Not everyone is going to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday. No doubt many readers of this column will be looking for alternatives to the big game. This weekend’s Best Bets: February 5th – February 7th feature plenty of opportunities to tune out the commercials (and the football) and relax into some amazing performances.
Clearly not all the fireworks are going to be taking place in Tampa. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that these are some of the best offerings on any given weekend in recent memory. Though I will admit there aren’t a lot of new offerings on Sunday, but many of these listings are for more than just one day.
Our top pick this weekend is drummer/multi-instrumentalist/composer Tyshawn Sorey at the Village Vanguard on Friday and Saturday.
So let’s get to it. Here are the Best Bets: February 5th – February 7th.
PLAYS/READINGS: Christa McAuliffe’s Eyes Were Blue – Center Theatre Group – Now – April 4th
If you’ve seen the film One Night in Miami, you are familiar with the work of playwright Kemp Powers. He adapted his play for the Regina King-directed film now available on Amazon. (Earlier this week the film received two Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor – Leslie Odom, Jr. and Best Director for King). Kemp is also the co-director and co-writer of Pixar’s newest film, Soul.
Christa McAuliffe’s Eyes Were Blue tells the story of twin brothers who find life treats them very differently. One brother has to battle with racism because of his dark skin and the other can pass as white. The play takes place in two different settings: New York City in the 1980s when they were just boys and a Minnesota courthouse in 2006, by which time their lives have taken very different paths.
This “produced reading” (meaning there are sets and costumes) stars Giovanni Adams, Jovan Adepo (Fences), Amaia Arana, Lorena Martinez (South Coast Rep’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Connor Paolo (Business Doing Pleasure), Adam J. Smith (Taken 3), Cory Michael Smith (1985), Larry Bates (Big Little Lies) and Justin Lawrence Barnes (InterVallum). It was directed by Jennifer Chang.
Center Theatre Group subscribers and donors can access Christa McAuliffe’s Eyes Were Blue for free. There is a $10 streaming fee for all others.
MUSIC/DANCE FESTIVAL: Whistleblower – Philip Glass’ Days and Nights Festival – Now Available
In a lead-up to their tenth annual Days and Nights Festival in Big Sur, they are holding a digital celebration beginning this week. Composer Philip Glass created the festival and many of his works will be available through at least May. Ten projects have been announced so far and the festival launches with a film of the 2017 performance of Whistleblower.
Inspired by Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information, Whistleblower has music by Glass with concept and text by performance poet Jerry Quickley. Glass appears in this film. Also performing are Miranda Cuckson, Matt Haimovitz, David Harding, Tara Hugo, Lavina Meijer, Alex Weil and Alex Weston.
Also debuting this weekend are The Pattern of the Surface from Molissa Fenley Dance Company in a performance also from 2017 and Heart Strings, a musical depiction of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet created by Tenzin Choegyal and Glass.
Tickets to watch each performance are $5. You can buy each for $20. The Festival is also offering discounts or comps for those who don’t have the ability to pay. You can submit a request for that here.
PLAYS: All the Devils are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain – Shakespeare Theatre Company – Now – February 7th
Patrick Page may be best known for his menacing portrayals of some of the theatre’s great villains. He was Tony-nominated for his performance as Hades in Hadestown. He also appeared opposite Denzel Washington in a Broadway production of Julius Caesar, The Green Goblin in the ill-fated musical, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark and as Scar in The Lion King.
In this 80-minute film, the first-ever online production produced by Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, Page examines the many villains William Shakespeare created in his plays and how they progressed from simple stock characters in the playwright’s early works to fully-realized villains that set a new standard for the depiction of those characters we most love to hate.
Page has played his share of Shakespeare’s characters with STC including Claudius in Hamlet, the title character in Macbeth, Iago in Othello and Prospero in The Tempest.
Page wrote the script for All the Devils are Here. I’ve seen Page in multiple shows and can assure you that this is a perfect pairing of actor and material. And his voice…if you haven’t heard it (no doubt you have, even if you aren’t aware), you’re in for a real treat with his take on Shakespeare’s bad guys.
Tickets are $25
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Jupiter String Quartet – Kranner Center for the Performing Arts – February 5th – 1:00 PM EST/10:00 AM PST
Violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel and cellist Daniel McDonough make up the classical music ensemble known as Jupiter String Quartet. It’s a family affair. Liz is Meg’s older sister and Daniel is Meg’s husband. This family, however, makes beautiful music together.
On Friday, February 5th they are releasing a new album with Jasper String Quartet that features works by Felix Mendelssohn, the world premiere recording of a work by Dan Visconti and Last Round by Osvaldo Golijov on Marquis Classics.
That same day they launch the first of four digital concerts in collaboration with the Kranner Center for the Performing Arts under the title Reflection and Renewal.
Each performance becomes available at 1:00 PM EST/10:00 AM PST and is free to stream.
This week’s first concert features Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95, “Serioso” and Kati Agócs’ Imprimatur (her second string quartet). Imprimatur was commissioned by The Aspen Music Festival and School, Harvard Musical Association, and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The link takes you to the full line-up which will include works by William Bolcom, Haydn, Mendelssohn and Schubert.
OPERA: Il trittico – Royal Opera House – Debuts February 5th – 2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST
This weekend the Royal Opera House begins streaming (through March 7th) their 2011 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Il trittico.
Il trittico is a trilogy of one-act operas. The three operas are Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. The latter is the best-known of the three as it is the most commonly performed.
Jealousy and murder are on tap in Il tabarro involving the love triangle of Michele (Lucio Gallo), his wife Giorgetta (Eva-Maria Westbroek) and her lover Luigi.
Suor Angelica is the dramatic story of a nun (Ermonela Jaho) dealing with loss.
Gianni Schicchi (Gallo) depicts what happens when someone dies and the will goes missing. And you think your relatives were difficult?
Richard Jones directed this 2016 production (a revival of his 2011 production) and Antonio Pappano conducted.
Tickets are £3 which equates to roughly $4.10 (as of press time).
PLAYS/CONVERSATION: TCG Books’ First Friday with Michael R. Jackson – February 5th – 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST
This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama went to playwright Michael R. Jackson for his musical A Strange Loop. TCG Books, a publisher who releases plays and musicals in book form, is hosting a conversation with Jackson on the occasion of their publishing A Strange Loop.
The leader character in A Strange Loop, Usher, offers perhaps the most succinct description of the show. “It’s about a black, queer man writing a musical about a black, queer man who’s writing a musical about a black queer man who’s writing a musical about a black queer man, etc.”
Jackson told the New York Times in a 2019 interview about his experience seeing Brian Dennehy in a production of Death of a Salesman. As a black, gay, young man he felt innate sadness and that Arthur Miller’s play revealed that in “America you’re worth more dead than alive.” But he also asked himself the question that would lead to A Strange Loop.
“What if I can make an old white man empathize with what it might be like to be a young, black, gay man and suffer — and not because he’s being killed by the police or destroyed in some way like that, but it’s actually an emotional journey from the inside?”
This conversation will take place on TCG’s Facebook Page. Those interested in buying the book can purchase it here.
JAZZ: Christian McBride’s New Jawn – SFJAZZ – February 5th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
When jazz bassist Christian appeared at SFJAZZ in 2016 for this concert, he was certainly working out the material that ended up on his 2018 album Christian McBride’s New Jawn. The line-up on the album and this concert are the same: trumpeter Josh Evans, saxophonist Marcus Strickland, and drummer Nasheet Waits.
By the time the album was released, McBride and his ensemble coalesced their work into a Grammy-nominated work that garnered this praise from Hilary Brown in Downbeat Magazine, “The word ‘jawn’— a fresh new phenomenon—is familiar argot to Christian McBride, a Philadelphia native. And when it comes to trailblazing new, cool jazz concepts in eponymous trios or big bands, the venerable bassist always delivers. Enter his latest jawn—a pianoless quartet, born of a New York scene that sates East Coast soul-seekers and purists alike. Christian McBride’s New Jawn faithfully salutes its forebears—Gerry Mulligan, Ornette Coleman and the like—but leave it to this next-gen assimilation of bandleaders to take musical liberties.”
Hearing these four amazing musicians work on this material live well before putting it to vinyl is going to be a great way to launch your weekend.
Tickets are $5 which allows for one month of Fridays at Five performances or $60 for a complete year of them.
TOP PICK: JAZZ: Tyshawn Sorey – Village Vanguard – February 5th and 6th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
February is a busy month of drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey. Next week Opera Philadelphia will unveil the world premiere of his Save the Boys, a composition written for and performed by countertenor John Holiday. But before that happens, he’s taking to the stage at the Village Vanguard in New York.
Sorey was recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine where writer Adam Schatz wrote, “Sorey who turned 40 over the summer, would be worth writing about for his drumming alone. The power, precision and inventiveness of his playing often draw comparisons with masters like Max Roach, Elvin Jones and Tony Williams. But Sorey refuses to play conventionally virtuosic drum solos — he prefers to play delicately and sparely, if at all — and he avoids being photographed with his sticks in the athletic poses that have defined the image of most jazz drummers. He is also a brilliant trombonist and pianist, and in the last few years he has become as arresting a figure in contemporary classical and experimental new music as he is in jazz..”
Joining Sorey for these two performances are saxophonist Joe Lovano (who just released a new album, Garden of Expression, on ECM Records last week) and guitarist Bill Frisell.
Tickets are $10 for each performance.
OPERA: Lohengrin – San Francisco Opera – February 6th – February 7th
Conducted by Nicola Luisotti; starring Brandon Jovanovich, Camilla Nylund, Petra Lang and Gerd Grochowski. This Daniel Slater production is from the 2012-2013 season.
Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin had its world premiere in 1850 in Weimar. It is one of his few romantic operas.
The setting is Antwerp in the 10th century. Elsa is accused by Friedrich von Telramund of killing her brother in an effort to prevent Telramund from assuming the dukedom. The dispute is to be resolved by combat. In an answer to her prays a mysterious knight named Lohengrin appears. He agrees to help Elsa as long as she never asks who he is or where is from. When Lohengrin defeats Telramund in battle, but spares his life, revenge is foremost on Telramund’s mind.
Director Slater updated Wagner’s opera to take place in the mid-20th century in an unnamed Eastern European country.
Joshua Kosman, writing in the SF Chronicle, said of Jovanovich, “In his debut as the mysterious, nameless knight who shows up to defend Elsa of Brabant against the baseless charge of fratricide, Jovanovich combined sweet-toned lyricism and ardent heroism in just the proportions required by this tricky role. His singing was thrillingly pure and tireless, his stage presence simultaneously tender and aloof.”
OPERA RECITAL: Anna Netrebko – Met Stars Live in Concert – February 6th – 1:00 PM EST/10:00 AM PST
Soprano Anna Netrebko is arguably one of the biggest opera stars in the world. She will be performing a recital from Vienna’s Spanish Riding School with pianist Pavel Nebolsin on Saturday as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s Stars Live in Concert Series.
The program is slated to include four works by Sergei Rachmaninoff; two by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; three by Richard Strauss; five by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky an one each by Frank Bridge, Gustave Charpentier, Claude Debussy, Antonín Dvořák, Gabriel Fauré, Ruggero Leoncavallo and Jacques Offenbach.
During the recital Mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova will join Netrebko for two duets.
Tickets are $20 and the performance will remain on demand for 14 days.
PLAYS: While Yet I Live – Play-Per-View – February 6th – February 10th
Tony Award-winner Billy Porter’s semi-autobiographical play, While Yet I Live, had its world premiere in the fall of 2014. The cast was Lillias White (The Life, Fela!), Emmy Award winner S. Epatha Merkerson(Come Back, Little Sheba), Elain Graham (Smash), Sheria Irving (Romeo & Juliet, Ethel Sings), Kevyn Morrow (Moulin Rouge! The Musical), Sharon Washington (The Scottsboro Boys) and Larry Powell (The Gaze…No Homo).
They are all reuniting with director Sheryl Kaller (Next Fall, Mothers and Sons) to do a reunion reading of the play. The live reading takes place on February 6th at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST. It will be available afterwards on demand through February 10th at 11:30 PM EST/8:30 PM PST.
At the time of the production, Porter said, “This play is a love letter to my mother, my sister, and the women who raised me. Reflecting on my own life experience as a gay, black, Christian man, and survivor of abuse, I wanted to write a play that was about family, faith and the healing power of forgiveness, three things very necessary to move forward and make change in your life. Change is possible, but it takes patience.”
Tickets for the live performance range from $5 – $50 based on your ability to pay. To watch the show afterwards, the price is $15. All proceeds will benefit the Actors Fund Covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund.
DANCE: Passage – Dance Theatre of Harlem YouTube Channel – February 6th – 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
Dance Theatre of Harlem launches a one-month Winter Series of virtual events and performances with Passage which begins streaming on the company’s YouTube Channel on Saturday, February 6th.
Choreographer Claudia Schreier created Passage for a commission from the Virginia Arts Festival and the State of Virginia’s 2019 Commemoration. Their event recognized the 400th anniversary of the arrival of slaves from Africa to Virginia.
Schreier told the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State that Passage, “addresses themes of struggle and aspiration and reflects, in abstract, the fortitude of the human spirit and an enduring will to prevail. There are several images throughout the ballet that suggest descent or ascent, as well as the presence of water. The movement is borne out of this ebb and flow, much of which is drawn from Jessie’s sweeping score.”
The Jessie is composer Jessie Montgomery. If her name sounds familiar, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has recently included her works in their In Concert at the Hollywood Bowl series. Her music will also be performed by the orchestra in their Icons on Inspiration concert on Saturday (see immediately below for details).
On Friday, February 5th, Schreier and Montgomery will have a conversation on Dance Theatre of Harlem’s YouTube channel and Facebook page at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST.
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Icons on Inspiration – Los Angeles Philharmonic – February 6th – 9:00 PM EST/6:00 PM PST
The Los Angeles Philharmonic has certainly figured out how to go big with their events during the pandemic. Icons on Inspiration, their gala on Saturday night is no exception. They have a starry line-up of artists and music lined-up.
Lead by Music Director Gustavo Dudamel, their special guests are long-time Board member and Oscar-winner Julie Andrews, Oscar-winner Common, 13-time Grammy nominee Katy Perry, Oscar-winner Natalie Portman, soprano Liv Redpath, Colombian singer/songwriter and 2-time Grammy Award winner Carlos Vives and classical pianist and 4-time Grammy Award-nominee Yuja Wang.
The program will include Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst; Duke Ellington’s Martin Luther King from The Three Black Kings (arranged by Terence Blanchard); Tchaikovsky’s Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato; Stravinsky’s Berceuse from The Firebird; Arturo Márquez’s Danzon No. 2; Romero’s Fuga can Pajarillo and Mahler’s Das himmlische Leben (arranged by Erwin Stein).
This event is a fundraiser, but you don’t have to make a donation to watch it (though donations are strongly encouraged).
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Schoenberg & Bach – Bard College’s The Orchestra Now – February 7th – 2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST
Works by Bach, Lutoslawski, Carreño and Schoenberg are featured in Bard College’s TŌN (The Orchestra Now) first concert of their 2021 season. Leon Botstein leads the orchestra through performances of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3; Lutoslawski’s Funeral Music; Carreño’s Serenade for Strings and closes with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night).
There is no fee to watch the concert (scheduled to run approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes); however reservations are required. Donations, of course, are accepted with a suggested donation of $15-$35.
Those are my official Best Bets: February 5th – February 7th, but you know I’ll always offer a few reminders of shows that might be ending, or only have one upcoming airdate. Here they are:
MUSICALS: This is your last weekend to catch You I Like the loving tribute to Jerry Herman from the Pasadena Playhouse. Fans of musical theatre – do not miss it! For more information about this show, check out my interview with creator Andy Einhorn here.
CLASSICAL MUSIC/POP MUSIC: For the second week in a row, there are back-to-back episodes of In Concert at the Hollywood Bowl on PBS stations nationwide. The two episodes are Fireworks and Gustavo and Friends. Check your local listings
OPERA: The first week of Black History Month at the Metropolitan Opera concludes this weekend with performances of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro from the 1985-1986 season on Friday; Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos from the 1987-1988 season on Saturday and the 1978-1979 production of Puccini’s Tosca on Sunday.
That should keep you busy this weekend. Whatever you choose to watch from amongst my Best Bets: February 5th – February 7th, I hope you enjoy yourselves!
Photo: Tyshawn Sorey (Courtesy TyshawnSorey.com)