Jessye Norman News

Variety reports that the upcoming Gloria Steinem biopic, from theatre and film director Julie Taymor, has sold to LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions.

The Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, the arts center of the Archdiocese of New York, has announced highlights of its 2020 Spring season, a rich mix of theater, film, music, author's nights, gallery exhibitions, and talk events featuring artists and thought leaders including Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist and author Peggy Noonan; New York Times columnist and bestselling author David Brooks, and Director of The Philanthropy Roundtable's Character Initiative and author Anne Snyder; Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation Br. Guy Consolmagno, SJ; a rousing evening of gospel music from Vy Higginsen's Sing Harlem choir; celebrated composer and big bandleader Darcy James Argue plus the New England Conservatory Alumni Big Band; Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico and multi-award winning New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik; singer, songwriter, and acclaimed clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn and genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso and vocalist from Beijing Wu Fei; and events tackling thought-provoking topical themes including justice in underserved communities, the protection of immigrants to America, and the inspiration of Sr. Thea Bowman and other Servants of God.

Multi-genre musical experience We Shall Overcome comes to Pepperdine University at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 8, 2020 at the Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts.

The National Society of Arts and Letters Florida East Coast Chapter recently unveiled their new website (www.nsalfloridaeast.org) featuring the 2020 competition and scholarship applications. This year's key National competition is in musical theatre and local applicants can apply now for a chance to win $2,000 plus an all-expense paid trip to Chicago to compete for a $15,000 first prize. Additionally, applications are now open for a Piano and Strings Duo competition along with the Naomi Rabb Winston 2-D Art Scholarship and the Shirley Rabb Winston Classical Voice scholarship. All criteria, rules and application deadlines are on the website.

Check out Joe's Pub lineup for the Under the Radar festival featuring new and experimental work from Rizo (fka Lady Rizo), Lucy McComick, Daniel J. Watts, and Ryan J. Haddad. Rounding out the week is Kittel & Co, Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra, Jean-Michel Blais, Rev Billy, a very fun showcase from DANCE NOW, Nellie McKay, Aditya Prakash, Damien Sneed, William Prince, Xenia França, Luis Enrique and, as always, a ton more.

2019 has come and gone, and we are reflecting on those we have lost in the Broadway and theatre communities throughout the year.

Skylight Music Theatre today announced the cast and creative team for The Gospel at Colonus running January 17-26, 2020 in the Cabot Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway, in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward.

Gettysburg College's Majestic Theater will host the Gettysburg community's 40th anniversary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Saturday, January 25 at 7:30 p.m. with a free concert, a?oeWe Shall Overcome.a?? Produced and music directed by Damien Sneed, the concert is inspired by the words and actions of Dr. King, and showcases repertoire from across African American music traditions that electrified generations of civil rights activists and defenders.

Last night, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's 2019-2020 holiday season engagement at New York City Center kicked off with a star-studded Opening Night Gala Benefit performance and party led by Artistic Director Robert Battle, with award-winning actress and singer Renée Elise Goldsberry as honorary chair. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater kicks off its five-week holiday season with a one-night only gala benefit on Wednesday, December 4 at 7pm, complete with an exceptional performance at New York City Center and dinner-party at the Hilton New York Grand Ballroom.

Damien Sneed's 40+-City North American tour, 'We Shall Overcome: A Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.' tour kicks off at Joe's Pub in New York, NY on Tuesday, January 14, 2020, at 9:30 p.m. Presented by IMG Artists, today's leading global performing arts management agency, the tour will make stops at concert halls and universities in the U.S. and Canada. For a complete list of the tour dates, click HERE.

Rufus Wainwright is set to release an A/B side 7' EP, Come A Little Bit Closer, on November 29, Record Store Day Black Friday. The limited edition EP arrives ahead of Wainwright's forthcoming 2020 album via BMG, and consists of two live performances of Neil Young's 'Harvest Moon' and Arcade Fire's 'Crown of Love.' Come A Little Bit Closer will be available exclusively at participating RSD Black Friday record stores, found here.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater kicks off its five-week holiday season with a one-night only gala benefit on Wednesday, December 4 at 7pm, complete with an exceptional performance at New York City Center and dinner-party at the Hilton New York Grand Ballroom. The gala honors Philanthropist Elaine Wynn & The Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation for their generous contributions which have supported the creation of new works as well as the Elaine Wynn & Family Education Wing, which in 2017 added three floors a?" featuring four dance studios and two classrooms a?" to The Joan Weill Center for Dance, New York's largest building dedicated to dance.  The event's co-chairs are Emily & Len Blavatnik, Paulette Mullings Bradnock & Howard Bradnock, Mellody Hobson & George Lucas, Daria L & Eric J. Wallach and Joan & Sandy Weill.

DACAMERA's 2019a?"20 season continues with Mozart and Aucoin at Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, on Friday, Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m. The world-renowned Brentano Quartet returns to DACAMERA's stage for the premiere of a new work by composer Matthew Aucoin, for DACAMERA and Carnegie Hall. The ensemble will also perform Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F Major and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quintet No. 2 in C Minor, K. 406/516.

General Director and CEO Deborah Sandler today announced that an innovative new work celebrating the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and a cabaret-style favorite that returns by popular demand comprise the 2020 Explorations series. The series leads audiences on a delightful journey of musical discovery through eclectic works performed in Lyric Opera's Michael and Ginger Frost Production Arts Building in the Crossroads District.

On Saturday November 16th, at Temple Emeth in Teaneck New Jersey, veteran Actor Richard E. Waits will play 'Tevye' in a truncated version of the beloved Musical 'Fiddler On The Roof' as a pre-show presentation to the documentary film 'Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles.'

According to the Carnegie Hall program, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded just a year after the most modern pieces on last Friday's program were written. Those were Richard Strauss's “Four Last Songs,” composed in 1948, some of the most gorgeous music he wrote. Though I came for the songs and excerpts from Strauss's opera, INTERMEZZO, as it turned out, the symphony, Brahms' Fourth, was what made the evening.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will launch a five-week holiday season on December 4 with a star-studded gala benefit performance at New York City Center and party at the New York Hilton Midtown Grand Ballroom. The special evening celebrates philanthropist Elaine Wynn and the Elaine P. Wynn & Family Foundation. Wynn's generous contributions have supported the creation of new works as well as the Elaine Wynn & Family Education Wing, which in 2017 added three floors – featuring four dance studios and two classrooms – to The Joan Weill Center for Dance, New York's largest building dedicated to dance.