Michel van der Aa News
Dutch composer
- contemporary classical music
- Kingdom of the Netherlands
- composer, film director, record producer, librettist
social networks
Last update
2024-03-28
Refresh
2023-12-20 18:01:00
[…] Angeles; James Conlon conducted, magnificently, a fine McVicar production, with an explosive Golaud from Kyle Ketelsen and beautifully sung and acted performances by Will Liverman and Sydney Mancasola in the title roles.Osmo Vänskä's Sibelius at the LA Phil.Dalia Stasevska's Sibelius at SFS.Gabriel Kahane's emergency shelter intake form at SFS, on a program where Conrad Tao played Gershwin, brilliantly, as well.Falstaff at Opera San José. Yes, too too many fat jokes, but oh! what a lovely performance.Michel van der Aa's Blank Out, an opera with one character on video and the other live. A beautiful and moving work. I hope to hear more of his music in the future.Adriana Mater at SF Symphony.Pan, by Marcos Balter, performed by Claire Chase.JACK Quartet playing music of John Luther Adams.Thomas Conlin and the Vallejo Festival Orchestra in Sibelius. Some beautifully-sung songs and a fine 2nd Symphony made this a highlight, and it was particularly satisfying in the same week […]
2023-10-13 23:11:00
War Memorial Opera House and Veterans BuildingVan Ness Ave., San FranciscoVintage postcard from my collectionSan Francisco Opera's 2023-24 season is under way, with opera no. 3 of 8 opening in two days and the 2024-25 season announcement three-plus months away, so obviously it's time to speculate! Here's what I have on my Rumor & Gossip Operatic Future Seasons page:I keep hoping that Matthew Shilvock will finally be able to stage his dream opera, which is Schoenberg's formidable Moses und Aron. As I mentioned a few years back, when he said this at a Wagner Society. meeting, there was an audible gasp in the room. The only staging in the US that I can recall offhand was at the Met, decades ago, with John Tomlinson. Wagner TBD, conducted by Eun Sun Kim. We know it won't be Lohengrin. Matthew Shilvock did promise us Parsifal at some point. Note that Kim is conducting Parsifal in Houston in January.Verdi TBD, […]
2023-05-02 18:31:00
Blank Out at Cal Performances
Miah Persson (Woman) and Roderick Williams (Man) inMichel van der Aa's Blank OutPhoto: Marco Borgrevve, courtesy of Cal Performances I saw Michel van der Aa's Blank Out at Cal Performances over the weekend, and wow. A very beautiful and moving work. I was reminded of Kaija Saariaho's remarks about her string quartet Terra Memoria:The piece is dedicated "for those departed". Some thoughts about this: we continue remembering the people who are no longer with us; the material - their life - is "complete", nothing will be added to it. Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue to change about different aspects of their personality, certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams. Even after many years, some of these memories change, some remain clear flashes which we can relive.Blank Out is very much about the relationships between the living and the dead, […]
2022-09-26 11:06:38
Various venues, VeniceThe contemporary music strand of the Italian festival brought a typically elegant and thoughtful music theatre work by Michel van der Aa; less successful was Yvette Janine Jackson’s ‘radio opera’ Left BehindIt may not attract headlines the way that its visual art and cinema siblings regularly do, but the International Festival of Contemporary Music has been part of the Venice Biennale family of cultural events since 1930. It now takes place every year across a fortnight in early autumn, and the composer
or
- timeline: Composers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): D...