Mark Murphy has announced his decision to leave REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater), the California Institute of the Arts' contemporary performing arts and exhibition space located in The Walt Disney Concert Hall, at the end of the 2018/2019 season, in order to focus his attention on initiating new creative programs and productions in a variety of US and international cities. Murphy has led REDCAT for more than seventeen years, starting as its founding Executive Director in 2001, before overseeing the grand opening of the facility in 2003. Edgar Miramontes, Associate Director at REDCAT, will assume additional duties of interim leadership until a permanent appointment is made.
Bard College announces the appointment of world-renowned composer, conductor, and artist Tan Dun as Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun will guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of teaching young musicians both new music and music history, while deepening an understanding of its connection to history, art and culture, and society. He will also help to build the synergy between Eastern and Western studies at the Conservatory, including its recently founded US-China Music Institute.
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) announces their spring 2019 season concerts. Engagements this spring include performances of Tyshawn Sorey's Perle Noire: Meditations For Josephine featuring rising soprano Julia Bullock at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miller Theatre Composer Portraits of Wang Lu and Tyshawn Sorey, three performances at the 2019 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, and Silent Voices: Lovestate with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus at The New Victory Theater in NYC. The Ensemble also continues its partnerships with the New York Public Library and Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology throughout the spring.
With a formidable cast of three, and a brilliant ensemble of voices and instrumental musicians, Kaija Saariaho's ONLY THE SOUND REMAINS swept through town last weekend, created with director Peter Sellars. Once again, she left us in awe of how she can fill an impossibly large theatre with what seems on paper to be the tiniest of works.
San Francisco Opera Guild will honor Bay Area philanthropists John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn at the sixth annual An Evening on the Stage on Wednesday, November 28. The gala dinner on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House is co-chaired by Kim Dempster and Linle J. Froeb. The set of composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer's holiday opera It's a Wonderful Life provides the magical backdrop for this year's event, when the Opera Guild's 2018 Crescendo Award will be presented to John Gunn, Chairman of San Francisco Opera's Board of Directors, and arts patron Cynthia Fry Gunn. Passionately committed to the art form and actively involved in the leadership of the Company, the Gunn's magnanimous support has set an extraordinary standard in the community.
Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, presents Sergei Prokofiev's charming children's classic Peter & the Wolf.Isaac Mizrahi narrates and directs as Brad Lubman (Dec 1-2) and Oliver Hagen (Dec 7-9) conduct Ensemble Signal and a cast wearing costumes by Mizrahi performs choreography by John Heginbotham, bringing the 30-minute story to life for the young and young at heart.
American violinist Jennifer Koh showcases chamber works and a violin concerto by the visionary and much-honored contemporary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho on her new album Saariaho X Koh from Cedille Records.
The Gish Prize Trust today announced that the inspired Music and Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, has been selected to receive the 25th annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in recognition of his ongoing achievements as a conductor and an advocate for music education. Established in 1994 through the will of legendary stage and screen actress Lillian Gish, known as the First Lady of Cinema, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize is one of the most prestigious honors given to artists in the United States and bears one of the largest cash awards, currently valued at approximately $250,000.
Stephen Lawless will be directing the San Diego Opera's production of The Marriage of Figaro this week. I met with him in the opera company's rehearsal room recently to discuss that, how he came to be a director, and his views of a director's responsibilities.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts announced its 2018 White Light Festival, which will run October 16 through November 18. The multidisciplinary festival will feature events presented in six venues across the city, including world, U.S., and New York premieres. The ninth annual international festival will explore transcendence, interior illumination, and the communal impulse as exhibited through artistic expression across continents and centuries.
Monday evening, November 12, 2018, 8 p.m., The New York Choral Society and Orchestra (NYCHORAL) will present its first program of the season, MY SHADOW AND MY LIGHT, under the baton of Music Director David Hayes at the Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall. In honor of Veterans Day and in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War and the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Maestro Hayes has chosen a program that explores how three early 20th-century composers, two British and one American, created works expressing their deeply personal reactions to these profound moments in human history.
Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announces that its 2019 Gala will honor Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner; Broadway press agent, and President of DKC/O&M, Rick Miramontez; and arts philanthropist, and Chairman Emerita of Ingram Industries, Inc., Martha R. Ingram.
This year's 2018 White Light Festival will run from October 16 through November 18. The multidisciplinary festival will feature events presented in six venues across the city, including world, U.S., and New York premieres. The ninth annual international festival will explore transcendence, interior illumination, and the communal impulse as exhibited through artistic expression across continents and centuries.
American Symphony Orchestra's 2018-19 season will open with A Walt Whitman Sampler on October 17 at Carnegie Hall, and has announced that rising American soprano Angel Blue will sing the New York premiere of Franz Schreker's Vom ewigen Leben (From Eternal Life).
Theatre Puget Sound (TPS) and the Gregory Awards announce today that brothers Billy and Howie Seago will be recognized for their contributions to the Seattle theatre community.
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, a dynamic hub for the lively arts and vital community resource, presents the Los Angeles Master Chorale in two performances of Orlando di Lasso's dramatic a cappella masterpiece Lagrime di San Pietro (Tears of St. Peter) directed by Peter Sellars on Saturday, October 20, and Sunday, October 21, 2018, at 7:30 pm, in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at The Wallis. Conducted by the Master Chorale's Associate Conductor Jenny Wong and featuring 21 singers, the production is the first a cappella staging and most personal and emotionally-charged work to date from the acclaimed director's creative mind. Twenty-one singers transform the 75-minute Renaissance masterpiece - committed to memory and dramatically staged - into both a biblical parable of St. Peter's disavowal of Jesus Christ and a contemporary allegory for our fractious times. This marks The Wallis debut of the Master Chorale, whose appearance is part of a 13-city international tour that also includes performances at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, The Barbican Centre in London and the Cite de la Musique in Paris.
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, a dynamic hub for the lively arts and vital community resource, presents a dozen classical, jazz and contemporary music programs featuring some of the era's most compelling musical artists during the 2018/2019 season. World premieres, programs with thought-provoking social commentary and timeless iconic works are among the offerings.
Starting from the 2019-2020 season, Alejo Perez will become the new music director at Opera Vlaanderen Royal Ballet Flanders. He has been appointed by Jan Vandenhouwe, who will take over as artistic director for the opera, starting in the same season.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts announced its 2018 White Light Festival, which will run October 16 through November 18. The multidisciplinary festival will feature events presented in six venues across the city, including world, U.S., and New York premieres. The ninth annual international festival will explore transcendence, interior illumination, and the communal impulse as exhibited through artistic expression across continents and centuries.
