos with the Haymarket Opera Company during a performance of Luigi Rossi's work at the Chicago Temple on Thursday, March 8, 2018.

Haymarket Opera performs rare Rossi Passion oratorio

December 14, 2018 at 3:07 p.m.

One of the more arresting additions to the Chicago music scene is the Haymarket Opera Company’s Lenten Oratorio series, which offers early-evening concerts of about an hour guided by period...

Pianist David Fray rises above the CSO’s dose of more of the same

December 14, 2018 at 10:05 p.m.

Older attendees to concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra may remember Georg Solti’s declaration that he and the ensemble had a primary responsibility to present the most polished performances possible...

All Stories