Jake Heggie News

San Francisco, August 31, 2015 – Acclaimed Opera Parallèle will present its annual gala benefit Today, October 3, at 6:30 pm, at Marines' Memorial Club in San Francisco featuring an original “Jukebox Opera” entitled Heroes, created by the Company's artistic team and performed by baritone Michael Mayes, who performed the role of Joe DeRocher in OP's 2015 production of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking. The performance will showcase another side of this charismatic artist together with Opera Parallèle's Founder and Artistic Director Nicole Paiement and Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel, who will trace the journey of a hero in arias by Heggie, Bernstein, Adamo, and others. The evening will also include cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, dinner, performance, and auction presented in The Commandant's Ballroom & Lounge at the classic 1920's Beaux-Arts hotel, Marines' Memorial Club. Tickets are priced from $350, with tables and sponsorships available for $3,500-$10,000 and all proceeds benefit Opera Parallèle and its cutting-edge productions including this season's premiere at SFJAZZ of Terence Blanchard's Champion February 19-28 and Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse April 29-May 1 at ZSpace in San Francisco. For tickets and information, visit www.operaparallele.orgor call Roma Olvera at 415.626.6279.

Third Eye Theatre Ensemble, a Chicago company which seeks to engage audiences with inspiring performances relevant to today's ever changing world, will be presenting contemporary [& in English] at Forte Framing & Gallery tonight, September 26th at 8pm. contemporary [& in English] is a night of singing featuring excerpts from Third Eye Theatre Ensemble's fall production, Sumeida's Song, by composer Mohammed Fairouz. Cast members and guest artists perform the music of Mohammed Fairouz, in addition to other contemporary composers, including Ricky Ian Gordon, Gwyneth Walker, William Bolcom, Lori Laitman, Jake Heggie, Dominic Argento, Benjamin Britten, and Alan Hovhaness. A wine reception follows the concert. There is a $10 suggested donation at the door. Forte Framing and Gallery is located at 2301 W. North Ave, Chicago, Il  60647.

Pianist Anthony de Mare presents a new 3-CD set of 36 songs by legendary composer Stephen Sondheim -- arranged and reimagined by some of the world's most exciting contemporary composers.

The Dramatists Guild Fund with TeCo Theatrical Productions will present A Conversation with Terrence McNally (MASTER CLASS, CORPUS CHRISTI, RAGTIME, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN) as part of DGF's Traveling Masters Program on Thursday, October 8 2015 7:30 PM at The Bishop Arts Theatre Center in Dallas, TX.

Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Susan Graham returns to Texas, joining Mercury, under the baton of Artistic Director Antoine Plante, for an evening of opera arias and more tonight, September 19 at 8 PM at the Wortham Center's Cullen Theater.  Plante says, "For this special concert we are performing some of Susan's favorite arias from Purcell, Handel and Mozart. I'm really looking forward to working with such a gracious and unique artist and sharing this performance with our audience." 

Broadway veteran and Tony Award Winner Patti LuPone could be coming to city near you! It was just announced that Patti LuPone will be embraking on a tour this coming spring! 

Two additional performance dates have been added to pianist Anthony de Mare's concert tour of his new 3-CD album Liaisons: Re-Imaging Sondheim from The Piano. De Mare will perform selections from the recording at Bard College on November 2 and at Chicago's PianoForte Studios on December 12. The remaining tour dates include Virginia Tech in Blacksburg VA (September 18) and performances of ALL 36 piano works - split up over three concerts in New York at Birdland (September 24), The Sheen Center (October 22) and Symphony Space (November 19). 

Third Eye Theatre Ensemble, a Chicago company which seeks to engage audiences with inspiring performances relevant to today's ever changing world, will be presenting contemporary [& in English] at Forte Framing & Gallery on Saturday, September 26th at 8pm. contemporary [& in English] is a night of singing featuring excerpts from Third Eye Theatre Ensemble's fall production, Sumeida's Song, by composer Mohammed Fairouz. Cast members and guest artists perform the music of Mohammed Fairouz, in addition to other contemporary composers, including Ricky Ian Gordon, Gwyneth Walker, William Bolcom, Lori Laitman, Jake Heggie, Dominic Argento, Benjamin Britten, and Alan Hovhaness. A wine reception follows the concert. There is a $10 suggested donation at the door. Forte Framing and Gallery is located at 2301 W. North Ave, Chicago, Il  60647.

Stephen Sondheim's macabre musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street receives its highly anticipated San Francisco Opera premiere in a production featuring a cast of notable operatic stars and performed with Sondheim's original score for the lyric stage.

Birdland Jazz Club has announced its lineup for September 21-27, 2015, including Coltrane Revisited, Christina Bianco, Ann Hampton Callaway with Christine Ebersole & Curtis Stigers, and more!

Building on two previous seasons that ended “in the black,” The Dallas Opera is very proud to announce that it has maintained a balanced operating result for a third consecutive fiscal year, as of June 30, 2015. 

BERKELEY, CA (UPDATED September 1, 2015) – Music Director Joana Carneiro and Berkeley Symphony have announced programming for the 2015-2016 season, including the West Coast premiere of Laterna Magica by Kaija Saariaho, who will be a visiting music professor at UC Berkeley this fall; the West Coast premiere of Mark Grey's new Frankenstein Symphony, co-commissioned with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; and the U.S. premiere of Fachwerk by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, featuring the Bay Area debut of Geir Draugsvoll, a pioneer of the bayan, or classical accordion, for whom the work was written. The Orchestra also welcomes soprano Simone Osborne, and violinist Simone Porter, both making their Bay Area debuts, in addition to a first-time Berkeley Symphony appearance by pianist Conrad Tao.

San Francisco, August 31, 2015 – Acclaimed Opera Parallèle will present its annual gala benefit Saturday, October 3, at 6:30 pm, at Marines' Memorial Club in San Francisco featuring an original “Jukebox Opera” entitled Heroes, created by the Company's artistic team and performed by baritone Michael Mayes, who performed the role of Joe DeRocher in OP's 2015 production of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking. The performance will showcase another side of this charismatic artist together with Opera Parallèle's Founder and Artistic Director Nicole Paiement and Creative Director Brian Staufenbiel, who will trace the journey of a hero in arias by Heggie, Bernstein, Adamo, and others. The evening will also include cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, dinner, performance, and auction presented in The Commandant's Ballroom & Lounge at the classic 1920's Beaux-Arts hotel, Marines' Memorial Club. Tickets are priced from $350, with tables and sponsorships available for $3,500-$10,000 and all proceeds benefit Opera Parallèle and its cutting-edge productions including this season's premiere at SFJAZZ of Terence Blanchard's Champion February 19-28 and Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse April 29-May 1 at ZSpace in San Francisco. For tickets and information, visit www.operaparallele.orgor call Roma Olvera at 415.626.6279.

Birdland Jazz Club has announced its September 2015 schedule, featuring Cyrus Chestnut Trio, Arturo O'Farrill, The Birdland Big Band, Darius de Haas, Coltrane Revisited, The Royal Bopsters Project, Jim Caruso's Cast Party and more!

WASHINGTON)—Washington National Opera (WNO) today announced details for the fourth season of the American Opera Initiative, its comprehensive commissioning program that brings contemporary American stories to the stage while fostering the talents of rising American composers and librettists. Three pairings of new opera composers and librettists—Christopher Weiss and John de los Santos, David Clay Mettens and Joshua McGuire, and Sarah Hutchings and Mark Sonnenblick—will premiere new one-act operas, each based on a contemporary American story, in a semi-staged concert performance on December 2, 2015 in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Caitlin Vincent, an alumnus of the program's second season, will present their new hour-long work Better Gods—based on the life of Queen Lili'uokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii—on January 8 and 9, 2016 in the Terrace Theater.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City opens its 58th season with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's haunting Don Giovanni September 26 and 30 and October 2 and 4 at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The production will be sung in Italian with English titles.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2015 – The Merola Opera Program's Summer Festival concludes with its 2015 artists performing in the Merola Grand Finale tonight, August 22 at 7:30 pm at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. Conductor Antony Walker will lead the orchestra and 2015 Merola Apprentice Stage Director Mo Zhou will stage the program, featuring works by Gounod, Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Jake Heggie, Nikolai, Verdi, Rossini, Humperdinck, Mascagni, and Offenbach. The performance is a culmination of the 12-week Merola Opera training program, and all 23 of the 2015 Merola singers will perform, under the coaching and direction of their fellow artists. A special artists' reception follows the Grand Finale (tickets sold separately).

Acclaimed mezzo-soprano Susan Graham returns to Texas, joining Mercury, under the baton of Artistic Director Antoine Plante, for an evening of opera arias and more on Saturday, September 19 at 8 PM at the Wortham Center's Cullen Theater.  Plante says, “For this special concert we are performing some of Susan's favorite arias from Purcell, Handel and Mozart. I'm really looking forward to working with such a gracious and unique artist and sharing this performance with our audience.” 

Birdland Jazz Club has announced its September 2015 schedule, featuring Cyrus Chestnut Trio, Arturo O'Farrill, The Birdland Big Band, Darius de Haas, Coltrane Revisited, The Royal Bopsters Project, Jim Caruso's Cast Party and more!

Stephen Sondheim's macabre musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street receives its highly anticipated San Francisco Opera premiere in a production featuring a cast of notable operatic stars and performed with Sondheim's original score for the lyric stage.