DAY OF THE DEAD LIVE! Día De Los Muertos Themed Show Comes To Brooklyn Art Haus This Month

Day of the Dead LIVE! takes you on a musical journey that is all FUN, celebrating Día de los Muertos, the holiday of family remembrance. With diabolical music from classical and popular composers, Mexican and European, this is a one-hour piano and puppet performance boasting larger-than-life characters, including jugglers, stilt-walkers, ghosts, skeletons, and dancers. It's a witty, wild, cultured romp and the ultimate family reunion — with dearly departed ancestors as the guests of honor!

Opening at the Brooklyn Art Haus in Williamsburg on Wednesday October 18th, with shows Wednesday through Saturday October 18th – October 28th at 6:00PM, plus Sundays October 22nd and 29th at 2:00PM, AND Halloween night Tuesday October 31st AND Día de los Muertos Wednesday November 1st (both at 6:00).  Tickets are priced at just $25 and can be purchased at www.BKArtHaus.com.

Day of the Dead LIVE! presents music for adults and children of all ages, plus delightful fantasies for the child in all of us.  Opening with Saint-Saen' Danse Macabre; we travel from Dante's Inferno to Paradiso in Liszt's Dante Sonata; we hear popular songs of Mexican folk composers like Rubio and Velázquez; and rhapsodic compositions by Mexican classical composers like Chávez and Ponce (a little Bernstein, too!).  All animated by dancers, acrobats, and strange creatures! 

Our music is performed by the 26-year-old virtuoso pianist Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner. The merry life-sized puppets and direction from the circus-trained aerialist Juanita Cardenas.  The full cast includes Victor Ayala, Jean Tae Francis, Agave L'amour, Ryan Shinji Murray, Anthony Rodriguez, Tyler West, Lighting Design Kyle Driggs, Stage Manager Pher Gleason and Stagehand Audra Brandt.

Center stage is a festive candlelit ofrenda (family shrine), illuminated throughout the performance, where images of the cast's family and Mexican revolutionaries appear, including Francisco "Pancho" Villa, Emiliano Zapata Salazar, and Cesar Chavez on horseback; the women soldiers known as Adelitas holding Mexican flags; artists Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as the author and women's rights advocate, Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Ponce's Balada Mexicana rings in a final fête with ancestors and ghoulish creatures before they return to the underworld. The audience is invited to dance as Bernstein's Mambo! plays the curtain call.

 MUSICAL PROGRAM

Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre (arr. Liszt/Horowitz) 8'

PONCE Intermezzo 3'

RUBIO Jarabe Tapatío (arr. Earl Wild) 4'

VELÁZQUEZ Bésame Mucho (arr. Sanchez-Werner) 4'

LISZT Dante Sonata 12'

CHÁVEZ Hoja de Álbum 3'

PONCE Balada Mexicana (arr. Sanchez-Werner) 10'

BERNSTEIN Mambo! (arr. Sánchez-Werner) 3'

Opening with Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre (1874), the composer imagined skeletons dancing at midnight.  Our version is arranged by two piano virtuosi: Liszt and Vladimir Horowitz. The phrase, Danse Macabre, made its first appearance during the plagues of the fourteenth century. Danse Macabre reminds us that death is not only inevitable, but also the great equalizer, claiming the high and mighty as well as the humble. 

Manuel Ponce was one of Mexico's and Latin America's most pivotal composers of the 20th century.  Known for his vibrant, idyllic, and enduring melodicism, as much as for his craftmanship, he bridged the classical tradition, Mexican folk, and popular music. Ponce's Intermezzo (1912) is one of his earlier works. Ponce's passion for a Mexican - nationalistic artistic movement co-existed with his love of older European music.

Jesús González Rubio's Jarabe Tapatío, also known as the Mexican Hat Dance, is an embodiment of Cinco de Mayo celebrations.  But it goes much deeper; written in the early 1800's during their War of Independence, it proclaimed opposition to Spanish colonialism. With origins in the State of Jalisco, the song again swept the country in the 20th century as a national dance of protest by Mexican revolutionaries.

Consuelo Velázquez was Mexican concert pianist and composer.  Her Bésame Mucho is famous internationally.  After being recorded by the Spanish-Mexican baritone Emilio Tuero, in 1944 Nat "King" Cole made its first English adaptation. From then on, it was interpreted and performed by hundreds of artists around the world including Pedro Infante, Javier Solís, The Beatles, Plácido Domingo, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Luis Mariano (who popularized it in France), Dalida, Xavier Cugat, The Ventures, Antonio Machín, Lucho Gatica, Vera Lynn, Andrea Bocelli, José Carreras, Ray Conniff, Diana Krall, and Zoé. Translated into more than 20 languages, part of its appeal was among women waiting for husbands during the second world war.

Franz Liszt's Après une Lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi-Sonata, often referred to as The Dante Sonata, is a musical portrayal of the Divine Comedy, an example of the composer's love of literature—and gives us visions of ghouls, ghosts, and trumpeting angels. A thrilling epic that musically depicts the journey from the depths of the hellish Inferno, through Purgatory, onto the heavenly Paradiso.

Carlos Chávez, probably the most important Mexican composer of the 20th Century, was a lifelong friend of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Aaron Copland, Arthur Rubinstein, and Igor Stravinsky. Chávez founded the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted the New York Philharmonic, wrote his Symphony No. 6 as a commission by Bernstein for the opening of Lincoln Center, presented Norton Lectures at Harvard, and, in performances he curated at the Museum of Modern Art, programmed his own music to pair with Kahlo's paintings. We present his Hoja de Álbum 3'.

Manuel Ponce was one of Mexico's and Latin America's most pivotal composers in the 20th century.  In his rhapsodic Balada Mexicana, Ponce intricately weaves in the tender melodies of two Mexican folk songs: Acuérdate de mi, which translates to “Remember Me,” and the sensuous El durazno, or “The Peach.”  Another admirer of great literature, Ponce regularly set poems to music. He carried on a distinguished pedagogical lineage as the musical descendent of Beethoven and Liszt: Beethoven taught Czerny, who taught Liszt, who taught Martin Krause, who taught Ponce. In turn, Ponce would go on to instruct Carlos Chávez.

Leonard Bernstein personifies the spirit of globalism. He introduced an entire generation of children to the joys of classical music with engaging warmth in his 53 “Young People's Concerts,” and he performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony, with its theme of universal brotherhood and love, in both West and East Berlin shortly before the Berlin Wall fell. To end the program because it is such fun, “Mambo” from “West Side Story.” Mambo refers to the Cuban-Mexican swinging dance music of the late 1930's, and we hope that it leaves you dancing and in festive spirits.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Wednesday, October 18, 2023 - 6pm

Thursday, October 19, 2023 - 6pm

Friday, October 20, 2023 - 6pm

Saturday, October 21, 2023 - 6pm

Sunday, Oct 22, 2023 - 2pm

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 - 6pm

Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 6pm

Friday, October 27, 2023 - 6pm

Saturday, Oct 28, 2023 - 6pm

Sunday, Oct 29, 2023 - 2pm

Tuesday, October 31, 2023 - 6pm (Halloween)

Wednesday, Nov 1, 2023 - 6pm (Day of the Dead)

ABOUT LLEWELLYN SÁNCHEZ-WERNER

PIANIST, COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR, TEACHER, AND MUSICAL SCHOLAR

Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner began playing the piano at two, having already learned to read.  His Mother, Martha, a lawyer from Guadalajara, had recently relocated to Santa Monica, taking her infant to Hollywood Bowl concerts.  Noting his reaction to music, she purchased a piano and found he could eke out melodies.  No teacher was willing to take a two-year-old student.  So she hired a teacher for herself, letting her son listen.  When he crawled up on the bench and played back what the teacher had demonstrated, the problem was solved.  By three he could read music.  At five he began music classes at Ventura College, along with home schooling by his mother.  At six he made his orchestral debuts with the Ventura Symphony Orchestra and the New West Symphony.  When still a toddler, Van Cliburn noticed his unwavering attention at his concert, lifting him up from the audience onto the stage and inviting him backstage afterwards.  

Now 26, Llewelyn has always been loath to embrace the “prodigy” label which he describes as, “being about your being good for your age, instead of good.”

At ten, Llewelyn moved with his Mother to New York City, continuing online music classes with Ventura College.  By 14 he was a full-time student at The Juilliard School where he became their youngest graduate. His time there was, “Fantastic!  I was treated like everyone's little brother.  For me it was like Hogwarts. I was so grateful.”  Following a year off for travel, he enrolled in the Yale University School of Music (the only music school in the Ivy Leagues) in their highly competitive Artist Diploma program. 

Llewellyn's busy schedule has included performances for President Obama at The White House, for President Biden at his second Inaugural Concert at the Kennedy Center, as well as performances for President Peña Nieto of Mexico, Prime Minister Peres of Israel, and President Kagame of Rwanda.

Arts Advocacy has been an essential component of his oeuvre and for which he received the Atlantic Council Young Global Citizen Award in recognition to his commitment to social action through music.  His many international concerts include Iraq where General Petraeus commended his, “courageous humanitarian contributions through the arts, strengthening the ties that unite nations.”  The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra's commitment to performing made a deep impression, “despite threats from extremists, the musicians continued to rehearse, donning bullet proof vests, the conductor packing a pistol.  That's how strongly they believed in the power of classical music. To me, they are heroes.”

The lives of composers and musical history is a passion Llewellyn likes to share.  He's an accessible advocate for classical music, “especially younger audiences love a blueprint of what they're going to hear, to know what to listen for, what is the story the music tells.  People can better relate to the colorful moments in a score if they're prepared, if they've been told a little bit about the composer, and their relationship to the classical canon.  Audiences today want to break down the old barriers and see concert experience and musical repertory anew.”

Llewellyn has performed for many of the great orchestras and maestros including Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Peter Oundjian, Tito Muñoz, Michael Morgan, and Karina Canellakis.  His many prizes include the First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild 2022 International Competition and the Gilmore Young Artist Award.  Recent performances have paired him with Renée Fleming and Eric Owens, among others.

Day of the Dead LIVE! is only part of his upcoming schedule of performances that includes an Artist in Residence for the Newport Music Festival, a return to Sienna and Luka festivals in Italy, The Sembrich Sumer Festival in upstate New York, as well as venues in Nantucket and East Hampton

Llewellyn continues to live near Juilliard on the upper west side of Manhattan.  He shares a birthday with his idol George Gershwin.  Billy Joel is another favorite, “because he makes the piano something we all want to dance to.”  His hobbies include chess, running, and reading. He loves the piano.

ABOUT JUANITA CÁRDENAS

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR AND PUPPETEER

Colombian born artist Juanita Cárdenas is a cutting-edge innovator, combining aerial performance and puppetry. She is the artistic director of the circus theater collective Visceral Abstractions which has produced sold out shows at House of Yes, Slipper Room, and Coney Island USA. Her work reflects deep community connections, nurtured through collaborations, friendships, skill sharing, and belief in solidarity.

Born in Bogotá, at ten she moved with her family to Miami.  Coming to New York for a BFA at Cooper Union, on graduation she moved to Buenos Aires, and later to Rio de Janeiro, for circus training and performance opportunities, before returning to New York.

Juanita learned her remarkable sewing and fabrication skills from her Grandmother and circus experiences. Her varied work includes creative and technical direction, design and fabrication of costumes, props, and puppets, choreography, puppetry, and aerial performance. With an undying love for live performance, she has created a menagerie of animated creatures, glittering costumes, and absurdist circuses that she describes as embodying “inexhaustible joy”.

Juanita has worked with Basil Twist, Julie Atlas Muz, Hovey Burgess, House of Yes, The Muse ABCirque, and Bindlestiff Family Circus, touring internationally with Blunderland. In 2022 she received Bindlestiff Family Circus First of May award which funded the creation of her original show Notes from the Void. She was puppet director for the Panto Project's Dick Rivington and the Cat at the Abrons Art Center (2021 and 2022) and set and production designer of Viva DeConcini's radical lesbian puppet TV show Beautiful, Evil, Lost. She directed, co-created, and co-produced Sex Ed 3.0 at House of Yes in February 2023.  Juanita also teaches aerial arts to adults and circus skills to children at The Muse in Brooklyn.

Her recent marriage to fellow Day of the Dead LIVE! performer and acrobat Ryan Shinji Murray was celebrated at the Slipper Room in a ceremony that was earnest and absurdist by turns, including multiple costume changes, puppets of her own design, and performances.  They will celebrate their honeymoon with a two-week bicycle trip from Spain to Italy.

Juanita Cárdenas and Ryan Shinji Murray make their home in Bedford–Stuyvesant Brooklyn with their much beloved dog Lucy.

Brooklyn Art Haus is an arts organization that premiers new and innovative productions. Now, in its inaugural year, its mission is to serve as an incubator, social environment, and performance space built for the longevity and success of artists and companies that maintain high standards and take risks with their projects. Audiences will experience the best of Brooklyn art, as well as the beauty of our international community of artists and production companies. From inspiring artistic experiences to delicious food and drink, to events and devising space, Brooklyn Art Haus invites you to make this your new home for the arts in New York City!

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