Jason Victor Serinus

Jason Victor Serinus regularly reviews music and audio for Stereophile, SFCV, Classical Voice North America, AudioStream, American Record Guide, and other publications. The whistling voice of Woodstock in She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, the longtime Oakland resident now resides in Port Townsend, Washington.

Articles By This Author

Feature

Nurturing the Singers of Tomorrow, Part 2

Jason Victor Serinus - November 11, 2008

Last week, Jason Victor Serinus investigated singer development in the San Francisco Opera Center's Merola and Adler Fellows programs.

Feature

Nurturing the Singers of Tomorrow

Jason Victor Serinus - November 4, 2008

Who are they? Who will replace the generations of singers who thrilled us and brought us to tears when we first fell in love with opera and art song?

Review

Accepting Carmen's Challenge

Jason Victor Serinus - October 21, 2008

Why do so many folks disparage Bizet's Carmen? While certain pre-Freudian elements of its plot strain credulity, like Corporal Don José's instant obsession with the Gypsy woman Carmen and her final quest for death, Henri Meilhac and Jacques Halévy's libretto is far more believable than many.

An Evening of Beauty

Jason Victor Serinus - October 7, 2008

Sometimes the act of artistic creation is more involving than the music itself. On the first stop of a coast-to-coast “"Remembrance Concert Tour” that will culminate in Carnegie Hall, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian graced the stage of Herbst Theatre on Saturday night.

Review

Ever Wonderful

Jason Victor Serinus - September 30, 2008

Chanticleer celebrates several musical milestones this fall. The men's chorus' opening program of the season, titled "Wondrous Free," honors the 250th anniversary of America's earliest surviving secular composition, Frances Hopkinson's My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free. The concert program, heard last Thursday, was a marvelous gambol through five centuries of the repertoire Chanticleer so frequently champions, choral music of the Americas.

Review

Over-the-Top Glories

Jason Victor Serinus - September 30, 2008

If you only know Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt (The dead city) from its unforgettably haunting duet, "Gluck, das mir verblieb" (Joy, sent from above), prepare to be stunned. That gorgeous melody, sometimes referred to as "Marietta's lied," is one of the few moments of lyrical repose in an otherwise astoundingly lush, powerhouse score in which protagonists and orchestra vie for first place in both volume and impact.

Review

The Angela Gheorghiu Show

Jason Victor Serinus - September 9, 2008

Welcome to the Angela Gheorghiu Show! I make three costume changes, one of which leaves precious little to the imagination. To complete the spectacle, I present two radically different hairdos designed to set off my runway model figure and beautiful countenance. And for this special occasion, the entire San Francisco Opera Orchestra accompanies me, conducted by Marco Armiliato.

Reaching for the Godhead

Jason Victor Serinus - August 26, 2008

Bless San Francisco Lyric Chorus' collective heart for programming heavenly music during the worst of summer's classical concert lull. While Lord knows how many singers and musicians were hiking Yosemite, SFLC's music director, Robert Gurney, took his musicians on a trek to the firmament.

Splashy Mission Travelogue

Jason Victor Serinus - August 12, 2008

"May I ask which paper you're writing for?" asked the lovely gray-haired woman during intermission on Sunday afternoon. First I explained that I was reviewing for the only classical music review–rich publication in the Bay Area, San Francisco Classical Voice, as well as American Record Guide.

Ordo Virtutum With All the Trimmings

Jason Victor Serinus - August 5, 2008

It was a very San Francisco affair. This is, after all, an area where no urban sophisticate blinks an eye when a photo of three leather-clad, motorcycle-mounting Barbies graces the cover of The San Francisco Chronicle's Pink Section.