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Benjamin Woodward
For Benjamin Woodward's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 19, 2008
"The Cunning Little Vixen" at Saito Kinen Festival
The Saito Kinen Festival continues to showcase opera from off the beaten track with a production of Leos Janacek's "The Cunning Little Vixen," conducted by festival founder Seiji Ozawa. First performed in 1924 and fashioned out of a newspaper comic strip, this breezy, bucolic fable is Janacek at his most accessible, fast-paced and filled with dance, mime and folk melodies from his native Moravia. The cast includes Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and American baritone Quinn Kelsey.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007
A passion for the classics
Mention "Die Soldaten," B.A. Zimmermann's dark, uncompromising and harrowing work of 1960s modernism, and Hiroshi Wakasugi visibly brightens. It's the first season for this highly respected conductor as artistic director of Tokyo's New National Theater, and he's clearly very, very pleased that he has managed to get the opera onto the NNT stage next May.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007
Nights at the opera: picks for the upcoming season
With the publication last week of the new Michelin Guide, the world may now know Tokyo to be the culinary capital that it is. Opera, on the other hand, lags slightly behind, although compared to many other cities there is still an embarrassment of riches, writes Benjamin Woodward.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 26, 2007
Playing to tell her tales
Storytelling lies at the heart of Japanese pianist Yu Kosuge's art.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 12, 2007
Be baffled and awed
The New National Theatre, under the aegis of recently appointed director Hiroshi Wakasugi, opens its 2007/8 season with Richard Wagner's 1845 grand Romantic opera "Tannhauser."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 21, 2007
Soundtrack of the summer: Seiji Ozawa
Under the baton of Seiji Ozawa, some of Japan's top classical musicians gather each year for roughly a month of opera and orchestral concerts. The Saito Kinen Festival showcases an opera, usually something a little offbeat, and this year it's Tchaikovsky's "Pikovaya Dama" ("The Queen of Spades"), based loosely on Pushkin's tale of greed, obsession and the supernatural. The opera, an uneasy mix of full-blooded romanticism and rococo pastiche, has long been overshadowed by the composer's own "Eugene Onegin," so this is a good chance to hear what is arguably the more sophisticated of the two operas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 21, 2007
Soundtrack of the summer: Andrey Boreyko
With tickets for Italian maestro Riccardo Muti's concerts sold out, Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko's concert with Russian pianist and former International Tchaikovsky Competition gold medalist Boris Berezovsky is a good and by-no-means lesser alternative. In fact, it probably has the more interesting program. Most people will be there for the much-vaunted pyrotechnics of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3, but for those who have heard the concerto once too often, there are the lesser-known gems of Liadov's "Enchanted Lake," "Kikimora" and Scriabin's maniacally decadent "La Poeme de L'Extase." The orchestra is the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra, launched by the late, great Leonard Bernstein, bringing together young talent from around the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 23, 2006
The real Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The genius, the divinely inspired child, the idiot savant, the skilled populist craftsman, the underappreciated artist in his time who died tragically young in anonymous penury. Every generation makes of him what they will; the legends abound. And 250 years after his birth in 1756, he still remains, despite a well-documented life, an elusive, myth-bound figure.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 3, 2005
Puccini's masterpiece transcends its age
Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" is one of most beloved operas of all time. Musically rich, dramatically taut and shamelessly wringing every last drop of sentiment from its tale of innocence betrayed, it shows Puccini at the top of his form. Yet its seductive beauty and the emotional immediacy disguise some of the more troubling aspects of this story -- aspects that become increasing difficult to ignore when it is performed in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2005
The Alban Berg Quartett know Schubert inside out
The Alban Berg Quartett occupies a near-legendary position among string quartets. Their technical fluency, the beauty of their playing, the harmony of their interpretation -- have left critics searching for superlatives and ensured their constant demand in recital halls around the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 27, 2005
Russian diva's voice to die for
"Russians always need a little shit in our lives. If everything is good and we seem completely happy, then we become suspicious of that." This is Russian opera star Anna Netrebko's philosophy -- slightly incongruous for one who, at a glance, seems to have it all and to be enjoying every bit of it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 13, 2005
Kent Nagano conducts former collaborator Takemitsu
Kent Nagano is nothing if not a very busy man. The musical director of the Los Angeles Opera, the artistic director and chief conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, Berlin, and the guest director of many world-famous orchestras, the California native is in demand as one of the most popular opera and symphonic conductors currently on the music circuit, and a champion of contemporary music.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 16, 2005
A baroque approach
With his keen, adventurous musical intellect and an interpretative idiosyncrasy that breathes new life into the standard repertoire, Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey is fast assuming a hallowed place in the cellist pantheon. Influenced by the revolutionary Early Music movement in the Netherlands under luminaries such as Anner Bylsma, Gustav Leonhardt and Nicholas Harnoncourt, Wispelwey gained great acclaim with his first recording of the Bach cello suites on baroque cello. His repertoire, however, spans many centuries. A much lauded recording of Benjamin Britten's cello suites followed swiftly on the heels of his Bach recording and he is equally at home on baroque and modern cello as he is playing Bach, Dvorak, Lutoslawski or Crumb. Wispelwey is currently touring Japan with a program of Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, and The Japan Times caught up with him to talk about the music that he is perhaps best-known for -- the endlessly fascinating Bach cello suites.

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A statue of "Dragon Ball" character Goku stands outside the offices of Bandai Namco in Tokyo. The figure is now as recognizable as such characters as Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man.
Akira Toriyama's gift to the world