The New Jersey QuickChek Festival of Ballooning is the largest festival of its kind in the state of New Jersey. Held each year at the Soldberg Airport in Readington, NJ, this festival boasts over 100,000 visitors and hundreds of sponsoring companies giving guests free samples of their food. Loads of food choices with food trucks and of course QuickCheks massive operation offering food and drinks.

Review of concert of Beth Dito and the Pet Shop Boys at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2017.

In her recent concert in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center on Saturday evening, October 29, 2016, Jiaoyue Lyu enchanted and entranced her audience with a program rich in traditional Chinese poetic music selections. This enlightening concert was performed by Ms. Lyu on the ancient stringed instruments of Guqin and Zhu, both very significant in the traditions of Chinese music. Jiao’s exemplary affinity with and command of these fascinating instruments reveals their uniquely expressive and innately beautiful timbre and exquisite range of tonalities. As the evening progressed, she and her musician collaborators guided the concert with graceful expertise from ancient to contemporary music modes with the introduction of electronic amplification.

In the Foreword to her very engaging and informative new book, Dr. Jennifer Miceli reveals the many dimensions and unique diversity of her career path and experiences as a professional choral director, music educator, educator of music teachers, and as a performing musician. The choirs she has directed include musicians of varied levels of training and experience from youngsters of pre-school age and children with special needs to intergenerational and accomplished professional choirs and choral ensembles. Although every singer as musician within a choral group brings unique, creative skills and understanding to each rehearsal and concert, quoting Dr. Miceli, “As choristers we breathe together, intone the notes off the page, and unleash the glorious sound of human voices singing in harmony—it can be, and often is, transcendent.”

Roundup of the opening weekend of the 49th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival

We were all wonderstruck on entering the hall of the Sporting in Monaco on Friday, August 1, 2014, where the fashionably dressed ladies and tuxedo gentlemen were given the White Carpet treatment with a large and bright red cross signaled the way to the high-profile and mythical event of the year, the Monaco Red Cross Ball, with mirrors and screens everywhere adding to the allure of the evening. It was certainly the place to be and be seen for the 850 guests who visited each other at their table in a convivial atmosphere, but the buzzing and chattering stopped and everybody stood up for the arrival of the Prince and Princess to inaugurate the 66th edition of the glamorous Red Cross Ball that Prince Albert presides.

Amazing evening at the Montreux Jazz Festival 2014 with Rodrigo Y Gabriela and Robert Plant

Jiaoyue Lyu, an accomplished Guqin artist and pianist, performed a Guqin concert of exquisite beauty, sensitivity and fine art on June 2nd, 2014, at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, in New York City. Having studied and played piano since the age of four, she has won numerous awards in competitions throughout China and the world as a pianist. Jiaoyue Lyu performed a program of poetic instrumental selections as well as some pieces with vocal parts. The program included solo pieces along with numbers played by the ensemble, which included the excellent and versatile musicians Zhou Yi, playing pipa, Miao Yimin, playing dizi and other woodwind instruments and Shih-Hua (Judy) Yeh, playing Guqin. Attending a concert of Serene Moon, a beautifully sensitive and mesmerizing virtuoso Guqin performance by Jiaoyue Lyu and her acclaimed ensemble of musicians—all Chinese instrument players of ultimate quality and accomplishment—is a breathtaking and enlightening experience not to be missed.

Helen Peterson, dynamic choreographer and poet, will perform HEARTBEATS SPEAK, her original creation of poetry-dance fusion in concert at the Triskelion Arts Theater in Brooklyn, NY, on Sunday, May 4th, 2014. Helen’s unique performance pieces move, intrigue and delight her audiences by very artistically bridging the music of poetry and Spanish Flamenco dance. As a native Cuban born into a theatrical family, Helen’s rich, colorful performances of poetry with dance embody her vibrant heritage, early dreams, artistic and life experiences, and politics as well as her extensive training. With her own unique Flamenco style, bold, earthy realities and graceful, sophisticated flare, she enthrall her audiences, transporting them through her vividly depicted and enacted expressions. Her ardent and elegant voice and movements sculpt shining revelations of her ongoing involvement with the strong and subtle experiential emotions of life. Her unique, artful, kinetic flow of words over dancing rhythms of castanets and drumming feet emphasize the strong, yet graceful empowerment of a fine artist’s poetic vision sung from the heart and soul.