258 stories by "Chloe Veltman"
September is always a big month for small theater in San Francisco.
Reading about the British Government's poetry recitation initiative for school children, Poetry By Heart, in The Guardian over the past few days brings to mind another recent attem…
I hate iTunes. It's official.Organizing my digital music collection has always been tricky. Many of the recordings I own aren't commercially available so the data often fails to correspond t…
It's no surprise that Mario Testino's photographs, some of the most iconic of which are currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, are attracting thundering hoards.&nbs…
People in this country can't get enough of old world traditions at this time of year.Events like The Bracebridge Dinner, a high-end yuletide feast based on Olde Englishe customs which takes …
One fascinating outlet for the analysis of visual art in today's pop culture landscape is Ink Master. I caught an episode of the reality television series, which puts professional tatt…
Blue Heron is a high-endy early music-oriented vocal ensemble based in Boston whose members have sung with the likes of Sequentia and Chanticleer and whose work has been written up by Alex R…
I can't imagine a more wonderful place to experience the "musical theatre" of John Cage than in the new concert space at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which opened less than a ye…
Last weekend in Davis, CA, I had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Humble and Adam Reinwald of the Cantus men's chorus based in the Twin Cities.One of the things the singers said which stru…
Of all the arts, the cinema has traditionally been the most passive from the audience's perspective. We stare at the screen, and any reactions we have (burying our faces in pillows, crying, …
Slipstream Strategy founder Tamsin Smith who blogs for The Huffington Post just wrote a great piece about singing -- and specifically about VoiceBox -- for the HuffPo. The lin…
I've been thinking about how much audiences seem to value the element of spontaneity in their musical experiences -- and how much this element is lacking from some types of music, notably we…
When most people think of El Sistema, the amazing Venezuelan-born music education program that's transforming the way in which many countries are approaching the musical development of child…
Cultural industry workers who happened to attend Clas/sick Hip Hop at The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this weekend, would very likely have been impressed and probably envious o…
Cal Performances is hosting a two-day conference about music education centering on El Sistema, the lauded Venezuelan approach. The conference is part of a bunch of offerings organized aroun…
Sasha Frere-Jones' recent article in The New Yorker about the British songstress Paloma Faith's entrée into the United States market got me thinking about the fortunes of British female sin…
I feel sort of embarrassed to say this as the thing has gotten such euphoric reviews, but Steven Spielberg's new movie about Abraham Lincoln kinda left me cold. I exited the theatre over the…
The Theatre Development Fund has launched a whimsical online resource called Theatre Dictionary.The tool is being billed as "a video guide to 'theatre lingo' by TDF and theatre companies fro…
The current production of Tosca at the San Francisco Opera is wonderful to hear. The orchestra plays lavishly and the excellent double cast (which featured Patricia Racette in the title…
Why does time so often play tricks on us when we go to the theatre? Why do plays rarely feel the length that they actually are -- even ones that claim a unity of time, place and action?I ask…
From the moment a friend in Washington DC introduced me to Martin Sexton this summer (when I was over there doing a fellowship at the Library of Congress) I have been hooked on the singer-so…
Today's blogpost is brought to you by 11-year-old San Francisco school student Jasmin Tejeda (pictured left). Jasmin joined me for The Lion King during its latest run in San Francisco.&…
I snapped the poster pictured on the left this morning when I was in a stall in the ladies bathrooms at the Stanford gymnasium. It was hanging on the inside of the stall door and I suspect e…
I am hard-pressed to find a more wonderful anecdote to these discombobulating times of mudslinging politics, economic crises and really awful weather, than Pitch Perfect. I saw the film yest…
My head was full of thoughts about Costas Vaxevanis, the journalist who was arrested and put on trial by the Greek authorities a few days ago for publishing a list of wealthy Swiss bank acco…
