For the performing arts in Vermont, 2020 was the year that wasnât. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic revealed many arts organizationsâ ability to redefine themselves â and for others it meant a complete shutdown.
January began optimistically with a splendid performance by the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Anne Decker, of Menottiâs Christmas opera, âAmahl and the Night Visitorsâ at City Hall Arts Center. The Spice on Snow traditional music festival celebrated its 10th year, also in the capital.
Vermont Stage, the Burlington professional theater, mounted excellent productions of âRelativity,â by Mark St. Germain â in which Ron Crawford became Albert Einstein â and âMarie and Rosetta,â the rockinâ gospel of Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Christmas Oratorio. Ensemble Resonanz presents Bach s
Christmas Oratorio as Hausmusik among friends. With a small cast and no large choir, the ensemble has arranged 30 arias, recitatives, choruses, and chorales from Bach s masterpiece in its own version. The score remains untouched, but electric guitar and Hammond organ sound in the continuo, there’s only one trumpet, and the whole ensemble joins in the chorales. View here.
Delibes’s
Sylvia. Conductor: Kevin Rhodes, choreography: Manuel Legris after Louis Mérante. With Kiyoka Hashimoto, Masayu Kimoto, and Davide Dato. Production from November 2018. Register for free and view here.
2 pm ET: VOCES8 Live from London presents
3 pm ET: London Philharmonic Orchestra presents
All the World’s a Stage. The LPO celebrates Brett Dean, their new Composer in Residence, with the UK premiere of
The Players. The scene is Elsinore, setting of Dean’s opera
Hamlet, with the solo role played by accordion player James Crabb. The concert begins with Bach’s
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and ends with Stravinsky’s mock-Baroque
Pulcinella. View here.
6 pm ET: Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents
Mark Steinberg, Marcy Rosen, and Jonathan Biss play Beethoven. Celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday as three chamber music luminaries play a program of early masterworks: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 5 No. 2, Violin Sonata in A, Op. 30, No. 1, and Piano Trio in G, Op. 1, No. 2. View here. LIVE