Bangor got a taste of the eclectic musical mix the National Folk Festival’s expected to bring to town next month as the South American band Inca Son warmed up a riverfront audience Thursday night for folk icon Arlo Guthrie. More than 2,500 people filled the… Read More
BANGOR – The mark of a great concert is if you enter knowing little to nothing about the group performing and then leave wanting to head to the nearest music store to buy a CD or two and relive the experience over and over again. Read More
Don’t be fooled, rock concerts are actually about two things: selling bottles of water and outrageously long lines at women’s restrooms. Too bad, too, because Tuesday night’s Incubus concert at the Cumberland County Civic Center belonged mostly to the lady fans. The Honda-sponsored tour is as close to… Read More
ORONO – Through some freak of PR nature, I ended up with two extra tickets to Tuesday’s Natalie Merchant show, so I started calling my friends. Strangely, each of them had an excuse: Too late. Too busy. Too tired. Too bad. googletag.cmd.push(function () { //… Read More
Looking relaxed and impossibly young for his 53 years, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne served up generous and rich helpings from his 30-year recording career Monday night at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. Browne, on the second night of a 22-date tour, was in… Read More
Conductor Uri Barnea got lucky when he was slotted to direct the final concert of the season for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and faced a program of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3. What true-hearted musician wouldn’t want the challenge of lifting a baton… Read More
As the only community radio station in central Maine, WERU-FM finds itself trying to hold out against a deluge of commercial stations. So it’s only natural that the headliner for WERU’s 14th birthday party was Midnight Oil, the activist Aussie band that’s long been a… Read More
Something other than singing the blues was never really in the cards for Shemekia Copeland. She had a vague sense that she might like to go to school, be a psychiatrist, branch out into a profession unmarked by music. But being the daughter of the late bluesman Johnny… Read More
You gotta love Irish music when you hear legendary balladeer Tommy Makem and his three sons – Shane, Conor and Rory – play for three hours at a venue as cavernous as the Maine Center for the Arts, in Orono, where the family foursome performed Saturday. In fact,… Read More
If you could read his mind, what a tale his thoughts could tell. In almost 40 years of performing, Gordon Lightfoot has sung of heartache and romance, tradition and change, all in his inimitably resonant voice. The 63-year-old singer-songwriter shared the highlights of his works… Read More
Somewhere in the first few minutes of hearing Leon Williams sing, you have a sense that time stops and the earth stands still. His baritone reaches out like a mighty invitation requesting your company for the evening. As if that weren’t powerful enough, Williams’ first song at an… Read More
ORONO – Meredith Crawford will tell you how much she likes Debussy, Tchaikovsky, De Berriot Mendelssohn – “anything that makes you go ‘ah, that is so pretty.'” The 15-year-old violinist delivered just that to nearly 4,000 youngsters Monday as soloist for three Bangor Symphony Orchestra… Read More
Paul Phillips tells a story about being a young jazz student and hearing Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” for the first time. The crashing rhythms, the intensity, the rage, excitement and frank warmth of the piece changed Phillips on the spot into a classical musician. Fortunately for the Bangor Symphony… Read More
Who says there’s nothing for families to do together anymore? It was a real family affair Thursday night as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters all gathered at the Bangor Auditorium for a little ’70s hard rock, as Blue Oyster Cult came to town. And… Read More
The Turtle Island String Quartet, which performed Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, is the crossover group of all crossover groups. When this eclectic foursome was founded in 1986, the classically trained players not only swung between classical and jazz forms,… Read More
Music lovers found out the easy way Friday night that you can wait for spring – or you can bring in Buckwheat Zydeco and the Ils Sont Partis Band and let them melt the snow in a sizable chunk of Penobscot County. All the way… Read More
A few weeks ago when the Pamela Frank and Alexander Simionescu Duo were forced to cancel a classical music concert because of an arm injury Frank suffered, programmers at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono had some quick work to do. The job… Read More
ORONO – The third classical concert of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra season was thrown a few curve balls. First, the score for Antonio Rosetti’s Horn Concerto in F Major that was ordered from Germany last summer showed up three weeks ago. Except it was Rosetti’s Horn Concerto for… Read More
We know all too well these days what men sound like at war. We know what they sound like as politicians and leaders and moralists. What we perhaps don’t hear enough of at the moment is the sound of men’s voices lifted together in song. Read More
Ever had the blues make you happy? Monday at the Maine Center for the Arts, the “All Over Blues” tour, which combined The Muddy Waters Tribute Band with fusion bluesman Chris Thomas King, may have been the blues, but it sure felt good. After just… Read More
I have a confession to make. When I hear the words “soprano”, “solo voice” or “aria” pertaining to a forthcoming concert, I am filled with fear and loathing, a sinking trepidation moderated only a little by a morsel of anticipation. I feel this way because I love and… Read More
Even if you’ve been singing “God Bless America” at the seventh inning stretch during the World Series over the last week, you’d be hard-pressed to find any event more packed with American songs than the Bangor Symphony Orchestra concert Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts in… Read More
Lonestar showed how it’s climbing the country charts at a Wednesday night concert at the Bangor Auditorium. The Texas quartet, backed by musicians on steel guitar, bass and fiddle, enthusiastically rifled through the songs of its nine-year career, delighting the sellout crowd of 2,967 in… Read More
Peter Serkin is a soldier when it comes to Schonberg. He stands at attention. He salutes and rushes into battle with the general’s music. It’s a just battle all right, and Serkin, a pianist who may well be today’s leading interpreter of Schonberg, came up victorious Wednesday with… Read More
Some minor guitar-amp difficulties slowed down the start of Shawn Colvin’s show Tuesday at the Maine Center for the Arts. But after a few small repairs, she was up and running. For more than an hour and a half, Colvin sang, told stories and talked… Read More
The Maine Center for the Arts’ annual gala Saturday night was a time for an experience above the norm, and featured performer Mandy Patinkin certainly provided that. The festive evening began with a reception, held in a large white tent in the parking lot adjacent… Read More
Sometimes words just don’t suffice … Music just gets to the heart of it. – concert organizer Karen Eisenhower CAMDEN – That’s what Tuesday night’s concert was like at the Camden Opera House. Inside the dark theater, a spotlight picked out the lone figure of… Read More
It’s hard to disassociate a piece of music from a moment to which it is assigned. But many of our national songs have undergone a stretching process during the past two weeks of national crisis and have been transformed from hymns of pride to anthems… Read More
Most of the metal fans at Cumberland County Civic Center on Monday night came shirtless, and it’s a good thing. During the “Big Day Off” show, the state’s exhibition of select Ozzfest tourmates, even those sitting in the bleachers were drenched in sweat. googletag.cmd.push(function ()… Read More
PORTLAND – After the near-standing-room crowd of 900 fans packed into the State Theatre Friday night were given The Samples, Bruce Hornsby came out and delivered the groceries. Hornsby’s entrance onto the stage was greeted with thunderous applause as he said a polite “hello” and… Read More
BAR HARBOR – It is said that good things come to those who wait. Certainly it was so for the audience at the Criterion Theatre on Sunday evening who endured a warm, half-hour wait for the house to open. Avishai Cohen and the R. J. Miller Quintet’s performances… Read More
BAR HARBOR – It was a hot night, even by the ocean, but the Cowboy Junkies kept things cool inside the Criterion Theater. Sarah Harmer had the audience going early, with a strong, clear opener (think Ani DiFranco minus the angst) before the Junkies took… Read More
Picture me at 11 years old around 1977, my ears perking and something in my musical soul going “toinnnnnng!!!” the first time I heard Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “What’s Your Name.” This is good stuff, said I. I’ll have to look into it. googletag.cmd.push(function () { //… Read More
ORONO – At the end, the cheering crowd yelled out “Encore,” and “One more time!” As Christopher Zimmerman took his final bows Sunday, it was evident that the departing music director had led the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the combined voices of the University of… Read More
I admit it. I was late. By the time I ran up Park Street and got inside the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bangor Monday night, The Azure Ensemble had already begun to play. And so, not being able to enter in the middle of a piece, I had… Read More
ORONO – The University of Maine’s annual outdoor music festival came off feeling like the Bangor State Fair as the two-day event played out Friday and Saturday in a parking lot amid the smell of doughboys and curly fries. Bumstock’s usual grass location in the… Read More
ORONO – Alisa Weilerstein plays the cello the way Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. Alisa Weilerstein plays the cello the way Joan Sutherland sings. googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner = false; for (var i… Read More
ORONO- Despite the day being probably the finest that the Bangor area has seen this spring, and despite the lack of guest soloists or guest conductors on the program, seats were well filled for Sunday afternoon’s concert by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra at the Maine Center for the… Read More
ORONO – There was more reckoning than reveling going on when Ani DiFranco took the stage Saturday night. DiFranco, who stopped at the Maine Center for the Arts as part of her Wreckage Unravelling tour, played a low-key set that felt melancholy at times. It… Read More
ORONO – If you’re going to play Edvard Grieg for nearly 4,000 people in one day, you’ve just got to have tympani – and great strings, awesome brass and wondrous woodwinds. On Monday, Abigail Greene had them all. The tympani thundered its cue, and pianist… Read More
ORONO – In the 1960s it became fashionable to don campy 1940s vintage clothing. In the 1970s leather jackets and other paraphernalia from the 1950s came into style. It seems apparent that there is a pattern in the cycles of fashion. Perhaps there is a… Read More
ORONO – You don’t have to be Franco-American to have your heart broken when Michael Doucet sings plaintively of Le Grand Derangement, the 1755 exportation of his Acadian ancestors from what is now Nova Scotia. On Tuesday, Doucet and freres in the Cajun band Beausoleil… Read More
If you take three accomplished Broadway performers, combine with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, add an attentive Maine Center for the Arts audience and about two hours of some of the finest music from American musical theater and mix thoroughly, what you get is a sort of dessert for… Read More
ORONO – Recent scientific studies have pointed to a relationship, often suspected, between the study of music and the ability to excel in mathematics. The converse, that mathematical ability will lead to musicianship, is not as simple a proposition since the ability to excel in musical performance relies… Read More
ORONO — Buddy Guy was worried that the crowd at the Maine Center for the Arts would think he was responsible for the arctic blasts outside the University of Maine facility. “I hope you don’t think that I brought these winds with me,” said the… Read More
ORONO — Theater is the grown-up version of the children’s game of make-believe. All the different forms of theater, from Japanese Kabuki and Noh, to the Medieval Passion Play, to Modern Minimalist Theater, depend on one thing to succeed: the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of… Read More
ORONO – Eileen Ivers didn’t just have the luck of the Irish going for her Saturday night at the Maine Center for the Arts. She also had the luck of the African, South African, Caribbean, Scottish, Cuban and Latin American forces that influence her music. Read More
BANGOR – This past Saturday evening, The Bangor Symphony Orchestra dropped its formal attire and added a few promising young musicians, entertaining a packed house at the Peakes Auditorium at Bangor High School. This concert, the first of two Casual Concerts to celebrate the opening of the Maine… Read More
BLUE HILL – The Brentano String Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, believed by many to be the subject of Beethoven’s letter to his “Immortal Beloved.” This letter symbolizes deeply felt passion that was eventually kept hidden. While the quartet certainly feels the passion, fortunately, they do not… Read More
ORONO – A concert originally scheduled for October is canceled by the arrival of a blizzard. When the concert is finally rescheduled, a worse blizzard occurs, but the concert goes on. This scenario was played out Saturday afternoon at the Maine Center for the Arts, as hundreds of… Read More