Academy of St Martin In The Fields Chamber Ensemble Tickets

Priceless! Super beautiful! Perfect Orchestra and Joshua Bell is amazing and made this concert priceless! Like I just said .

It was an enchanting evening listening to the best of the best in classical performance. I could have stayed there forever listening to them play. It was sad to see the place not fully booked. They missed a very lovely evening. If they come back next year , will surely watch them again. Thank you for bringing a fine classical performance to our area. Hope more is to come.

Outstanding program from a very talented soloist and company!

We are disappointed because we have come to hear Joshua Bell play. We just could not hear the violin that well when he played the concerto.

Great show. Enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

If you have a taste for good old traditional European art music, you can't beat the Academy, led by Joshua Bell. This program even deviated from the normal strictly conventional fare by including a contemporary piece in a style that made use of some dissonance and irregular rhythms. That was the intriguing Ouverture for violin and orchestra by Edgar Meyer. I was particularly impressed by the ensemble work and Bell's conducting technique. If you ever wondered whether he was just waving his bow around in a sort of pro forma manner, this erased any such doubts. This wasn't just some standard that they can play for the 500th time with their eyes closed. You could tell they must have put in some rehearsal time. If you've never seen the Academy before, the way it works is conductorless. Joshua Bell conducts, in a manner of speaking, from this seat, using his body when he's playing, using his bow when he's not. When he's the soloist, he conducts with his free hand and/or bow when he's not playing, and just goes for it when he is. In the case of this piece, he also had the score out there on a music stand, making me wonder if he intended to turn pages with his feet. That would have been a cool trick. The Wieniawski Violin Conerto No. 2 was superb. I don't normally go for this sort of repertoire but this performance sold it to me. Joshua Bell actually makes all that flash and dash make real musical sense. The Mendelssohn Overture to a Midsummer NIght's Dream was as tasty as it gets. This is the sort of texture where this ensemble shines. The pristine clarity is almost stupefying, the energy level is tremendous. Now, for me the Beethoven Sixth is easily the dullest of the Symphonies, so -- you wanna know the truth? -- I fell asleep about 10 or 15 minutes in and woke up at the applause when it ended. At $100+ per seat that's an expensive nap. But another way of looking at it is, it was a really great nap. How often do you get lulled to sleep by music-making of world-class calibre? This kind of event at NJPAC is very much a thing for old white people. It's unfortunate that audiences are not more diverse -- not just for the sake of feel-good diversity, but because more people ought to give this music a try once in a while. If you're not usually a classical music fan but you're thinking of taking the dive, I can't recommend the Academy of St Martin in the Fields highly enough. Duke Ellington once declared: if it sounds good, it is good. When these super-talented musicians pick up their axes and start blowing in the excellent acoustics of this concert hall, it sounds good. Really good.

The theater is beyond what I expected. This is a wonderful venue. The performance was one of the best I have attended and there isn’t a bad seat in the house.

Excellent musicians - but people were talking while music was playing! Spoiled all the experience - i could not get over this. I think Joshua heard it too - because there was not contact with auditorium. Feel bad for superb music and performers!

Best chamber group around but bad programming. New commission plus 2 Shostikovich is too much for the ear in one sitting