By JOEY ORR
Editors note: We welcome another new voice to ArtscriticATL.com. Joey Orr made his name in Atlanta as an entrepreneurial and sharp-eyed curator before he left to earn a master's degree in visual and critical studies from the Art Institute of Chicago. Orr is back in Atlanta, this time as a doctoral student in Emory University’s Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, pursuing his interest in queer studies. -- Pierre and Cathy
"Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South," a book of oral histories, came to life in a performance at Kennesaw State University the weekend of Sept. 18, part ...
By REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN
Editor's note: As a forum for arts and ideas in Atlanta, ArtsCriticATL.com opens the floor to colleagues whenever possible. We are pleased to welcome critic/curator Rebecca Dimling Cochran with this essay. Cochran is a long-time surveyor and participant in the city's visual arts scene. Her reviews of Atlanta artists appear in national publications such as Art in America, Artforum.com and Sculpture. She is currently curator of the Wieland Collection, the private collection of contemporary art owned by home-builder John and Sue Wieland. -- Pierre and Catherine
The farewell gala for the High Museum’s Louvre Atlanta project came with a ...
By JEFFREY BAXTER
Editor's note: From time to time, we'll publish essays, reviews and commentary by Atlanta artists in all fields. This first one is by the choral administrator of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, who's also a tenor in the group and was an assistant to Robert Shaw in the years before his death. Have an idea for us? Send your suggestions to ArtscriticATL [at] gmail [dot] com. -- Pierre
BACH: MASS IN B-MINOR
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Minkowski. With text and translations. Naïve CD V-5145.
In reviewing Marc Minkowski’s respectable new recording of Bach’s monumental B-Minor Mass, I'm reminded how ...
By RONALD BROUN
Amplified classical music in huge outdoor amphitheatres has become part of the American summer landscape, but it is one thing to amplify pop music that has always thrived on amplification, and quite another to amplify classical music traditionally written for unamplified concert halls. At best, exquisitely matched choirs of instruments, unique instrumental timbres, and issues of balance and weight can be maddeningly difficult to get right. Amplification adds a technological dimension to all this that can vitiate even the most carefully calibrated performances.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's all-Mozart program Saturday night at its summer home at Encore Park in ...
By RONALD BROUN
Blake's perception of "the universe in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower" applies equally to Bach's Two- and Three-Part Inventions -- those domestic studies written to teach his kids how to play two lines of music sounding together, and then three lines sounding together.
These pieces typically last only a minute or two. But they yield continual insights of how creative genius -- operating with only the slightest materials -- can make much from almost nothing at all. Played routinely, as practice exercises, the Inventions sound like exercises; performed well, they belie their simplicity and offer stabbing emotional rewards.
Till Fellner, an Austrian, is ...
By RONALD BROUN
"Tangos, Fados and Dance!" Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducting the ASO. Luciana Souza, mezzo-soprano and percussion; Scott Tennant, guitar; Rosa Collantes and Stefan Zawistowski, dancers. Attended Saturday, June 6.
Although the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's two-week festival featuring the music, dance, and culture of South America was monstrously overshadowed by a single piece for cello and orchestra -- Osvaldo Golijov's "Azul" -- that is no rap on the festival itself, which traversed worlds of unfamiliar terrain with stylish charm and quicksilver rhythmic arabesques not often encountered this far north.
A week later, on June 5, the festival's last program -- aptly titled "Tangos, Fados and Dance!" -- provided a satisfying conclusion to the two previous symphonic programs. Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedova once again presided, ...
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