Alison Bartlett

Sesame Street got its start at the height of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty, in answer to a simple but powerful question: could television help prepare less advantaged children for school? In 1969, the show's founders tapped researchers, entertainers, and other visionaries to create a “street” like no other, where colorful monsters, humans, and even grouches lived side by side. Today, Sesame Workshop – the nonprofit organization behind the iconic show, which has grown to reach kids and families in more than 150 countries and 70 languages – is proud to announce the start of Sesame Street's landmark 50th season.

The new music ensemble, International Street Cannibals (ISC), presents "The Easily Satisfied Lover" - an evening of vocal works from the period of early modernism, which turns its lens on archaic male narratives of romance and reframes them through the voice and sensibility of a 21st century woman. Central to the evening is the performance of Arnold Schoenberg's monodrama, Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1912) - a fantastical setting of 21 poems by Belgian symbolist poet Albert Giraud and freely translated in German by Otto Erich Hartleben. The program is a creation of soprano Ariadne Greif, Los Angeles-based director Gray Palmer, and ISC's founder/director Dan Barrett. It features conducting by maestro Christopher Lyndon-Gee; film footage by Swiss-Japanese filmmaker Caroline Mariko Stucky, especially created for this performance; and technical direction and stage management by Tyler Learned.