Chicago’s Kontras Quartet and Malashock Dance: A Smashing Pas de Deux

Chicago’s outstanding Kontras Quartet has returned to San Diego in “High Strung” at the Lyceum Theatre, a stimulating collaboration between Art of Élan and Malashock Dance. In April, 2018, Art of Élan brought noted jazz virtuoso Branford Marsalis and the Kontras Quartet for an exciting concert at the Music Box in Little Italy, so I…

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Johannes Debus Conducts the San Diego Symphony in Compelling Dvořák Sixth Symphony

With the San Diego Symphony’s dazzling performance of Antonín Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony at Friday’s concert, Dvořák lovers in Copley Symphony Hall were no doubt left swooning. Guest conductor Johannes Debus led an exuberant yet skillfully shaped account of the composer’s one mature symphony that stubbornly remains in the shadow of his mighty Eighth Symphony and beloved Ninth—the “New World.”

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SummerFest’s Sunny Sunday Serenades

Festival programming that runs out of pleasant surprises is likely to overstay its welcome, so SummerFest Music Director Cho-Liang Lin came up with a pair highly unusual offerings by Britten and Elgar for Sunday’s (August 20) afternoon concert at the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall . . .

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