Gardner Museum

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Lighting history

The Gardner Museum takes a chance on the new
On January 1, 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner invited 300 guests to a private concert by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the opening of her new museum on the Fenway. After performances of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, the mirrored doors of the first-floor concert room rolled open to reveal an extraordinary vision.
By GREG COOK | February 03, 2010

Works in progress

Photography after Facebook at the PRC, 'Boston Does Boston III' at Proof, and Taro Shinoda at Gardner
Back in October, Minnesota photographer Alec Soth spoke at MassArt. "Facebook: 15 billion uploaded photos," he said. "At its busiest, 550,000 images each second being uploaded. So I've been struggling with that. How do I function as a photographer in that environment?"
By GREG COOK | January 12, 2010

Best in their field

An early 2010 harvest
The jazz scene continues to struggle — along with everyone else — through hard times.
By JON GARELICK | December 30, 2009

2009: The year in Classical

Beating the quease
This was a queasy year for classical music.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 04, 2010

Blessings: mixed and otherwise

Boston Baroque’s Amadigi; Opera Boston’s Tancredi; the BSO’s Beethoven; the Borromeo’s Bartók; Brahms from BCMS and BSOCP
By odd coincidence, in recent weeks we’ve had performances of two important operatic rarities, landmark early works a century apart: 30-year-old Handel’s Amadigi (1715) and 20-year-old Rossini’s Tancredi (1813, his 10th opera!).
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 28, 2009

More than a feeling

Music inspires art at the MFA, Panopticon, and the Gardner
The centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts' "Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs" is Candice Breitz's 2005 Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), a wall of 30 televisions, each showing a different Madonna fan singing a cappella to her 1990 greatest-hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. They wear headphones, bob their heads, sing aloud to music we can't hear.
By GREG COOK | July 21, 2009

Fleeing factions

Letters to the Boston editor, April 3, 2009
David S. Bernstein’s piece on the resurgence of anti-government rhetoric in the last few months is a little unfair, particularly since it lumps together radical conservative Republican movements with the Libertarian strain of right-wing thought.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | April 01, 2009

Interview: Ulrich Boser

Going after the Gardner thieves
As we reach the 19th anniversary of the theft of 13 priceless art objects from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, there's been a renewed effort to identify the thieves and retrieve the Gardner treasures.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 24, 2009

East meets West

'Shôwa' at the MFA, and Mrs. Gardner's Asian tour
The paintings in "Shôwa Sophistication" at the Museum of Fine Arts are like the dreamiest travel posters you've ever seen.
By GREG COOK | March 24, 2009

Three's company

Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese rule at the MFA
The show's American curator, Frederick Ilchman, has snagged an improbable number of pairs and trios from the world's famous (and not so famous) museums.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 11, 2009

Musical acrobats

Antonio Sanchez's ambidextrous mind, and Cirkestra's big top
Having Antonio Sanchez explain the difference between "straight 8's" and "swing 8's" is a bit like having Einstein explain long division — total waste of the dude's time.
By JON GARELICK | February 09, 2009

Ring in the new

Haydn trios, Kirchner's 90th-birthday concert, Cantata Singers' Britten, Teatro Lirico's Aida
If 2009 lives up to the grace and power of some of the concerts that began it, we can look forward to a vintage year.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 20, 2009

Year in Jazz: Playing for keeps

By JON GARELICK | December 22, 2008

Year in Classical: Celebrate!

Comings and goings
In Handel's Hercules, the demented Dejanira's loss is still so painful, I was afraid to listen; now I don't want to hear anything else.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | December 22, 2008

(Probably) high society

'After Hours' at the Gardner Museum
The warm bodies and conversational hum provide séance juice for the ghostly presence of the mansion’s namesake.
By MATT PARISH | August 05, 2008

Boston music news: July 25, 2008

Notes on the Rock for Health benefit at Lily Pad
If you’re one of the many local rockers terrified of pulling some hype splits on stage for lack of proper health care, first of all: you pussy!
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | July 22, 2008

Road trips

Luisa does Isabella in China, Gohlke does America
In the fall of 1883, Isabella Stewart Gardner — more than a decade before she would develop her museum on Boston’s Fenway — traveled to China.
By GREG COOK | July 01, 2008

Unembarrassed riches

Dutoit and Elder at the BSO, Collage’s Berio, Boston Conservatory’s Turn of the Screw, and Kurt Weill at the Gardner and the MFA
Some weeks Boston has such musical riches, one wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 21, 2008

Gardner growing pains

Her will be done
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s will is explicit: the experience she choreographed for visitors to her museum must continue in perpetuity.
By MIKE MILIARD | December 19, 2007

Hail and farewell

The Berlin Philharmonic’s Mahler, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and the BSO’s Smetana
The season’s most eagerly awaited (and, with its $187 top ticket price, most expensive) classical concert was not a disappointment.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | November 27, 2007

Touch the sky

Cliff Evans at the Gardner, Jim Lambie at the Mfa, ‘Ad|Agency’ at the PRC, and more
The term “polyptych” usually refers to the multi-panel paintings designed as altarpieces for churches and cathedrals in Gothic and Renaissance Europe.
By RANDI HOPKINS | October 30, 2007

Standards

Julius Hemphill at the Gardner, Cyrus Plays Elvis
For much of his life, no one played Thelonious Monk pieces except Thelonious Monk.
By JON GARELICK | October 23, 2007

Opening nightmare

Good playing, bad karma at the BSO gala
It wasn’t as bad as what happened at Opening Night at the Pops last May, but it was still awful.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | October 10, 2007

People get ready

‘Trainscape’ at the DeCordova, ‘Merging Influence’ at Montserrat, and more
Fourteen New England artists/artist teams hook up to produce a variety of interconnecting installations.
By RANDI HOPKINS | August 22, 2007

Stormy weather

BSO cancellations, plus the Camerata, Jonathan Biss, Emmanuel Music, and more
The BSO has been having terrible luck hanging on to its star soloists.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 28, 2007

Damned good

Levine’s Berlioz and Wuorinen, Garrick Ohlsson’s Beethoven, the Borromeo’s Shostakovich, the Alloy’s Eagle
James Levine returned from his winter break with one of the most thrilling BSO concerts of his tenure: Berlioz’s “dramatic legend,” La damnation de Faust.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 20, 2007

Another family, another island

Heidi Pitlor’s many birthdays
Heidi Pitlor’s debut novel, as the plural title suggests, is about more than just one person’s significant day.
By DANA KLETTER | August 17, 2006

Granduer and intimacy

Frühbeck de Burgos at the BSO, the Borromeos’ Schoenberg, BMOP at Club Café
One of the most delightful moments in Mozart comes at the very end of his Symphony No. 39 in E-flat, the first of his last trio of great symphonies.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 18, 2006

Beloved of God

Mozart’s 250th birthday celebrations get underway
Johannes Chrisostomas Wolfgang Gottlieb (Amadé) Mozart was born 250 years ago last Friday, January 27.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 01, 2006