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Hits of DOC NYC on Streaming & VOD

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 28 May 2014 16:17; Written by Nora Lee Mandel

A World Not Ours

The extended impact of the fourth annual DOC NYC, held November 14 – 21, is being felt as features are succeeding to wider distribution, in theaters, on PBS, and on such video-on-demand platforms Netflix and iTunes. Here’s recommendations of two memorable international documentaries to catch that are now thoughtfully bringing international issues to more American eyes:

A World Not Ours

Director Mahdi Fleifel is haunted by David Ben Gurion’s claim, as Israel’s first prime minister, about displaced Palestinians (to quote him more accurately than the film does): “They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time." As the third generation who has not forgotten, and marked the 60 years since the Nakba – The Disaster – of 1948 by picking up cameras, he intimately and frankly documents over time the lives of his family and friends in Ein el-Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. For all the media attention on the Palestinians on the West Bank, particularly in films such as seen in the Other Israel Film Festival, this is a significant portrait of the frustrations and isolation in this limbo where they have no political or economic rights.

Delving insightfully into the gaps between memory and reality, he explores his childhood impressions of summer play visiting his grandfather, who has lived there since the expulsion from his home at age 16. By the time youthful soccer games gave way to 2006 World Cup enthusiasm, the square kilometer that the United Nations Relief Agency organized in the same pattern as their original villages, had gotten further subdivided by growing families to teem with over 70,000 people. Now the octogenarian patriarch can’t stand the encroaching noise and crashing balls.

Fleifel is both a sympathetic insider and a clear-eyed outsider, whose identity card expired when he was four, but eventually gets him past checkpoints for annual visits. His father got a job in the Emirates in 1985 and elsewhere as a salesman while for many years filming home movies of their wide travels until they were able to settle in Denmark in 1988 – a place unknown to everyone in the camp. Ironically, his Danish high school class visited Israel so that he is the only family member who witnessed that their original farm in Saffouriehlooks like an archeological ruin.

Selections of archival footage and his narration provide useful context of political events outside the camp, from 1948 through the hopes of peace negotiations, and the fallout in the 1990’s from the Lebanese civil war that took the life of one uncle, hailed as a hero, and shattered the mental health of another left raising pigeons. But the unique heart of the film focuses on the impact of the larger politics on his best friend. Adopting the name Abu Iyad during his intelligence work for Arafat’s Fatah, he is dependent on their reduced subsistence allowance after the clashes with Hamas, fed up with the Palestinian Authority’s corruption, and desperate enough for an opportunity to a better life that even illegal status in economically depressed Greece looks good. Winner of DOC NYC’s Viewpoints Grand Jury Prize, this revealing documentary is getting a theatrical release before premiering on PBS’s P.O.V. series August 18, 2014.

God Loves Uganda

Director Roger Ross Williams reveals the context behind the rising tide of extreme homophobic legislation and homosexual persecution that has roused global condemnation, and taken a terrible, even fatal, toll on individuals in Uganda, as seen in interviews with gay activists here, and in Call Me Kuchu released last year. Resentful mainstream Christian ministers in the U.S. and Africa who have been actively ostracized by the ascendant evangelicals are the narrative guides. But what makes this documentary so eye-opening are the sweet smiles and fervent dedication of the wholesome, earnest Midwestern missionaries who are intimately followed as they are recruited, trained, and sent forth to enthusiastically proselytize from the International House of Prayer, a megachurch in Kansas City, Missouri.

They are inspired by centuries of colonial clichés about the dark continent of pagan souls ripe for the solace of Jesus effectively updated to American culture war priorities for an extensive fundraising operation. (Even more controversially, in Mission Congo, an hour-long film in the festival, directors Lara Zizic and David Turner investigated another religious charity, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing, for fraudulent misrepresentation of assistance in Congo.) While the participants here talk extensively about their heartfelt motivations, including how these years of commitment help them overcome what they see as their own failings, it is positively atavistic to see smiling young white folks today still providing only English hymns to African kids in grass shacks with no education, electricity, or modern health care, let alone catastrophic to see the damage from the far more blatant rabble-rousing against gays. PBS’s Independent Lens began showing the documentary in May, and it is now available on iTunes and Netflix.

American Ballet Theater Opens New Season on a Strong Note

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 27 May 2014 22:01; Written by Jack Angstreich

The new American Ballet Theater season at Lincoln Center began, after an opening night gala performance, with a run of Don Quixote, choreographed by Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky, here presented in the 1995 production staged by Kevin McKenzie and Susan Jones. The modern Don Quixote is said by some to be a Soviet bastardization of the classical original and is often derided by cognoscenti; indeed, it does come across as pure fluff, albeit of a highly entertaining kind. The slender and improbable comic narrative is a mere armature upon which the effervescent dances have been embroidered for purposes of maximum display. The Ludwig Minkus score, a tuneful pastiche of Spanish-inflected melodies, has been undervalued — while not on a par with the great Romantic ballet music by Edouard Lalo, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexandr Glazunov, and others, it nonetheless possesses great charm. The scenery and costumes by the talented and ubiquitous Santo Loquasto here are serviceable, if generic.

The final performance, on the evening of Monday, May 19th, featured the fine Cuban ballerina Xiomara Reyes, who was unusually dazzling in the lead role of Kitri, if not quite the match of the scintillating Natalya Osipova or Veronika Part. ( Natalya Osipova did not perform in Don Quixote, this season but Part played the part in the previous week. Xiomara Reyes, although on the whole outshone here, is incidentally a superb and touching Giselle.) In terms of sheer athleticism, the beefcake star, Ivan Vasiliev, is without peer and, for that reason alone, is always an exciting and popular Basilio even if he does not offer the elegant precision of an Alban Lendorf, who performed the role here in the previous week, also partnering Xiomara Reyes. The leads are assisted by an outstanding supporting cast: Misty Copeland as Mercedes and as the Queen of the Dryads, Jared Matthews as Espada, Devon Teuscher and Melanie Hamrick as the Flower Girls, Isadora Loyola and Zhiyao Zhang as the Gypsy Couple, and Yuriko Kajiya as Amour — all splendid! A further grace note of this performance was the corps de ballet which was, gratifyingly, in nearly top form while Ivan Vasiliev and Xiomara Reyes received a deservedly rapturous ovation for their astonishing pyrotechnics in the last act.

As an interlude amongst the full-length story ballets that constitute the main fare at American Ballet Theater, the “Classic Spectacular” program exhibits some other jewels in the company’s repertoire. With the opening work in the program, George Balanchine’s masterpiece, Theme and Variations, an exquisite, abstract exercise in apparent nostalgia for Imperial Russia, originally created for ABT in 1947 and set to music from Tchaikovsky’s orchestral Suite No. 4, we move from what may be mere entertainment to aesthetic enchantment. At the matinee performance, the thrilling leads were the pretty Sarah Lane along with Daniil Simkin, one of the strongest male dancers in the company; the evening performance of the same day featured Isabella Boylston and and New York City Ballet principal, Andrew Veyette, who, although very good, didn’t quite attain Danil Simkin's perfection. The costumes by Zack Brown are marvelous.

George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant, set to music by Igor Stravinksy, is a high-point of the choreographer’s more intimate, modernist works and is a staple at City Ballet where it has notably been recently performed by Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck amongst others. Paloma Herrera and James Whiteside were solid at the matinee performance but both were surpassed in the evening program by Eric Tamm and, above all, Misty Copeland, who was the most impressive of all the principals.

Leonide Massine’s rarely seen and unjustly neglected Gaîté Parisienne, set to music by Jacques Offenbach, provided a fabulous conclusion to these performances. Veronika Part and Jared Matthews afforded much pleasure as the leads in the matinee; their counterparts in the evening were the brilliant Hee Seo partnered by Marcelo Gomes. The costumes by Christian Lacroix are appropriately vividly colorful, if not beautiful.

American Ballet Theater

Metropolitan Opera House

Lincoln Center

212 362 6000

May 12 - July 5, 2014

www.abt.org

May '14 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 27 May 2014 21:05; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Bridges of Madison County

(Warners)

This major miscalculation by director-star Clint Eastwood—whose turgid 135-minute adaptation (from 1995) of the popular Robert James Waller romance novel never escapes its sappy origins—has an opening sequence that may be the worst-acted and tone-deaf bit of one of his pre-Gran Torino movies.

Too bad Eastwood and Meryl Streep’s real rapport can’t overcome the sentimental melodramatics. The Blu-ray image looks decent; extras are an audio commentary, making-of featurette and music video.

Chaplin

(EuroArts)

A ballet about Charlie Chaplin’s life and films sounds promising, but Mario Schroder’s choreographically lazy vision—which contrasts Chaplin’s own music with Wagner, Schnittke, Brahms, Britten and Barber—traps the Little Tramp (a glorious Tyler Galster) by boxing in his signature movements with too much stage busyness.

Some wonderful moments make clear how balletic Chaplin’s physical comedy was, but after awhile the repetition becomes numbing. The Blu-ray image and sound is stellar.

Dan Curtis’ Dracula

(MPI)

Jack Palance takes on the Transylvanian count with a taste for blood and nubile young women in Dan Curtis’ straightforward, mostly uncampy take on Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel, which has a no-nonsense script by the great Richard Matheson.

Palance gives a controlled performance in a role usually hammed up to the nth degree in this skillfully old-fashioned entertainment. On Blu-ray, the movie looks good; extras include outtakes and interviews with Palance and Curtis.

Endless Love

(Universal)

Following Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 bomb with Brooke Shields—also based on Scott Spencer’s novel—director-co-writer Shana Feste’s romance doesn’t try to be anything other than a watchable soap opera about a very attractive couple.

If the plot and the characters never stray from what’s expected out of this type of movie, the ultra-beautiful leads Gabriella Wilde and Alex Pettyfer (surprisingly, both are British) share a chemistry that goes a long way toward selling this even to those who might resist. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras are making-of featurette, extended ending, deleted scenes.

Gang War in Milan

(Raro)

In Umberto Lenzi’s fast-paced 1973 thriller, local pimp Toto stands up to the newest crime lord set on lording it all over his small-time operations in Milan, a city that’s as much a character as the men and their (usually naked) women.

The non-stop action—chases, showdowns and shootouts—keeps coming for 100 minutes, as Toto decides not to go down without a fight. The film’s grain is retained on Blu-ray to great effect; lone extra is an intro by Mike Malloy.

Journey to the West

(Magnet)

Director Robert Chow shows off his talent for incredible action sequences and pacing in this caffeinated adventure about a demon hunter and his ultimate prize: Sun Wukong, the demon of all demons.

Although the story is cartoonish in the extreme, Chow keeps things animated in both senses with game performers, an astonishing eye for detail and computer effects work. The fantastic images look terrific on Blu-ray; extras comprise several making-of featurettes.

Stranger by the Lake

(Strand Releasing)

Despite obvious visual allure, this sun-dappled story about a killer among the clientele at a secluded beach where gay men pick up one another for anonymous sex meanders for nearly two hours; Alain Guiraudie’s crude direction and heavyhanded script and the indifferent acting make the hardcore segments seem like desperate attempts to deflect attention from the rest of the film’s innocuousness.

The Blu-ray image looks a little overexposed, but that may be Guiraudie’s intent; extras include a Guiraudie interview, two Guiraudie shorts, an alternate ending and deleted scenes.

DVDs of the Week
The First World War—The Complete Series

(e one)

This ten-part series is a comprehensive look at the Great War, which made Europe a bloody battlefield for four years. By using much archival footage and the actual words from many of its participants gives greater, more personal meaning to many of the events, from the assassination in Sarajevo that sparked the conflict to the armistice that ended it.

If you count yourself a true history buff—as I do—then you should watch every minute of its ten hours.

God Loves Uganda

(First Run)

American evangelicals not only make life miserable for Americans, but now that they outsource themselves to the rest of the world—Uganda has become an anti-gay battlefield—other countries are facing their own deadly infection, as Roger Ross Williams’ enraging documentary shows.

Williams smartly allows both sides their say with no editorializing, so when a gay Ugandan activist ends up killed, no amount of commentary is needed to point out who the spiritual culprits are. Extras comprise deleted scenes and short films.

The Great Flood

(Icarus)

A follow-up to his masterly The Miners’ Hymns, director Bill Morrison brilliantly marries archival footage he uncovered to a contemporary score by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. Morrison’s ingenious editing and Frisell’s music provide stark beauty amid the misery of flooding that inundated the Mississippi delta in 1927.

Although there are dead moments—a Sears Roebuck catalog segment seems an attempt to pad the running time—Morrison illustrates a necessary reminder of man’s relationship to nature’s ravages.

Hitler and the Nazis

(Cinedigm)

This five-part, 4-1/2 hour documentary series—which recounts the horrible and lethal efficiency of Hitler and his henchmen, who caused the deaths of untold millions in European battlefields, concentration camps and ghettos—begins with Hitler’s inauspicious beginnings in rural Austria to his clever political wrangling that led him to become the infamous face of worldwide evil.

Narrated by Chris Andrews, Karl T. Hirsch’s series offers vintage footage and photographs, as well as eyewitness testimony from everyone from filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to Jesse Owens’s widow and sister to vividly tell the story of the man and his horrific legacy.

The Jewish Cardinal

(Film Movement)

In the “truth is stranger than fiction” department comes this story about a French-Jewish convert to Christianity who, after becoming a Cardinal, finds himself as Pope John Paul II’s right hand man in touchy Church matters relating to the Holocaust. Director Ilan Duran Cohen’s measured tone seems right for a film in which much of the drama is inside a title character (the powerful Laurent Lucas) still anguished about his decades-old conversion.

Cohen also accomplishes the feat of having actor Aurélien Recoing play John Paul with humor and even irreverence without it seeming sacrilegious. The lone extra is an amusing short, Kosher.

Pretty Peaches 2/Pretty Peaches 3

Deep Tango/Young Secretaries

(Vinegar Syndrome)

This quartet comes from porn’s “golden age” (‘70s & ‘80s), when X-rated movies had plots punctuated by—occasionally relevant—sex scenes. Peaches 2 (1987) has curvaceous superstar Tracey Adams, while Peaches 3 (1989) stars the always energetic Keisha.

The mid-‘70s flicks are pretentious (Deep apes Last Tango in Paris down to an opening scream echoing Marlon Brando’s from that film) and frivolous (Secretaries is as original as its title). Vinegar Syndrome keeps churning out vintage porn, an eye-opener to those who only know today’s “gonzo” style that the internet has made ubiquitous.

Weekend of a Champion

(MPI)

In 1971, Roman Polanski followed his pal race car driver Jackie Stewart for three days while he prepared for the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, and we get to see the famous athlete and the famous director in Stewart’s world, both on and off the race track.

Directed by Frank Simon, the film fascinatingly shows the two men together four decades ago and, at the end, today: an older and wiser Polanski and Stewart sit down to reminisce about the earlier footage, which comes off as a DVD bonus that’s become part of the film.

May '14 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 20 May 2014 23:42; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Big Red One

The Women

(Warners)

Samuel Fuller’s uneven but stark 1980 World War II drama, The Big Red One, gets its Blu-ray debut, sort of: the familiar 113-minute release cut is in (substandard) hi-def, while the reconstructed—and far more engrossing—162-minute director’s cut is only in standard def.

Based on Clare Booth Luce’s amusing play, George Cukor’s 1939 The Women has an exemplary starry cast—Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine, for starters—which provides masterly comic timing throughout, and it looks fine on Blu. One extras comprise a Richard Schickel reconstructed version commentary, Fuller documentary, featurettes and alternate scenes;Women extras include documentaries, a cartoon and an alternate sequence.

The Color of Lies

(Cohen Media)

Claude Chabrol’s low-key, creepily effective 1999 Hitchcockian mystery—about a painter, accused of killing one of his young students, who might be cuckolded by his loving wife—works precisely because Chabrol gives substantial weight to the characters and their relationships, not just to solving the murders (the wife’s possible lover later turns up dead).

This shrewd thriller features sympathetic performances by Jacques Gamblin and Sandrine Bonnaire and tasty, well-used chamber music by Chabrol’s son Mathieu. The Blu-ray image is enticingly grainy; the lone extra is an audio commentary.

Countess Dracula

(Synapse)

One of the most listless Hammer horror flicks is Peter Sasdy’s 1971 snoozer, in which an elderly countess (Hungarian actress Ingrid Pitt) drinks the blood of virgins to keep her youth—but what happens when the supply of young women dries up? What could have been a wicked and sexy parody is instead played pretty much straight, dulling the effect.

Only the final scenes are campy fun; there’s also the lovely Lesley-Anne Down as the old lady’s nubile daughter. The hi-def transfer is attractive enough; extras include a Pitt audio interview and a Pitt career featurette.

Dio—Live in London

(Eagle Rock)

Ronnie James Dio was the leather-lunged singer beloved by metal fans for his solo work and stints in Rainbow and post-Ozzy Black Sabbath, and this 1993 London concert shows off his top vocal form as his crack band romps through 19 tunes in a fast-paced 90 minutes.

Pretty much everything Dio fans want is here: “Holy Diver,” “The Last in Line,” “Rainbow in the Dark,” Rainbow’s “Man on the Silver Mountain” and Sabbath’s “Heaven and Hell and “Mob Rules.” The Blu-ray image is basically a standard-def video, but the sound is appropriately pummeling. The lone extra is a backstage featurette.

Like Someone in Love

(Criterion)

Following his Italy-set Certified Copy,Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami travels to Japan for this enigmatic drama about a student call girl, her mechanic boyfriend and her elderly client. When the boyfriend thinks the old man slept with her, he takes his revenge—or does he?

The not quite ambiguous final shot sums up the entire film: its supposed vagueness nods to a greater dramatic weight than this minor film by a major director has. The hi-def transfer is immaculate; the lone extra is a 45-minute on-set featurette.

Nikita—The Complete Final Season

(Warners)

The fourth and last season of Nikita, in which the world’s leggiest rogue assassin finds herself on the run after being framed for the assassination of the president at the end of season three, seems truncated, considering it’s only six episodes long: but it might also be the primary reason why the nonsensical plot twists are kept to a minimum.

But real fans shouldn’t complain either way, since Maggie Q continues to look absolutely fabulous in her form-fitting killing outfits. The Blu-ray image looks impeccable; too bad there are no extras to help wrap up the series.

Pompeii 3D

(Sony)

When Titanic and Gladiator inserted silly romance and stilted melodrama onto their elaborate historical frameworks, they were awarded Best Picture Oscars; Paul W.S. Anderson does the same with his trashily entertaining drama about the Vesuvius eruption of A.D. 79, which buried an entire Roman city under ash for two millennia, but I doubt he’ll be winning any Academy Award hardware for his efforts.

This CGI-filled spectacle doesn’t overshadow actors like Keifer Sutherland, Emily Browning and Carrie-Anne Moss, who help its 100 minutes pass by painlessly, while the final shots cleverly merge fiction and history. On Blu-ray, the film looks smashing in 3D and 2D; extras include an Anderson commentary, deleted scenes and several featurettes and interviews.

DVDs of the Week

Back in Crime

(Kino Lorber)

If you can ignore the genre’s usual improbabilities, this time-traveling French policier is quietly riveting, mainly for the offbeat chemistry between haggard detective Jean-Hugues Anglade and psychiatrist Melanie Thierry, a beauty who may well be Michelle Pfeiffer’s Gallic daughter.

If director Germinal Alvarez can’t quite grasp the fantastical aspects of the plot (the script is by Alvarez and Nathalie Saugeon), he at least concentrates on the personal side of things, which is more compelling than the serial killer case anyhow.

The Biggest Bundle of Them All

Pennies from Heaven

Summer of ’42

(Warner Archive)

Despite Mediterranean locales and a cast including Vittorio de Sica, Victor Spinetti, Robert Wagner and the ever-beauteous Raquel Welch, 1967’s Biggest Bundle is a pale imitation of the jet-setting action-adventures it wants to parody. Herbert Ross’s 1981 Pennies from Heaven is not the equal of Dennis Potter’s original TV mini-series with Bob Hoskins, but it has undeniable charm and pathos thanks to Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and the always underrated Jessica Harper.

Then there’s Summer of ’42, Robert Mulligan’s affecting 1971 exercise in nostalgia, which features Jennifer O’Neill as the most alluring yet innocent-looking beauty in movie history. Pennies includes a 2001 reunion of cast and crew and reviewer Peter Rainer’s commentary.

Brownian Movement

(First Run)

The premise—a female doctor has sex with patients in an apartment she keeps separately from her husband and young son—makes it sound like this is a soft-core Cinemax special: would that it was!

Instead, Nanouk Leopold—who takes his heroine at face value—has a clinical directorial style that turns what could have been a 95-minute jaunt into a slow crawl. On the plus side, actress Sandra Huller’s fiercely committed performance makes this contradictory woman empathetic if not exactly believable.

The Chambermaids/Honey Buns

(Impulse)

Jungle Blue

(Vinegar Syndrome)

Porn’s “golden age” of the 1970s—so-called because supposedly talented artists made good films that just happen to include wall-to-wall explicit sex—includes this trio of basically plotless flicks with hardcore sex scenes that are anything but “good.”

There’s 1974’s The Chambermaids, most notable for starring Andrea True, who later had a big hit single, “More More More”; 1973’s Honey Buns, which is completely innocuous; and 1978’s Jungle Blue, which intercuts its hardcore inserts with a nonsensical ape plot.

Generation War

(Music Box)

This utterly absorbing 4-1/2 hour epic (made for German TV) examines how disastrous Nazi leadership annihilated the German people, literally and figuratively: of the five friends and siblings we meet at the beginning of the war and follow until its ignominious end, only three survive, each in various stages of emotional and physical duress.

Director Philipp Kadelbach and writer Stefan Kolditz explore Germany both on a huge canvas and in microcosm; if there are unavoidable touches of melodrama, this is still an unforgettable three-part war film. The lone extra is a 20-minute director and writer “master class.”

The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story

(Eagle Rock)

The strange story of Syd Barrett—songwriter-performer extraordinaire who founded Pink Floyd and whose mental illness forced him out of the band after its debut album—is recounted in this hour-long 2001 documentary by friends and fellow Floyd mates David Gilmour (who replaced Barrett), Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, who quite touchingly discuss his genius and sad demise (he died in 2006).

The first disc also includes the full Waters interview; a bonus disc comprises the full Gilmour, Mason and Wright interviews—did Waters demand to be separated from his former band mates?

Raze

(IFC Midnight)

Though not the female Fight Club, director Josh C. Waller’s single-minded movie about a group of kidnapped women forced to beat the crap out of one another to ensure that beloved family members are not killed doesn’t have the most original premise.

Too bad the mind-numbing repetition of bloody revenge—not to mention a tease of a not quite happy ending—desensitizes the viewer after awhile. Extras include commentary, cast/crew interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes with commentary, gag reel and short.

CDs of the Week

Alfredo Casella—Complete Music for Cello and Piano

(Brilliant Classics)

Mieczyslaw Weinberg—Chamber Music (CPO)

Passionate Diversions—A Celebration of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (Azica)

Three chamber music discs by a strong composing trio begins with Italian Alfredo Casella, whose career spanned the the first half of the 20^th century; his music for cello and piano—beautifully played by cellist Andrea Favalessa and pianist Maria Semeraro—is irresistibly romantic.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish-born Russian who died in 1996, wrote music in many genres that’s only finding deserved audiences on disc and in performance (his opera The Passenger will be heard in New York this summer); this disc of his characteristically and wrenchingly emotional music, like his Trio and Sonatina for Violin and Piano, is performed brilliantly by pianist Elisaveta Blumina and violinists Kolja Blacher and Erez Ofer, among others.

Finally, there’s Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, today’s preeminent American composer, whose music has a strong reliance on melody as a modernist bent works its way insinuatingly into all of her compositions. The three formidable works on this disc are written for and dedicated to the superb Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which plays with its typical assertiveness, especially on 1987’s sprightly Trio, 2008’s trenchant Septet and a Quintet based on Schubert’s classic Trout Quintet.

Reviews

Hits of DOC NYC on Streaming & VOD

American Ballet Theater Opens New Season on a Strong Note

May '14 Digital Week IV

May '14 Digital Week III

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