On Friday evening, I hiked down to U.S. Bank Arena for the World Choir Games awards ceremony. It was bustling at The Banks, since the Reds are back in town and playing the Cardinals. It was fun to see the WCG participants, many dressed in colorful team T-shirts, mingling with the crowds around Great American Ball Park in their Reds gear. Lots of folks from other nations had a chance to peer i...  

The best theatrical entertainment onstage this weekend is The Foreigner, presented by the Commonwealth Theatre Company at Northern Kentucky University. I saw it a week ago (review here) and it's a winner — a very funny play with a marvelously inventive performance by Roderick Ju...  

I spent 12 hours on Thursday absorbing events and performances of the 2012 World Choir Games. My "day pass" gave me way too much to write up in detail, but here are some highlights and random observations.

Show Choirs: I spent several morning hours at the Aronoff Center (which was "sold-out" — no empty seats, before 10 a.m.!) watching groups perform in the manner popularized by the ...  

The beginning of this week was a slower pace for the World Choir Games in Cincinnati. At the halfway point, choirs visiting for the first week departed and new ones arrived, so there was very little activity on Monday. A festive, rambunctious parade from the Convention Center to Fountain Square too place 6 p.m. Tuesday, with dozens of choirs, many in traditional dress from their home countrie...  

If you’re not acquainted with George M. Cohan, you should be. Right after Independence Day (and during the incredible festival of song all around us in Cincinnati during the World Choir Games) is th  

I had a trip around the world on Sunday afternoon, thanks to the World Choir Games. It includes stops in South Africa, the Netherlands, Venezuela, Switzerland, and the Chinese cities of Guangdong, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hangzhou. The program, playing to a completely sold-out house at the Aronoff Center's Procter & Gamble Hall, was a chance for eight choirs, each champions in one or more ...  

I’ve seen Ken Shue’s 1984 comedy The Foreigner in several good productions. It’s one of the funniest plays I know, a well-oiled laugh machine, but if you anticipate what’s happening, you’d think it would diminish the humor.   

Despite the 100-plus heat on Friday evening, on my way to a World Choir Games concert at Over-the-Rhine's School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) I took an extra half-hour to wander through the renovated Washington Park, which officially opened earlier in the day. What an incredible scene! Hundreds of operagoers were streaming through the park on their way to see Porgy and Bess ...  

On Thursday evening I slogged through the humid, 100 degree soup of downtown Cincinnati to hear a World Choir Games concert at the Masonic Center on Fourth Street (next door to the Taft Theatre). I've lived in Cincinnati for 32 years and covered lots of arts events, but I've never set foot inside this honeycomb of stages, halls and meeting rooms. The sold-out event I attended, "Global Harmony...  

Opera always struck me as a strange, overblown cousin to musical theater. I told people that I had to “turn off my theater filters when I went to see opera.” But then I spent several seasons working for Cincinnati Opera, and my eyes were opened to the reasons people react so strongly to that art form.