Musical Paradise
The first sex scene in Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s opera “Fellow Travelers,” which had its New York premiere last weekend, begins with vacation plans. “I should take you to Bermuda,” Hawk, a State Department employee in Washington, D.C., says to Tim, an idealistic newcomer from New York. As the men slowly remove their clothes, Hawk (the baritone Joseph Lattanzi) describes tree groves and “sand as white as milk” and repeatedly tells Tim (the tenor Aaron Blake) “I’ll show you.” Once they are finally in bed together, the music swells as they sing “Bermuda!” The music here is beautiful, if a bit wistful. This is a gay romance in the time of McCarthy and the “lavender scare,” and they know that their paradise is “as far away as it sounds.” JOSHUA BARONE
Memory of a Groove
On the closing night of this year’s Winter Jazzfest, I caught Maroon Cloud, a group led by the veteran flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell. (She will also have a recent chamber piece presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble this Sunday.) The concert served as yet more confirmation of the cellist Tomeka Reid’s exciting adaptability. Occasionally Ms. Reid spun graceful lines underneath some of the vocalist Fay Victor’s potent improvisations. Later, Ms. Reid offered more harshly striated textures during sections led by the pianist Aruan Ortiz. Early in “Leaving Livorno” — a track from the collaborative string trio Hear in Now, which counts her as a member — it’s the cello that announces a steady, repeating motif. Even when Ms. Reid takes leave of the melodic cell for a contemplative solo, a memory of the earlier groove inhabits her sound. SETH COLTER WALLS
Memory of a Groove
On the closing night of this year’s Winter Jazzfest, I caught Maroon Cloud, a group led by the veteran flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell. (She will also have a recent chamber piece presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble this Sunday.) The concert served as yet more confirmation of the cellist Tomeka Reid’s exciting adaptability. Occasionally Ms. Reid spun graceful lines underneath some of the vocalist Fay Victor’s potent improvisations. Later, Ms. Reid offered more harshly striated textures during sections led by the pianist Aruan Ortiz. Early in “Leaving Livorno” — a track from the collaborative string trio Hear in Now, which counts her as a member — it’s the cello that announces a steady, repeating motif. Even when Ms. Reid takes leave of the melodic cell for a contemplative solo, a memory of the earlier groove inhabits her sound. SETH COLTER WALLS