Philip Glass News

These are heady times for Kronos Quartet, celebrating its 40th anniversary this season. As you may know, on April 8 Nonesuch is releasing the Kronos Explorer Series box set and a new CD, A Thousand Thoughts. Both releases spotlight the quartet's longstanding engagement with musical traditions from around the globe.

Skylight Music Theatre performs Hydrogen Jukebox, the eclectic and fascinating result of collaboration in the late 1980s between composer Philip Glass and beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The production runs tonight, March 14 through March 30 in the Cabot Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center (158 N. Broadway, Milwaukee WI).

Take eight one-act plays, add 13 versatile student actors, and you have the recipe for a great evening of fun and laughter when CCBC Catonsville Academic Theatre performs playwright David Ives' collection of short, comic plays produced as 'All in the Timing.' The plays will be presented at 8 p.m. tonight, March 14 and 15, 3 p.m. March 16, 10 a.m. March 17 and 1 p.m. March 18 in the Center for the Arts at CCBC Catonsville, 800 S. Rolling Road.

For DIRECTOR'S CHOICE, the fourth program of Pacific Northwest Ballet's 2013-2014 season, Artistic Director Peter Boal selects from his roster of acquisitions and increases them by one: The captivating mixed-bill program will feature a much-anticipated world premiere by Alejandro Cerrudo, resident choreographer of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. The program also reprises audience favorites TAKE FIVE...More or Less, Broadway-darling Susan Stroman's sunny slice of jazz-infused Dave Brubeck fun; and Susan Marshall's distinctive aerial duet, Kiss. Rounding out the lineup is Molissa Fenley's State of Darkness, a tour-de-force solo performance set to Stravinsky's riot-inducing The Rite of Spring. DIRECTOR'S CHOICE runs for seven performances only, today, March 14 through 23 at Seattle Center's Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.

Violinist Jennifer Koh, known for her commanding, laser-focused performances and commitment to new repertoire, plays the New York premiere of Jennifer Higdon's The Singing Rooms, a large scale work for violin, chorus and orchestra with the New York Choral Society and Orchestra conducted by David Hayes at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium on Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 8:00 p.m.

ETHEL performs “Grace” feat. works by Ennio Morricone, Jeff Buckley, Vijay Iyer, Son Lux, Marcelo Zarvos, Nico Muhly and more today, March 13th at 1:00pm at Trinity Wall Street, 74 Trinity Place, New York City, Train 2/3/4/5 Wall St, R/1 Rector St, J/Z Broad St for FREE. First come, first serve. For more info, call Trinity at 212.602.0800 or visit trinitywallstreet.org.

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues the 2013-14 Composer Portraits series with Unsuk Chin featuring Ensemble Signal: Brad Lubman, conductor, Rachel Calloway,mezzo-soprano, Oliver Hagen, piano, Bill Solomon, percussion, and Ning Yu, piano. The show is tonight, March 13, 2014, 8:00 p.m. at the Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street) and Tickets are $20-$30 and for Students with valid ID they are $12-$18.

What do you get when a born freak, a former beauty queen, and an award-winning maverick director take on a classic romance? From today, March 13-­31, Abrons Art Center will present Beauty and the Beast, starring Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz, directed by Improbable's Phelim McDermott. Fraser, the consistently inventive, provocative and entertaining British disabled actor/writer and Muz, the Downtown NYC performance legend and former Miss Coney Island, breath complexity and life into the eponymous characters, weaving an adult fairytale like no other.

Signature Theatre has announced that the 'World of the Play' series continues with a panel of experts discussing The Practice and Performance of Kung Fu, presented in conjunction with the world premiere of David Henry Hwang's Kung Fu, on Saturday, March 29th from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in The Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues). The event is free and open to the general public (no reservations required).

Pacific Symphony's newest recording of a three-part oratorio crafted by one of the most sought-after composers of his generation, Richard Danielpour, is set to be released by Naxos on March 25. Written for the Persian holiday of Nowruz in 2012, "Toward a Season a Peace" was premiered by Pacific Symphony, conducted by Music Director Carl St.Clair, in the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County, Calif. The work features Pacific Chorale (Artistic Director John Alexander) and Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann. By weaving together sacred passages with texts by the great Sufi poet Rumi, Danielpour explores violence and war in the name of religion, using the season of spring as a metaphor for change and transformation. The work was commissioned for the Symphony's 2012 American Composers Festival, "Nowruz-Celebrating Spring," presented in collaboration with the Farhang Foundation.

Pacific Symphony's newest recording of a three-part oratorio crafted by one of the most sought-after composers of his generation, Richard Danielpour, is set to be released by Naxos on March 25. Written for the Persian holiday of Nowruz in 2012, “Toward a Season a Peace” was premiered by Pacific Symphony, conducted by Music Director Carl St.Clair, in the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County, Calif. The work features Pacific Chorale (Artistic Director John Alexander) and Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann. By weaving together sacred passages with texts by the great Sufi poet Rumi, Danielpour explores violence and war in the name of religion, using the season of spring as a metaphor for change and transformation. The work was commissioned for the Symphony's 2012 American Composers Festival, “Nowruz—Celebrating Spring,” presented in collaboration with the Farhang Foundation.

What do you get when a born freak, a former beauty queen, and an award-winning maverick director take on a classic romance? From March 13­31, Abrons Art Center will present Beauty and the Beast, starring Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz, directed by Improbable's Phelim McDermott. Fraser, the consistently inventive, provocative and entertaining British disabled actor/writer and Muz, the Downtown NYC performance legend and former Miss Coney Island, breath complexity and life into the eponymous characters, weaving an adult fairytale like no other.

Delighted to see the mandate of Kent Nagano continue until 2020, the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal was filled with renewed enthusiasm today when it presented, at Maison symphonique de Montreal, a 2014-2015 season that is dazzling and richly diversified - a season that promises deep emotions! The 2014-2015 season offers a number of sensational programs built around major works of the repertoire, some of them large in scale and some of them discoveries. Classicism and modernity rub shoulders throughout the season. In the foyer Allegro at Maison symphonique, Kent Nagano, music director of the OSM, unveiled the details of the 2014-2015 programming, accompanied by Stephane Levesque, principal bassoon with the Orchestra, and Mylene Paquette, the navigator who did a solo crossing of the Atlantic last fall. The event was hosted by Jean-Francois Lepine, international analyst and music lover, in the presence of OSM chief executive officer Madeleine Careau. The announcement marks the launch of the subscription renewal campaign, which ends on April 25, and the new-subscription and single-ticket-sale campaign, which begins on April 28.

Jacaranda's next concert, tonight, March 8 at 8:00 p.m., will be held at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall, which is waiving admission to honor Jacaranda's 10th anniversary. Jacaranda's inaugural season featured an adventurous young string quartet known as Denali, which played with the series until 2010. Denali was succeeded by Lyris as quartet in residence. This free 'Continental Harmony' concert will be entirely devoted to the Lyris Quartet, playing 20th-century American string quartet repertoire spanning 80 years. For the occasion, Lyris will open with their debut performance of the String Quartet No. 2 by Charles Ives (1911-13), followed by a Jacaranda signature work from 1973, String Quartet No. 4, 'Amazing Grace,' by Ben Johnston. String Quartet No. 5 by Philip Glass (1991), a Lyris specialty, will be followed with String Quartet No. 3 by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre continues the Company's remarkable 28th Season with a concert of riveting original ballets by New England's celebrated dance-maker, Jose Mateo. Silent Currents (March 21-April 6) peers into the dark depths of the human condition with three of Mateo's most gripping and powerful works. Silent Currents is the third of a four-concert repertory series at the glorious Sanctuary Theatre, 400 Harvard St, Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Classic Stage Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Brian Kulick and Executive Director Greg Reiner, today announced plans for its 2014/2015 Season. The upcoming season for the esteemed off-Broadway company begins in October with Rodgers & Hammerstein's ALLEGRO, directed by Tony Award-winner and CSC Associate Director John Doyle. ALLEGRO marks the second installment of CSC's Musical Theater Initiative, which launched last year with the company's hugely-successful production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion, directed by Doyle. Considered one of Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's most personal and groundbreaking works, ALLEGRO was their third collaboration and first premiered on Broadway in 1947.

To celebrate the release of Bryce Dessner's new album Ensemble LPR will perform at Le Poisson Rouge tonight, March 7, with Andre de Ridder conducting.

The new year has already brought notable success for Houston Grand Opera (HGO), where the hotly anticipated American premiere of the long-lost Holocaust opera The Passenger-hailed by the Associated Press as 'the latest coup for a company known for producing new works'-took the national and local press by storm, and where the company's Rigoletto revival was pronounced 'glorious' (Theater Jones). These accolades come at an exciting time for the company, which continues this season's extraordinary line-up with the launch of the first American presentation of a visionary and groundbreaking treatment of Das Rheingold by La Fura dels Baus; the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's A Coffin in Egypt, named one of the twelve 'must-see opera events of the season' (Opera News); a new HGO production of Carmen from Broadway sensation Rob Ashford; and Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, which boasts designs by fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi.

Chicago-Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, announces a forthcoming artistic exchange with Ireland through the co-production of Chapatti, a new work developed through Northlight's Interplay program. The co-production of Chapatti will premiere at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie, today, March 7-April 13, 2014, and will open at the Galway Arts Festival in July 2014. Chapatti, by acclaimed Irish playwright Christian O' Reilly, will be directed by Artistic Director BJ Jones and will feature John Mahoney and Penny Slusher.