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about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Music

  • The 66th Viennese Opera Ball: Do I Hear a Waltz!

    As spectacular as many of the gowns worn by celebrities at the recent Met Costume Ball were, they had nothing over the extravagantly clad waltzing couples at the 66th Viennese Opera Ball held at Cipriani 42 Street this week. An annual white tie gala, –floor length gowns for women, white tie and tails for men–the…

  • Tony Awards Nominees for Grabs: Looking for Hugh Jackman 

    Celebrating the Tony nominations this year held special excitement: it’s the 75th anniversary, the first in-person comeback after Covid, a year of re-emergence for shows shuttered in March 2020. Vaxxed, masked, Covid-tested, journalists met with the nominees in a return to Broadway-as-usual. A dozen or so sat at designated places in a room at the…

  • A Holocaust Symphony Premieres at Carnegie Hall 

    Photo:  Aylin Tekiner The Holocaust continues to unravel secrets. During this period of remembrance, a symphony by a survivor from Salonica, Greece pays homage to his community, its creative artists, and a little-known pocket of wartime history. You know the joke: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Way more than practice! The music took…

  • The Little Prince: An Intergalactic Journey on Broadway

    Aerial feats, dance, a touch of Gaul—Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince at the Broadway Theater brings a beloved children’s classic to the stage with visual flair. Beginning as the book does with a crash landing in the desert, the show moves quickly from scene to scene as a boy in a yellow jumpsuit and yellow…

  • Clive Davis at 90 

    “The thing about turning 90,” quipped music impresario Clive Davis, “is I realized, last year I was 89.” The occasion was a birthday dinner at The River Café that was also a celebration of the Clive Davis Institute at New York University, an educational venue that also features studios where young artists can record their…

  • MJ: The Musical: The Art of Michael Jackson

    If you love Michael Jackson, you will love MJ—it’s that simple. The musical limns the controversial performer’s rise to “King of Pop,” avoiding the more difficult challenges of his personality in favor of music and dance—it’s that simple. Not that the star’s dependence on pain killers is not a significant plot issue—it’s that plot is…

  • Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man: “There Was Love All Around”

    Harold Hill, a talented conman, who wants to swindle the Midwest town of River City, Iowa, had me at hello. That may owe to the fact that “The Music Man” is played by Hugh Jackman. Arriving on a train, bumping along with salesmen grousing about Hill’s wiles, Hill pays them no mind, singing and dancing…

  • Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story: Get Ready to Rumble

    You will not have to ask, do we need yet another adaptation of this classic? With Leonard Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics firmly implanted in your head, a memory of the 1961 Jerome Robbins’ choreography and Arthur Laurents’ book, prepare to be delightfully shocked at how much this new version of West Side Story…

  • Freda Payne at The Cutting Room: What Love Could Be –And Is

    An apt locale for a book party for a famed pop singer, the Cutting Room filled with well – wishers for Freda Payne’s memoir, Band of Gold, last week. Co-writer Mark Bego flew in from Tucson, wearing the most outstanding jacket, a print of black & white with sparks of bold color. Yes, it was…

  • Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground at the New York Film Festival: Homage to a Bygone Era

    Film at Lincoln Center had a grand plan for Todd Haynes’ new film, The Velvet Underground. They would bring extant founding members of the band John Cale, Maureen (Mo) Tucker, for a performance at the movie’s New York Film Festival opening. That, sadly, was not to be. The premiere, though, with a posh party at…

  • Hamptons Journal: Susan Stroman Weekend at Guild Hall: Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Brad Oscar, and Mel Brooks Zoomed, Little Dancer Preview

    Starved for Broadway’s reopening, a happy crowd packed Guild Hall for an evening of clips and anecdotes about The Producers, the winner of the most Tony awards of any musical in history. On a panel introduced by choreographer Susan Stroman, a winner of 5 Tonys herself, the show’s stars Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and Brad…

  • Hamptons Journal: Bay Street’s Camelot, Robert Longo at Guild Hall, Diana Frank at Tripoli Gallery

    Legends of King Arthur and his court are having a moment: The Green Knight in theaters, and out east, Bay Street Theater’s production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot –under the stars! Now a classic, its signature song “If Ever I Would Leave You” sends a particular nostalgic chill—ah love—especially for the musical theater genre that…

  • Hamptons Journal: Graham Nash in Montauk/ Longhouse/ Chuck Manion’s Paintings at Duck Creek

    OM—though that’s not my mantra. Dan and Maureen Cahill hosted an event for the David Lynch foundation to support veterans by providing them with TM—transcendental meditation– life changing according to most practitioners, some of whom attended the concert and sit-down dinner on a gorgeous property between the old and new highways leading into the town…

  • David Byrne’s American Utopia: Spike Lee’s Documentary Brings Us to Our Senses

    Back before the pandemic made everything stop making sense, David Byrne opened his American Utopia at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, the most entertaining show in town. Everybody knew it, and tickets sold like hot cakes. Of course, so much in America had stopped making sense prior to the unanticipated lockdown; as upbeat as American Utopia was,…

  • A Star-Studded Tribute for Stephen Sondheim at 90: He’s “Still Here”

    To fete beloved Stephen Sondheim at 90 in song for two and a half hours, an A-list of Broadway stars zoomed in. Sure, you don’t get the wow production, the pageantry, the costumes and sets of a live musical, but what you do get is that up close emotion that the internet allows, as if…

  • Remembering Hal Willner: Music Impresario and Literary Man

    Back in the early 1980’s, Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs grinned across the screen on Saturday Night Live, having just been introduced as the greatest living writer in America by supermodel Lauren Hutton. Usually writers don’t read from their work on television, but behind the scenes, Hal Willner made it happen. Willner, beloved music…

  • Remembering Bucky Pizzarelli at the Café Carlyle

    Among the many joys of New York night life, and jazz performances in particular was hearing Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar alongside his son John’s quartet at the Café Carlyle. This week the elder Pizzarelli (94) succumbed to the coronavirus. Through the years, John was a regular at the Carlyle, and seven years ago, his father…

  • Apropos of Nothing: Woody Allen’s View from the Top

    Back in the day, I knew a journalist who had a crush on Woody Allen, and joined a club with others similarly besotted. Witty and smart, this bespectacled nerd made them laugh, and that was sexy. Cut to Woody Allen today, a man in his ‘80’s trying to clear his name. His new book, Apropos…

  • Girl From the North Country at the Belasco Theater: Dark Drama With Dylan’s Music

    The musical, Girl From the North Country, newly landed on Broadway at the Belasco Theater after sellout runs in London and at the Public Theater, imagines what you can do if you match up a brilliant storyteller, Conor McPherson, with a brilliant songwriter, Bob Dylan. And that’s without either one of them having met, spoken,…

  • Why The Song of Names Matters

    On the eve of the Golden Globes, consider The Song of Names, a film of merit in a tough, competitive film season. An epic post-Holocaust drama of two men who grow up as brothers, one a Jewish child prodigy, the other a Christian, the son of a classical music producer, The Song of Names focuses…

  • Celebrating Sondheim with the New York Philharmonic: Joy on New Year’s Eve

    Photo: Regina Weinreich Introducing this evening, Bernadette Peters cautioned the audience at Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall, "Sweeney Todd"'s Mrs. Lovett will not be singing about baking shepherd pies with real shepherds a featured ingredient. Not that it mattered. This would be Stephen Sondheim composer, and except for two numbers from Follies with the outstanding Katrina…

  • Sandra Bernhard Celebrates Ten Years of Mayhem & Madness at Joe’s Pub

      “Welcome to the Kremlin West!” Aglitter in a sequined sheath, Sandra Bernhard took the Joe’s Pub stage like a bat outta hell, that is a rock goddess, belting Bobby Womack’s “Across 110 Street,” backed by her first-rate Sandy Squad Band. On this, her tenth anniversary celebration doing New Year’s at this venerable Village venue,…

  • Cats: The World Premiere: T. S. Eliot, Can You Hear Jennifer Hudson?

    The latest entry into the Oscar race is Cats, a feature adaptation of the now iconic Andrew Lloyd Weber musical based on T. S. Eliot. I must mention “The Wasteland” poet because at no time during the state of the art premiere this week at Alice Tully Hall did anyone acknowledge this bona fide cred.…

  • David Amram: Celebrating Greenwich Village at the Museum of the City of New York

    Photo: Regina Weinreich At 89, David Amram is not slowing down. Celebrating his birthday at the Museum of the City of New York, and an exhibition of Fred McDarragh’s iconic photos from Greenwich Village back in the day, Amram, as times nicknamed “jamram,” led a jazz quintet: a brilliant Vic Juris on guitar, Rene Hart…

  • The New York Public Library’s Literary Lions Gala by the Book

    A bookish night at the New York Public Library, the Literary Lions gala celebrates writers. Charlie Rose attended, and was ensconced in conversation as pigs in blankets were passed. Jean Doumanian confessed to hating long cocktail hours, but the gabfest went on for a while. Writers do have stories. Julie Taymor is finishing her film…