“Befitting its subject matter, Mozart in the Jungle depicts a symphony of characters and voices in binge-ready structure illuminating through-lines for even the most minor players in the ensemble,” writes Erik Adams on Monday’s (12/22) AV Club website about the Amazon television series based on Blair Tindall’s memoir of the same name, set in the classical music world and a fictional New York Symphony. “In his personal crusade to save the soul of classical music, [the conductor] seeks to take Mahler, Mozart, and company out of the concert hall and into the streets, an infections energy that is, unfortunately, also the source of the show’s most cloying material. … Mozart in the Jungle is one part performing-arts drama, another part workplace comedy, and the simplest of its charms are wrapped up in the day-to-day details of the musicians’ lives: Rushing between gigs in separate parts of Manhattan, making ends meet by giving private lessons, keeping close tabs on the crazy new conductor … It’s a life currently unseen anywhere else on TV, and Mozart in the Jungle does a commendable job of pulling back curtains without losing sight of its characters’ humanity.”
Posted December 22, 2014
