In January 2010, The New York Philharmonic This Week - the two-hour, national, weekly radio program of concerts by the New York Philharmonic, hosted by Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin - begins with a Summertime Classics program from July 3-4, 2009, with conductor Bramwell Tovey: Gershwin's Strike Up the Band, Variations on "I Got Rhythm," and Rhapsody in Blue with Marc-Andre Hamelin as soloist; Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite; and Sousa's Hands Across the Sea March and Washington Post March. The following week, Music Director Alan Gilbert leads the Orchestra in Webern's Im Sommerwind, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, with Leif Ove Andsnes as soloist, Webern's Symphony, Op. 21, and Schumann's Symphony No. 2. The third January broadcast, also conducted by Mr. Gilbert, features Yefim Bronfman as soloist in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2, with Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 concluding the program. In the final January broadcast, Mr. Gilbert conducts Haydn's Symphony No. 49, La passione; John Adams's The Wound-Dresser, with baritone Thomas Hampson, the Orchestra's Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence; Schubert's Symphony in B minor, Unfinished; and Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces.
Broadway veteran Stephen Collins will appear alongside JoBeth Williams on the December 3rd episode of ABC's 'Private Practice.' The actors will portray the father of actor Kate Walsh's character, Dr. Addison Montgomery. Collins will appear as the husband of actress JoBeth Williams.
John Hillner, who starred on Broadway as Georges in the Tony Award-winning 2004 revival of La Cages Aux Folles, will join the cast of Perfect Crime, the longest-running play in New York history, on Monday, November 23, 2009. He assumes the role of Harrison Brent and replaces Randy Kovitz, who will play his final performance on Sunday, November 22.
Michael Urie ('Ugly Betty', 'The Tempermentals') is headlining a reading of Brian Sloan's 'WTC View' on November 22nd at the historic Player's Theatre in Greenwich Village. The play was originally staged as part of the 2003 NY Intl. Fringe Festival , with Urie originating the lead role. It was adapted into a 2006 film, directed by Sloan, a New York-based writer/filmmaker ('Boys Life', 'I Think I Do'). Now, the play is back on stage with its eye on a 2011 production in New York City for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
The distinctive qualities that make California a sympathetic refuge for creative renegades are all explored musically in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's upcoming West Coast, Left Coast festival curated by Creative Chair, John Adams.
The New York Philharmonic will present SONDHEIM: The Birthday Concert on March 15 and Tuesday, March 16, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. This celebration of the 80th birthday of the great Broadway and film composer/lyricist will include his most enduring orchestral music and songs - performed, in some cases, by the stars of the original Broadway cast productions - in addition to rarely-heard material. Joining the celebration will be (in alphabetical order) Michael Cerveris, Victoria Clark, Jason Danieley, Nathan Gunn, George Hearn, Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie, Audra McDonald, Donna Murphy, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, and others to be announced, including surprise guests. Paul Gemignani, Mr. Sondheim's longtime collaborator, will conduct the New York Philharmonic; Lonny Price is the director; and Mr. Price and Matt Cowart are the producers.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will recognize the recipients of the 2009 NEA Opera Honors at the awards presentation taking place on Saturday, November 14, at 7:30pm in the Sidney Harman Hall of the Harman Center for the Arts, Washington, DC.
Washington National Opera has unveiled its complete schedule of activities for National Opera Week, the nationwide celebration sponsored by OPERA America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Washington National Opera has unveiled its complete schedule of activities for National Opera Week, the nationwide celebration sponsored by OPERA America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will recognize the recipients of the 2009 NEA Opera Honors at the awards presentation taking place on Saturday, November 14, at 7:30pm in the Sidney Harman Hall of the Harman Center for the Arts, Washington, DC.
Acclaimed theater company Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) has announced nine initial performers who will participate in the return of its unique benefit evening STORIES ON 5 STORIES on Monday, November 9. Among those taking part in the special event will be two-time Academy Award winner and two-time Obie Award winner Diane Wiest (Memory House at Playwrights Horizons/PH, Hannah and Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway), Tony Award winner Debra Monk (Assassins at PH, Redwood Curtain, Curtains), Obie Award winner Jason Butler Harner (current Stage Manager in Our Town, Hedda Gabler, The Coast of Utopia), Clarence Derwent Award winner Zoe Kazan (100 Saints You Should Know at PH; Come Back, Little Sheba; Things We Want), Theatre World Award winner Cassie Beck (The Drunken City and Prayer for My Enemy at PH), Cristin Milioti (The Retributionists at PH, the upcoming The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter), Sue Jean Kim (The Drunken City and BFE at PH, 365 Days/365 Plays), Carmen M. Herlihy (The Thugs, Crooked) and Greg Keller (Broadway's Uncle Vanya, The Rainmaker). Additional performers will be announced in the coming weeks.
The New York Philharmonic will celebrate the holiday season with programs that feature a variety of seasonal favorites and performers: 'Holiday Brass,' Handel's Messiah, and an All-American New Year's Eve Concert.
New Repertory Theatre, in collaboration with arsenalArts and Watertown Children's Theatre, revives its popular adaptation of Dickens' classic holiday story, which has all the trimmings of a lavish Victorian Christmas.
As is frequently noted by lovers of strong book musicals, part of the brilliance of Sherman Edwards (score) and Peter Stone's (book) 1776, their 1969 Broadway tuner about the efforts of John Adams to convince the continental congress to vote for independency from Great Britain, is that the audience walks into the theatre knowing full well how it's going to end, and yet the authors (and history) keep you on The Edge of your seat wondering how the devil it's going to happen. With a unanimous vote necessary ('So that no colony be torn from its mother country without its own consent.') and Pennsylvania's John Dickinson leading the arguments for property-owners whose personal economy is protected by loyalty to the crown and South Carolina's Edward Rutledge keeping the deep south unified in favor of individual states rights that protect their practice of slavery, June of '76 concludes with half the congress against independence.
How exactly does Curly know the height of an elephant's eye?
I don't mean to doubt the intelligence or inquisitiveness of the guy, but if I asked a pre-statehood Oklahoma cowboy how high the corn has grown, the first response I'd expect wouldn't be a comparison to the height of a proboscidea native to Africa and Asia. Perhaps he found a picture book in some public library, or maybe that famous Thomas Edison film of the electrocution of Topsy, the Coney Island elephant, had made its way to a local picture house.
While the rest of the country celebrates Independence Day with barbeques and fireworks, musical theatre lovers like me will gather around their television sets for the traditional viewing of what I and many others call the finest film ever made from a Broadway musical, 1776.
On November 17, 19, 20, and 21 at 7:30pm, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (BYC)-one of the country's leading children's choruses and the ensemble of choice for orchestras and artists, from the Boston Symphony and Philip Glass to Elton John and Grizzly Bear-is prominently featured in composer Phil Kline and choreographer Wally Cardona's Really Real at BAM's Harvey Theater, as part of the 2009 Next Wave Festival.
