As more and more music making goes online — with YouTube videos, pre-recorded concerts, and live-streams — music critics are having to become more like film critics. They are having […]
Music
BOOK REVIEW
Bach to the Drawing Board
In The Way of Bach, Dan Moller makes the missteps of an academic amateur
The concept behind Dan Moller’s recently published The Way of Bach: Three Years With the Man, the Music, and the Piano, is a good one. It tells of the author’s […]
MUSIC
The Indie Playlist
Musical picks from Provincetown Independent staff and contributors
Compiled and edited by Saskia Maxwell Keller Contributors to our first-ever Indie Playlist were given minimal instructions: choose a song or music video that you love and tell us about […]
CONCERT REVIEW
The Joy of Watching A Far Cry
Pieces by young women composers steal the spotlight from Mozart
A Far Cry may be one of the most democratic ensembles out there. This Boston-based orchestra is “self-conducted,” meaning that the players, who call themselves “criers,” take turns leading the […]
LIGHTS FANTASTIC
Provincetown DJ Chris Racine Wants to Wow You
Designing light shows has been his lifelong passion
“I’ve liked playing with lights since I was a kid,” says Chris Racine, one of Provincetown’s most sought after DJs and lighting-effect designers. Racine and his collaborator, Shelley Jennings, are […]
MUSIC MATTERS
The Cape Youth Orchestra Plays On
One local ensemble persists in supporting the next generation of musicians
A dozen or so students watch, intently, as Paige Wayner, a flutist in the Cape Youth Orchestra, prepares to play Ernest Bloch’s Suite Modale in a master class for Zachary […]
THAT WAS THEN
Provincetown’s Forgotten Symphony Orchestra
How Joseph Hawthorne tried to build a Cape Tip Tanglewood
Did you know that Provincetown used to have a symphony? The Provincetown Symphony Orchestra, sometimes called the Provincetown Symphony Society, was founded in 1955 by the conductor Joseph Hawthorne. The […]
NATIVE TALENT
Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor Won’t Let Covid Slow Him Down
A Renaissance man from Mashpee and the Bronx
“I grew up in both the Bronx and Mashpee,” says Morgan James Peters, also known as Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor, in his recording studio, Polyphonic Studios, in Buzzards Bay. “My mom’s […]
SIGHT AND SOUND
Classical Crossover: Hawthorne, Dickinson, and Music
Portraits of cellists offer insights on Provincetown arts
The viewer is immediately drawn to the eyes. This is true of many paintings by Provincetown art colony founder Charles Webster Hawthorne. They are dark brown and serious. The glint […]
PERFORMANCES
Genie Morrow Sings of the Past and of Renewal
Her Payomet concert with Sputnik the Band features songs about James Dean
Sitting at the top of a set of weathered wooden stairs overlooking the ocean, Genie Morrow seems to belong in Wellfleet’s wild, windswept landscape. “I believe we can access creativity […]
CONCERT REVIEW
Renowned Baroque Cellist Performs in Cotuit
Phoebe Carrai provides a thrilling return to live music and Bach
“This is the first indoor [musical] event that anyone on the Cape can experience since February,” said David Kuehn, executive director of Cotuit Center for the Arts, introducing a solo […]
CONCERT REVIEW
Now Streaming: Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra
You can hear a pin drop during its performance of Barber’s Adagio for Strings
Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is a warhorse — a piece of classical music that is played so repeatedly, it ought to get old. But it doesn’t. Partly because of […]
GOING LIVE
From a Distance, Trying to Connect
Outer Cape performers reflect on a muted summer and chilly times to come
The summer came and went. And against all odds, we had live music, cabaret, and drag. Performers and venues acclimated to an entirely new way of performing — outdoors and […]
LIVE MUSIC
Thea Hopkins Creates Her Own Americana
Her stark lyrics draw on imagist poetry
This Friday, singer-songwriter Thea Hopkins will be performing on the Payomet Performing Arts Center’s Drive-in stage, offering the rare pleasure, these days, of experiencing a live musician in concert on […]
OPERA
Goethe’s Tortured Hero, Set to Massenet’s Music
Werther was originally rejected by the Paris Opera as too ‘gloomy’
Jules Massenet’s music has never moved me. It’s too thickly orchestrated, and his choice of dramas too extreme. Werther, easily Massenet’s best opera, filled with romantic melodies and dissonant outbursts, bears the […]
