CRITIC ROBERT COMMANDAY DIES AT 93

FAMILIAR AT THE Carmel Bach Festival for decades, Bob and wife Mary, a former festival cellist, attended the 2014 Bach Fest. His successor at the SF Chronicle, Joshua Kosman, remembers Commanday’s career. Click HERE

NEW DAVID CHESKY CD

SET FOR RELEASE on September 18, “Joy & Sorrow” is David Chesky’s newest classical release. Chesky is a prolific composer, performer and jazz artist whose label Chesky Records, founded in 1988, has dozens of high-definition CDs and includes such eminent artists as McCoy Tyner, Herbie Mann, Paco D’Rivera and John Pizzarelli. “Joy & Sorrow” is what program annotator Allan Kozinn describes as “urban classical;” think driving rhythms and Manhattan. The centerpiece of “Joy & Sorrow” is Chesky’s Third Violin Concerto, “Klezmer,” featuring soloist Artur Kaganovskiy, along with several others of his works, some for the first time on CD, played by New York’s Chelsea Symphony conducted by the young Yaniv Segal, a talented Michigan University grad and assistant conductor with the Naples Philharmonic in Florida. The program also includes the klezmer-inspired Dora’s Dance, Betty’s March, and The Fiddle Maker with clarinetist Moran Katz. The ‘sorrow’ pieces are the deeply-intoned, memorial Wiener Psalm with bass Ethan Herschenfeld and the gloomy Arbeit Macht Frei with Kristina Reiko Cooper, solo cello. Only thing missing is the dates of these fairly recent compositions. With its high degree of craftsmanship, intensity of expression and excellent performances, this is a CD to enjoy again and again.

BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR

EMMA LAZARUS, author of the inspired definition of American character that adorns the Statue of Liberty, is under attack from anti-immigration politicians for the line, “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,” in her visionary poem The New Colossus. Her words, and music from the American Songbook, will be celebrated Friday at La Mirada in Monterey. See our CALENDAR

MONTEREY SYMPHONY 70th SEASON

MUSIC DIRECTOR Max Bragado Darman’s guests include Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Vadym Kholodenko, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and the Cabrillo College Choir, pianist Orion Weiss (in an all-American program) and guest conductor Farkhad Khudyev, who is composing a special anniversary work, The Sounds of Eternity, to be premiered on his program. The season begins in mid-October. Click HERE

PERFORMING ARTS PEOPLE

MIRIAM ELLIS, retired UC Santa Cruz humanities lecturer, is annoyed by Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, and she’s doing something about it. Click HERE

FRESH REVIEW

WEST SIDE STORY from last Sunday’s performance in Monterey. Click HERE

Scott MacClelland, editor