How It Started It was never meant to be as monumental as a colleague celebrating his 60th birthday playing multiple games on the St Andrews Links courses, but I did expect my first-ever attendance at a classical music festival to be somewhat a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Going
I was delighted to discover, in Oscar Wilde's Impressions of America, the following description: "San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artistic town I have ever come across. The people—strange, melancholy Orientals, whom many people would call
We have read the book as part of our general reading curriculum, and have probably seen the TV series and the movie, so do we need to see a play adapted from Jane Austen’s celebrated novel Pride and Prejudice? And why the Gate Theatre, one of Dublin’s cornerstone
As a student of marketing, I am fascinated by how product pricing influences consumer behaviour, and my love of music led me to a search on iTunes over the weekend which prompted me to make a few interesting observations. I was considering downloading five albums: * New and Kisses On the
For those of you old enough to be around before personal computers became a permanent fixture in everyday life, spam had a different meaning. In 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation introduced a meat product called “Spam”, which is still available today. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin of
June 9th, 2013 Venetian Theatre, Macao Richard Wagner Overture to Tannhäuser Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 Allegro non troppo Adagio non troppo Allegretto grazioso Allegro con spirito The Philadelphia Orchestra Conductor: Donald Runnicles A casino is an unlikely venue for an orchestral performance, and it’
When James Rhodes holds court in a soiree billed as “An Unconventional Recital” at the China Club in the Old Bank of China Building in Hong Kong, we are entitled to expect some fun. And we were not disappointed last night. As we seated ourselves in the dining hall cleared
It’s been a busy couple of months for concert-going. I was fortunate enough to visit six different concert halls in five cities to sample performances by some of the world’s finest musicians. During a stop in London on April 24th, I saw Leif Segerstam conduct the Philharmonia
The programme billed him as "The Legend". Russian conductor Gennadi Rozhdesvensky - tongue-twister of a name that gave me lots of trouble as an upstart radio announcer years ago - led the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in an all-Tchaikovsky programme on Saturday March 17, 2012. Joining him in
It seems that in 2011 alone, there were several revivals of the Oscar Wilde evergreen The Importance of Being Earnest. A casual search online uncovered productions by Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theater in Manhattan, the Wingspan Theater Company in Dallas, and Rose Kingston Theatre in the UK.
Two hundred years ago today, Liszt Ferenc, better known to us as Franz Liszt, was born to Marie Anna Lager and Ádám Liszt in the Kingdom of Hungary. In the service of Prince Esterházy, his father played a number of instruments and counted Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven as personal acquaintances.
No sooner had I finished uploading my blog post about a crop of young female pop talent came the news that veteran singer Tony Bennett had broken a record: at the end of September he became the oldest singer to have a number one hit on the Billboard top albums