San Francisco
igor.toronyilalic
Who's the greatest living British exponent of the late Romantic repertoire? Many would say Edinburgh-born conductor Donald Runnicles (b. 1954). Runnicles has spent the last 30 years quietly forging a formidable name for himself abroad, first, as a repetiteur in Mannheim, then as an assistant to Sir Georg Solti at Bayreuth, as guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera and, for the past two decades, musical director of San Francisco Opera. In 2007 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra announced that Runnicles would return home to become their new chief conductor. This week he performs Strauss, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Astonishingly tall and surmounted by a luxuriant clump of dramatic red hair, Brett Dennen couldn't be mistaken for any other singer-songwriter. It's possible to detect any number of musical echoes in his songs - Neil Young, Dylan, Paul Simon - but thanks to his huskily soulful voice and a gift for conveying complicated sentiments in a resonant phrase, he manages to stand apart from the crowd here too.As a songwriter, Dennen was a late developer, hardly getting started until he was 21 or 22. "I think it's one of those things where it was just brewing for a while," reflects the tunesmith from Read more ...