The Wallis Presents 'An Evening With Nathan And Julie Gunn'

American baritone Nathan Gunn and pianist Julie Gunn, partners in life and often on stage, will make their debut at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in an evening of cabaret by iconic composers ranging from Leonard Bernstein and Cole Porter to Billy Joel and Tom Waits. The evening concert from an eclectic American Songbook joins Bernstein at 100, the worldwide celebration of the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history. An Evening with Nathan and Julie Gunn takes place Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 7:30pm in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at The Wallis.

"An Evening with Nathan and Julie Gunn joins our varied musical programming this month," said Paul Crewes, The Wallis' Artistic Director. "Their cabaret style performance will feature an eclectic roster of composers including the great Leonard Bernstein who we salute on his 100 birthday."

Single tickets for An Evening with Nathan and Julie Gunn are now available for $45 - $95. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit TheWallis.org, call 310.746.4000, or stop by in person at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Ticket Services located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210

The running time for An Evening with Nathan and Julie Gunn will be 80 minutes with no intermission.

For the complete listing of all Winter @ The Wallis programs visit TheWallis.org/Music.

About Nathan Gunn
Nathan Gunn has made a reputation as one of the most exciting and in-demand baritones of the day. He has appeared in internationally renowned opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Royal Opera House, Paris Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Theater an der Wien, Teatro Real in Madrid, and the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. His many roles include the title roles in Billy Budd, Eugene Onegin, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Hamlet; Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte, the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro, Malatesta in Don Pasquale, Belcore in L'Elisir d'Amore, Ottone in L'incoronazione di Poppea, Tarquinius in The Rape of Lucretia, Danilo in The Merry Widow, and The Lodger in The Aspern Papers.

A noted supporter of new works, Gunn most recently created the role of Inman in Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain at the Santa Fe Opera. He also created the roles of Sid Taylor in Jake Heggie's Great Scott, James Dalton in Iain Bell's The Harlot's Progress at the Theater an der Wien, Yeshua in Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene at the San Francisco Opera Paul in Daron Hagen's Amelia at the Seattle Opera, Alec Harvey in André Previn's Brief Encounter at the Houston Grand Opera, Father Delura in Peter Eötvös' Love and Other Demons at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, and Clyde Griffiths in Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy at the Metropolitan Opera. Because of this dedication to new works, Gunn held the title of Director of the American Repertoire Council at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, a steering council that focused on advancing the company's American Repertoire Program which was committed to produce a new American work in 10 consecutive seasons.

Gunn is working on several creative projects that will premier over the next three seasons, in which he is a collaborating artist with the creative teams. These include projects with producing companies such as the Pittsburgh Opera and Beth Morrison Projects, and are created with some of today's leading and cutting-edge composers. Also a distinguished concert performer, Gunn has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Münchner Rundfunkorchster, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The many conductors with whom he has worked with include, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Kent Nagano, Antonio Pappano, David Robertson, Donald Runnicles, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Mark Wigglesworth.

A frequent recitalist, Gunn has been presented in recital at Alice Tully Hall and by Carnegie Hall in Zankel Hall. He has also been presented by Roy Thomson Hall, Cal Performances, the Schubert Club, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Vocal Arts Society in Washington, DC, the University of Chicago, the Krannert Center, the Wigmore Hall, and the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. As a student, he performed in series of recitals with his teacher and mentor John Wustman that celebrated the 200th anniversary of Franz Schubert's birth. Gunn has recently ventured outside the standard opera repertoire with appearances in performances of the title role in Sweeney Todd with the Houston Grand Opera, Camelot and Carousel with the New York Philharmonic (both broadcasted on PBS) and Show Boat at Carnegie Hall and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He also appeared in the New York Philharmonic's 80th birthday gala celebration for Stephen Sondheim and appeared with the orchestra in an evening of Broadway classics with Kelli O'Hara. Other engagements have included appearances with Mandy Patinkin in Rochester, the Krannert Center the Ravinia Festival and on tour in Australia and New Zealand, a series of cabaret shows at the famed Café Carlyle in New York City and at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, special guest artist in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's annual Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, and a performance of Sting and Trudie Styler's work, Twin Spirits in the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Gunn's solo album, Just Before Sunrise, was released on Sony/BMG Masterworks. Other recordings include the title role in Billy Budd with Daniel Harding and the London Symphony Orchestra (Virgin Classics), which won the 2010 Grammy Award; the first complete recording of Rogers & Hammerstein's Allegro (Sony's Masterworks Broadway), Peter Grimes with Sir Colin Davis and London Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live!) which was nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (SONY Classics), Cold Mountain (Pentatone Music), The Hubble Cantata (Naxos), Kullervo with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (Telarc), and American Anthem (EMI). He also starred as Buzz Aldrin in Man on the Moon, an opera written specifically for television and broadcast on the BBC in the UK. The program was awarded the Golden Rose Award for Opera at the Montreux Festival in Lucerne.

This season, Gunn returns to the Metropolitan Opera in The Magic Flute, appears in concert with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and presents recital in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Kalamazoo, and Thomasville, and at Vanderbilt and Notre Dame universities. He also performed Paola Prestini's The Hubble Cantata at the Ford Theater in Los Angeles, appears in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's Bernstein celebration, and premieres his one-man show, Flying Solo, at the Laguna Playhouse and the San Diego Repertory Theater. Gunn was the recipient of the first annual Beverly Sills Artist Award, and was awarded the Pittsburgh Opera Renaissance Award. He is an alumnus of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artists Program and was a winner of the 1994 Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition. Gunn is also an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana where he is currently a professor of voice and the General Director of the Lyric Theater @ Illinois. Gunn is a partner in the Los Angeles City Club, RVCC, which is a forward-thinking analog space for artists and entrepreneurs changing the downtown of Los Angeles.

About Julie Gunn
Julie Gunn is a pianist, educator, and music director. She has performed on many of North America's most prestigious recital series, including the Aspen Festival, Boston's Celebrity Series, the Carnegie Hall Pure Voice Series, the Cincinnati Chamber Music Society, the Cliburn Foundation, the Dallas Opera, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center Great Performers, Manhattan's Café Carlyle, the Metropolitan Opera Summerstage, Notre Dame's DeBartolo Center, the Ravinia Festival, St. Paul's Schubert Club, San Francisco Performances, the Sydney Opera House, Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, University of Chicago Presents, Washington's Vocal Arts Society, the 92nd Street Y, and the United States Supreme Court. She has been heard in recital with William Burden, Richard Croft, Elizabeth Futral, Isabel Leonard, Stefan Milenkovich, Kelli O'Hara, Mandy Patinkin, Yvonne Gonzales Redman, Michelle De Young, the Pacifica and Jupiter Quartets, and her husband and artistic partner Nathan Gunn.

In the upcoming season she looks forward to recitals and cabarets at the Interlochen Center for the Performing Arts, the DeBartolo Center, Vanderbilt University, Thomasville, GA, Western Michigan University and the McCallum Theater for the Performing Arts. Director of Lyric Theatre Studies at the University of Illinois, she produces three mainstage operas or musical theatre works a year at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. A faculty member at the School of Music, she enjoys teaching singers, pianists, chamber musicians and songwriters, and conducting new works and musical theatre. She has given master classes at universities and young artists' programs all over the United States, including the Aspen Festival, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the Houston Grand Opera Studio, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, Opera Theatre St. Louis, the Ryan Young Artists' Program, the Santa Fe Opera, Ravinia's Steans Institute. She enjoyed tenures as artist-in-residence at Cincinnati Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival. She is the founder of the Illinois School of Music Academy, a program for talented pre-college chamber musicians and composers. Dr. Gunn enjoys working at the intersection of different disciplines and collaborates with artists in the fields of theatre, dance, and design whenever possible. She has served as a coach or conductor at Chicago Opera Theater, Highlands Opera Studio, the Metropolitan Opera Young Artist Program, Opera North, Opera Theater St. Louis, Southern Methodist University, Theaterworks!, and Wolf Trap Opera.

Gunn is committed to new works and in recent seasons has been part of several world premieres, as a co-producer, a pianist, or as a conductor: Twilight Butterfly(Thomas), Dooryard Bloom (Higdon), Polly Peachum (Scheer/Van Horn), Variations on a Summer's Day (Meltzer,) Letters from Quebec to Providence in the Rain (Gill,) and Bhutto (Fairouz.) She works with Beth Morrison Projects and American Opera Projects to produce workshops and academic premieres of new operas. A member of ASCAP, she is the author of many arrangements of songs for chamber groups and orchestras. Her arrangements have been heard at Carnegie Hall, Chicago's Symphony Center, the DeBartolo Center, Ithaca College, Interlochen, the Kennedy Center, the Krannert Center, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, and in Sun Valley, Idaho.

About The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Since opening its doors in October 2013, The Wallis has produced or presented more than 250 dance, theatre, opera, classical music and family programs to an ever-expanding audience. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Paul Crewes and Managing Director Rachel Fine, The Wallis brings audiences world-class theater, dance and music, performed by many of the world's most talented and sought-after artists. Featuring eclectic programming that mirrors the diverse landscape of Los Angeles and its notability as the entertainment capital of the world, The Wallis offers original and revered works from across the U.S. and around the globe.

The mission of The Wallis is to create, present and celebrate unique performing arts events and educational programs that reflect the rich cultural diversity of our community. Nominated for 47 Ovation Awards, four L.A. Drama Critic's Circle Awards and the recipient of six architectural awards, The Wallis is a breathtaking 70,000-square-foot venue that celebrates the classic and the modern and was designed by Zoltan E. Pali, FAIA of Studio Pali Fekete architects. The building features the restored, original 1933 Beverly Hills Post Office (on the National Register of Historic Places) that serves as the theater's dramatic yet welcoming lobby, and houses the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, GRoW at The Wallis: A Space for Arts Education (a gift of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family and the Annenberg Foundation) and the contemporary 500-seat, state-of-the-art Bram Goldsmith Theater. Together, these structures embrace the city's history and its future, creating a performing arts destination for L.A.-area visitors and residents alike.

The Official Sponsors of The Wallis' 2017/18 Season include: Delta Air Lines (Official Airline Sponsor), Montage Beverly Hills (Preferred Hotel) Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills (Official Automotive Sponsor) and Meridith Baer Home (Official Décor Sponsor).

For more information about The Wallis, please visit: TheWallis.org.
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Ticket Information:
What: An Evening with Nathan and Julie Gunn
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Bram Goldsmith Theater
9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, 90210
When: Thursday, March 15 at 7:30pm
Tickets: Single tickets: $45-$95 (prices subject to change) Online - TheWallis.org By Phone - 310.746.4000 Box Office - Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Ticket Service 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, 90210