(Composer Gregory Spears) By Jeff Maisey Virginia Chorale will conclude its 40th season with the world premiere of “The Neighboring Village,” a vocal composition it commissioned from Virginia Beach native Gregory Spears. The new song is the highlight on a program featuring vocal works from composers with a connection to Virginia, including former Virginia Opera composer Thea Musgrave and others.  In advance of the two concerts (April 20 at Galilee Episcopal Church and April 21 at Royster Memorial Presbyterian Church), I caught up with VA Chorale executive director Chuck Woodward for detai ..read more

(Conductor Thomas Wilkins) By Montague Gammon III Take your seat, for a concert of joyousness.  The Virginia Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto concert in late April showers the Ferguson Center, Chrysler Hall and the Sandler Center with “Pure joy,” to quote an email from VSO Principal Guest Conductor Thomas Wilkins. Before soloist Geneva Lewis and the ca. 1766 G.B. Guadagnini violin she plays take the stage for Tchaikovsky’s only violin concerto, Wilkins leads the orchestra in three other works: Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta (1934), George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad–Rhapsody f ..read more

(Classical guitarist Miloš Karadaglić will join Les Violons du Roy on stage.) By Montague Gammon III Hampton Roads snagged first dibs on a new, century spanning program of truly golden oldies, thanks to the Virginia Arts Festival.  The celebrated French Canadian chamber orchestra Les Violons du Roy, in company with the likewise celebrated classical and genre-crossing guitarist Miloš Karadaglić, who’s usually credited as MILOŠ, kicks off their four stop transcontinental USA tour here in late April, with a 70 minute, no intermission concert that’s part of their first collaboration with that ..read more

(Composer Juhi Bansal was commissioned by Virginia Symphony Orchestra to create a new classical music work — To Call the Rain.) By Montague Gammon III The Virginia Symphony Orchestra again gives Hampton Roads audiences the honor of being the planet’s first to hear a work by an important and, in the words of VSO Music Director and concert conductor Eric Jacobsen, “incredible younger composer.” That’s To Call the Rain, by Juhi Bansal, which opens VSO’s early March concerts in Norfolk, Newport News and Virginia Beach. Bansal’s world premiere is paired with Mozart’s popular “Paris Symphony” and Ca ..read more

By Jeff Maisey Since the late 1960s, The King’s Singers — hailing from King’s College, Cambridge in England — have made Christmastime special by performing ancient carols from the Renaissance period and then later incorporating a diverse array of modern holiday season selections In advance of their three performances — December 14 at Williamsburg Presbyterian Church, December 16 at River Road Baptist Church in Richmond, and December 17 at Norfolk’s Christ & St. Luke’s Church — present by the Virginia Arts Festival, I connected with King’s Sinders’ First Countertenor Patrick Dunachie to lea ..read more

(The members of Virginia Chorale. Photo by Steve Budman) By Jeff Maisey If choral music has a high season, surely it’s the holidays. Over the past thousand years, the most ancient of all music forms — vocal — has been composed for religious ceremonies as well as caroling and in modern culture for entertainment purposes such as Christmas albums, TV specials, and live performances at performing arts centers and atmospheric churches.  Virginia Chorale’s upcoming holiday concert, “Sing We Nowell,” will honor of the 20th anniversary of NATO’s Command Transformation based in Norfolk by performi ..read more

(Thomas Wilkins, conductor) By Montague Gammon III Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms and Dvořák with Thomas Wilkins November concert features “music that is going to make you feel better about yourself at the end of the evening,” says the VSO’s Principal Guest Conductor Wilkins, who will be on the podium. It’s actually a tripartite program, beginning with French composer Maurice Ravel’s self-orchestrated, fairy tales linked, Ma Mère l’Oye (trans: Mother Goose, using an archaic spelling of Oie/Oye, ca. 17-20 minutes). Originally composed in 1910 as a five part, four hand piano duet for 6 and ..read more

By Jeff Maisey Earlier this year, the Virginia Arts Festival celebrated in grand style the 150th birthday of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff with a series of chamber music concerts featuring the internationally acclaimed Dali Quartet and violinist Tianwa Yang as well as Sterling Elliott (cello), Debra Wendells Cross (flute), and Darrin Milling (trombone).   Front and center for most of these performances was the phenomenal, often animated pianist Olga Kern, who opened the spring Arts Festival season with a dazzling solo recital. For Kern the performances hit home in a most personally ..read more

(Piano soloist Orli Shaham) By Montague Gammon III The Virginia Symphony opens its 2023-24 Season with a Beethoven Festival whose bounties Music Director and concert conductor Eric Jacobsen twice likened to a “steak dinner with dessert,” a two course musical feast of “pieces that will bring people together for many years to come.” Ludwig’s van Beethoven’s unique 1803-04 Triple Concerto – formally, Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C major, Op. 56 –  opens these mid-September Thursday and Friday  concerts with what might be seen as a mash-up of chamber and symphonic ..read more

(TWO-GETHER: Andrey Kasparov and Oksana Lutsyshyn)  By Montague Gammon III The Norfolk Chamber Consort closes its 54th Season with a concert titled “The Game of Pairs.” Husband and wife performers, father and son composers, deux French composers, sibling string instruments, twinned string instruments, two ways of playing string instruments, and European style matched up with American jazz are its prominent one plus one pairings. Consort co-artistic directors Andrey Kasparov (husband, Russian born) and Oksana Lutsyshyn (wife, Ukrainian born), who together are the Invencia Piano Duo – anoth ..read more