258 stories by "Chloe Veltman"
I've lately -- and embarrassingly belatedly -- become hooked on The Voice, NBC's singing show which asks celebrity judges from the music world like Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green to pic…
The San Francisco Giants won the World Series and a rogue group of fans left the city in a state of disrepair. Crazy times. Mitt Romney's threats notwithstanding, at least we will always hav…
I quite often find myself wishing that curatorial statements could be excised from the walls of art museums. Or that they could be less pretentious.This feeling struck me palpably last week …
When Orson Welles adapted Herman Melville's Moby Dick for the stage in 1955, Kenneth Tynan famously wrote: "It is absurd to expect Orson Welles to attempt anything less than the impossible. …
I was lured to the East coast this week with the promise of fall color and experienced not only incredibly vibrant scenery out of doors but also colorful art happenings inside, including one…
If you want to make bank as a musical theatre creator, come up with a production that will have recycle value.And if you can write something that will come into vogue, say, ooh, I dunno, eve…
When Bellini wrote The Capulets and the Montagues in 1830, trouser roles were on their way out. Romeo was the last major role of this kind in Italian opera.To see Joyce DiDonato p…
Andras Schiff gave an hour-long lecture about J S Bach last night at Davies Symphony Hall. The pianist recently began a two-year residency with the San Francisco Symphony, during which time …
I spent the weekend in Lone Pine, a cowboy town on the far side of California.I'm not kidding about the cowboys; there were horses hanging outside the saloons on the main thoroughfare while …
This picture represents a yogic approach to voice. The different chakras in the body are aligned with the vowel sounds. While western singing practices mostly focus on the resonance of the v…
OK. Playing catchup on a few experiences of the past few days. Had to get some thoughts out about public book readings this morning and now will devote some time to sharing brief thoughts ab…
Some novelists and poets are extraordinary readers. By all accounts, Charles Dickens was an incredible orator. And I've gotten goosebumps while listening to Dylan Thomas read Under Milk Wood…
We've all known it for a while now: It's become close to impossible to make a living as a full-time arts journalist these days.And it's not just arts journalists who know it; a friend of min…
Finding a way to talk about California Shakespeare Theatre's production of Hamlet, SF Playhouse's take on My Fair Lady and the Man Ray and Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism exhibition at th…
What made last week's Public Radio Program Directors Conference in Las Vegas barely tolerable was getting off The Strip for an evening.I have visited Vegas before several times (for conferen…
San Francisco Opera's Opera in the Ballpark event is one of the best things about living in San Francisco. I've been to every single simulcast, which the company presents once a year at the …
My life has been a bit of a blur between returning from working for the music division at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and preparing for the Public Radio Program Directors Confer…
One of my final acts as a hired gun at the Library of Congress's music division this summer was to help the concert office produce a podcast to advertise its upcoming season. The challenge w…
It's official: the classical music revolution has arrived.I think there can be no greater sign of this than the advent of the upcoming music festival created by Classical Revolution, a grass…
The Library of Congress's Music Division looks like the archetypal government institution. The walls are beige. There's little natural light. The staff cubicles and reader study desks are un…
Artists as diverse as John Gay and Bono have long used the stage as a pulpit from which to preach a political, religious or social message. Al Green has come to realize the power of sharing …
There's an interesting disconnect at the Library of Congress in the way it presents some of its concerts.The Coolidge auditorium, where the venerable institution's live music programming gen…
Sharon Jones, the amazing soul-funk diva whose groovy version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" recently changed my life, performed with her band, The Dap Kings, in a free concert …
It's interesting to read in Forbes about Beck's new album, which the indie pop star is releasing...wait for it...as a bunch of pieces of sheet music. Forbes hails the singer-songwriter's eff…
Incongruity can be a powerful thing when it comes to creating memorable arts experiences.The lively dissonance I experienced by chance over the weekend when a friend and I stumbl…
