Opera Philadelphia's 2020-2021 season launches in September with fourth annual Festival O, featuring new commission from Jennifer Higdon, a new production starring Sondra Radvanovsky, and more.
Joe's Pub - a program and venue of The Public Theater - brings the world to New York City this spring and summer. Audiences can skip the hassle and headaches of JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark to visit the Middle East (Tarek Yamani Trio, Divahn, Yemen Blues, and Shai Tsabari and the Middle East Groove Masters), Asia (Mai Khoi, AzN Pop!, and Akiko Yano Trio), Europe (Elina Duni, Pierce Turner, Germán López, Sam Lee, and Daniel Norgren), Africa (Michael Olatuja, AJOYO, and AfrotoniX), India (Amaan & Ayaan Ali Bangash, Aditya Prakash Ensemble, Sunny Jain, and Kiran Ahluwalia), and the Americas (Jim Cuddy and Nation Beat). Joe's Pub asks its audiences to leave their passports behind, settle into seats with some of New York City's best views, and sail the skies with better inflight entertainment and food than they'll find on any commercial airline.
Anthony Freud, Lyric Opera of Chicago's general director, president & CEO, announced today that American bass-baritone Eric Owens has withdrawn from Lyric's upcoming Ring cycles in order to undergo treatment for ongoing health issues.
For playwright Max Posner, sitting down to write The Treasurer must have been a feat of de-centering oneself. The narrative takes a dusky, balmy look back at the relationship between his father and his grandmother, a wealthy, New York socialite who lived with dementia in her old age. While the story is, in a way, indirectly autobiographical, it offers few mentions of the playwright himself, uplifting the perspective of the protagonist, his father. In shouldering the role, Ken Cheeseman seems to push Posner's language further into the periphery. His ambulatory addresses to the audience and stoic musings seem to be conceived of in real time, not memorized from a written source. However, Lyric Stage Company's production of The Treasurer is not the standard a?oeI hate my fathera?? solo performance you are likely to see at any undergraduate institution's annual student festival. In fact, though the text is dominated by Cheeseman's character, the production is upheld just as much by him as it is by Cheryl McMahon in the role of Ida, his mother.
When the musical OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR! premiered in London, in the 1960s, World War One was relatively fresh in the minds of the audience, most having either lived through it or being the child of someone who had. Today, the show, which strings together British songs from the Great War through a series of comical and melodramatic vignettes, feels neither contemporary nor historical. In its new treatment at Hart House Theatre, Autumn Smith has tried to breathe twenty-first century life into the show through the contemporary metaphor of war as a video game, and through unusual and edgy audio-video. The result is a show that is conceptually confused, but aesthetically rather charming.
Brooklyn-based performer, Raquel Cion, is poised for her March 2020 performances of her alt-cabaret, Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie at Pangea, located at 178 Second Avenue New York, NY 10003. The 90-minute cabaret explores the lifelong 'soul love' that Cion has for David Bowie's artistry and David Jones's humanity.
Rose City Band have announced new album Summerlong, out May 15th. The project of Wooden Shjips' Ripley Johnson, Summerlong draws back the veil of psychedelia he's known for with his songwriting and beautiful guitar lines taking center stage. While his vocal treatment would be recognizable to any Wooden Shjips fan, the sparseness of the instrumentation lays bare the beauty of his writing. The aptly named Summerlong, born of Johnson's own fondness for the season, delivers an emotional lift—an expression akin to the joy of getting out there on a warm day, be it gathering for a BBQ, hopping onto a bike, leaping into a swimming hole, or simply reading in a park.
Margaret Edson's Pulitzer-Price winning play 'Wit' focusers on Dr. Vivian Bearing, a 50-year-old professor of English who is dying from ovarian cancer. The play examines the dispassionate way cancer patients are treated, with Sindy McKay-Swerdlove delivering a startling and emotional performance as Dr. Bearing.
Opera Philadelphia launches the 2020-2021 season with the fourth iteration of the trailblazing Festival O, the only American festival nominated for a 2020 International Opera Award. O20 comprises a wide variety of operatic happenings at multiple venues across the city this September. The company announced its full 2020-21 season, which includes the world premiere of a new commission, a major new production of one of opera's great classics, and a host of A-list artists making their company and role debuts.
If an actor or a reality show host can become president and wreak havoc around the world, then surely musicians have a time honored duty of reacting to that and speaking up for regular people. Punk rock legends D.O.A. have decided to do just that. That's why you have the new D.O.A. album: Treason.
Studio Theatre is embarking on the $20 million Open Studio capital campaign, which includes a $14.5 million renovation of its multi-theatre complex in Washington, DC. The aim of Open Studio is to enhance artistic innovation at the Theatre, forge more robust community connections, and increase operational efficiency. The focal point of the renovations will be a completely transformed Metheny Theatre capable of flexible, fully immersive staging environments and outfitted with state-of-the-art production technology. Plans also include more public gathering space throughout the building, including a first floor café with outdoor seating, and Studio's first dedicated rehearsal space. Renovations will occur in phases beginning in July 2020 and will be completed in spring 2021. Studio will continue to operate out of its complex at 1501 14th Street NW during the renovation process.
The Robert Urich Story - An Extraordinary Life is more than a biography of an inspirational man. Author Joe Martelle had become friends with Urich in the 1980s and decided to write the book sharing his unique knowledge when Martelle's wife Kim was unable to find any other book about Urich.
This past Sunday, February 23rd Feinstein's/54 Below celebrated women with I AM WOMAN: A Concert For Female Empowerment.
I Am Woman was an evening of story and song that aimed to destroy the a?oetabooa?? surrounding the discussion of women's issues. The night boasted some of Broadway's favorite females of Broadway as they came together to share their feelings not just as women, but as human beings. From sexuality to spirituality, from health to harassment, no subject was off-limits.
Storytelling Arts of Indiana and Indiana Historical Society celebrate a local historical icon and hero of the black community with a?oeSarah The Dreambuilder, A Story Tracing the Rise of Madam C.J. Walkera?? told by Deborah Asante, another Indianapolis woman who is making her mark, on Sunday, March 8 at 4:00 p.m. This story is tied to 'You Are There 1915: Madam C.J. Walker' at Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center that opened in September. Audiences will have the unique experience of seeing the exhibit and hearing an original story that paints an intimate portrait of Walker (1867-1919), who was lauded as a?oethe first black woman millionaire in America.a??
Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, will present Opera Theatre of Saint Louis: Awakenings by Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman on Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 7:30pm.
With 22 Grammys and hundreds of millions in worldwide sales, the potentially fascinating story of Gloria Estefan, her husband Emilio and their journey to success with the Miami Sound Machine has the potential to be a fantastic jukebox musical. On Your Feet has plenty of material to draw upon; with an intricate journey through issues of immigration, racism and a life-threatening accident, it is a fun and frothy evening.
Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse presents the New York premiere of D.W. Gregory's RADIUM GIRLS, newly revised for a limited run from March 19 through April 12, 2020, at the Playhouse home: 220 E 4th Street. Laura Livingston (State of the Union, The Jazz Singer) directs.