THE LAST SHIP: 10^th ANNIVERSARY REUNION CONCERT – 54 Below – New York, NY – November 4^th

Rock star/composer Sting is joined by members of the original cast of his musical The Last Ship for two reunion concerts at 54 Below. Tickets for both events sold out long ago. But you can live stream the event at 7 PM ET/4PM PT and catch all the action.

Amongst the cast members joining Sting are Michael Esper, Jamie Jackson, Sally Ann Triplett and Rachel Tucker.

A portion of the proceeds from the concerts and the livestream will benefit Project ALS. Aaron Lazar, who originated the role of Arthur Millburn, announced he was diagnosed with ALS aka Lou Gehrig’s disease earlier this year. These concerts are a celebration of him as well as the musical itself.

For livestream tickets and more information, please go here.

WAITING FOR GODOT  – Geffen Playhouse – Westwood, CA – November 6th – December 15^th

Samuel Beckett’s classic play is once again on stage in Los Angeles. This production, produced in association with Gare St Lazare Ireland, finds Rainn Wilson and Aasif Mandvi starring as Vladimir and Estragon – two men waiting endlessly for the arrival of Godot.

Joining them are Conor Lovett as Pozzo and Adam Stein as Lucky.

The role of Boy will be performed by Lincoln Bonilla and Jack McSherry (they will alternate performances). Judy Hegarty Lovett directs.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

ROUVALI LEADS JULIA WOLFE, STRAUSS & SIBELIUS  – New York Philharmonic – New York, NY – November 7-November 12^th

Life’s journey has inspired many a composer. This concert focuses on three different works that explore explorations of life at various ages.

The program opens with Julia Wolfe’s Fountain of Youth. By its name you know what part of life this represents.

Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, a powerful work, makes it clear what stage of life Strauss explored with this work. Soprano Miah Persson will sing this incredibly moving work.

The concert closes with Sibelius’ celebration of his own 50^th birthday in his Fifth Symphony.

Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts these four concerts.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

MUTI & THE CSO – Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Chicago, IL – November 8^th – November 9^th

Works by Chabrier, Donizetti, Falla and Verdi are on this program. But what makes these two concerts compelling is the world premiere of the Megalopolis Suite by Osvaldo Golijov. This is a suite of music from his wonderful score for the Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis.

Audiences didn’t exactly flock to see this movie, but they missed out. I personally loved the film and have played the score multiple times since seeing the film.

Golijov is a terrific composer and this CSO Commission will certainly showcase that to all who attend these concerts. This is a score that deserves attention and will hopefully find some love during awards season.

Riccardo Muti conducts.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

ISAIAH COLLIER & THE CHOSEN FEW – Soka Performing Arts Center – Aliso Viejo, CA – November 9th

Saxophonist/composer Collier is an artist who deftly joins jazz traditions with a unique blend of other styles including soul, gospel and funk. This concert will be focused on his latest release The Almighty – a 63-minute album that explores the role of spirituality in his life and by extension our own. It’s a terrific album that should be even more alive when performed live.

The chosen few joining Collier for this concert are Richard Gibbs III on piano, Jermain Paul on bass and Damien Reid on drums.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

This concludes our Best Bets: November 4th – November 10th. For readers in the United States, don’t forget to vote on Tuesday.

Enjoy your week!

Main Photo: Rachel Tucker and Aaron Lazar in The Last Ship on Broadway (Photo by Joan Marcus)

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In November of 1947, a new play opened at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, CT written by Tennessee Williams. That play was A Streetcar Named Desire. On December 3rd of that year the first of what would become (so far) nine Broadway productions opened. The play has proven to be catnip for actors and directors all over the world.

The economics of producing a play has made new productions of A Streetcar Named Desire more and more out of reach for all but the biggest of actors and most important directors. The result is the limiting of opportunities to bring Blanche DuBois, Stanley Kowalski, Stella DuBois, Mitch and the rest of the characters to life for less-famous, but no less-worthy actors.

Enter actors Lucy Owen and Nick Westrate who felt passionately that the language of the play and good actors was not just right economically, but also right for the play. Their production of A Streetcar Named Desire is produced in unique locations without using a set and without using props. Owen portrays Blanche and Westrate directs. They are both co-creators.

Their Streetcar Project has been staged in a variety of venues. Tonight they conclude the last of three nights in an old airplane hangar in the Frogtown area of Los Angeles. On Friday they will open in a 3-night run at an artists workshop in Venice. Additional performances will be announced for the East Coast soon.

Last Friday I spoke with them about their production, how it celebrates Williams’ language and how audiences find themselves listening and using their imagination to enter the world of three very haunted people. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Artistically, what made A Streetcar Named Desire the play for which this kind of setup would work? 

Owen: It just came out of a desire to work on this play and work on the character I’m playing, which is Blanche. Streetcar has been a favorite play of mine for a long time, like it is for a lot of people. And Blanche has been a favorite character of mine for a long time. Nick and I frequently refer to her as the female Hamlet. I just had a desire to work on her. And it came out of the pandemic, a dry time for a lot of creatives. We developed this slowly together out of necessity and out of what was available to us.

Westrate: The main thing we had available were these actors, their voices and their bodies. What we ended up finding out was that it’s a great language play. The characters say a lot. They tell you what they’re feeling. They tell you what they want, what they need, what they desire. And we started treating it like Shakespeare. You see Shakespeare performed a lot on a bare stage with nothing. So we started wondering what if you did that with Williams?

Q: How much of what you two are doing is motivated by the commercial demands of what theater is or how it is defined presently, not just in New York, but around the country?

Owen: Theater is changing so much. The demand for it is changing so much and getting and it’s quite expensive to make. Many theater companies rely on a star model. You have to have a famous person in one of these roles in order to make it viable financially, which is really understandable. But what it means is that working-class actors, of which I am proudly a member of that class, don’t get an opportunity to engage with this poetry. That’s just such a shame to me because there’s so many good actors who I want to see play the big, good, gorgeous roles. I don’t only want to see the same ten or so incredibly famous actors play all the same roles.

Q: We’re having this conversation a day after it was announced that Back to the Future – The Musical is closing [on Broadway] in January. It was capitalized for over $20 million and is not recouping a cent. I understand the idea behind established products like a Back to the Future. But imagine if Tennessee Williams was living in a world where only already established IP was what was performed. How would a Tennessee Williams today ever find his voice or his feet in theater?

Westrate: It’s an amazing question. I don’t think he would. I think we’re in an era [where] there’s a lot of fear right now. And so people are reaching toward something that they think is a sure thing.

Owen: It’s so disappointing for all artists personally. Every actor I know has gone through periods. Really established actors are losing their health insurance, writers are losing their mortgages, and artists are really, really struggling. Working class artists are really struggling.

Westrate: We talk a lot about path dependency in the arts, and you never change the path unless you actually try something new. 

Q: Elevator Repair Service started doing staged readings of novels like The Great Gatsby. That seems like a great idea given how much people are listening to books on tape, but it isn’t necessarily what one would think of as theater. But it feels like there is at least a desire on artists’ part, if not also on theatergoers, to not be hit with the bombast that is usually associated with big commercial theater.

Westrate: We live in such a visual age. We’re constantly looking at screens that are showing, showing, showing. This production asks the audience to really listen and it turns on the imagination in a way that I think people have forgotten.

Owen: It’s been galvanizing to interact with our audiences as we do this, because it’s been a risk for us. I’ve never done theater quite in this way before. Our audiences get to engage with their own relationship with the play and their own relationship with the characters, partially because they’re listening and their imaginations are turned on. But also, and I’ve heard this from a few people, it is partially because there isn’t the most famous woman in the world, the most famous man in the world, playing Blanche and Stanley. So they get to focus on hearing the play instead of focusing on celebrity or something spectacular visually.

Q: It’s not like when A Streetcar Named Desire was first on Broadway it had the best known actor in the world as Stanley Kowalski. [Star Marlon Brando rocketed to fame after appearing in the play in New York in 1947.]

Westrate: He wasn’t at the time. For so many years I thought that this play was about a sexy guy. It’s really not what the play is about. It’s a play about two women. I’ve never seen a production, until this one, that we have a play about two sisters. That’s ultimately what it’s about, in my opinion.

Owen: I’ve seen some gorgeous productions. I’ve seen beautiful performances. But I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Streetcar that was an ensemble. Ours is an ensemble. It’s about four people. It’s about their relationships. It’s about the devastation that they experience together.

Q: Given that you’ve had multiple audiences see and experience this way of telling A Streetcar Named Desire, how do you think the play is resonating that is unique to your production?

Westrate: Great writers like Williams and Chekhov were writing for the future. [They] were interested in the future. Tennessee Williams has a beautiful quote in the preface of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that “personal lyricism is the call from prisoner to prisoner, from the cells in which each of us are sentenced for our lives”. That’s a call that he’s making across the decades, across the generations. When you come to see the show, you’ll experience we’re really all just people in a room and a few people are going to speak. That’s the event. That’s what happens.

Q: Aren’t you basically sort of forcing the audience to see, not just in themselves, but in the other people in the theater, some parallels to what’s going on amongst these characters in the play?

Westrate: I hope so. I think it lets the play live right now. There’s this great dialectic between Stanley and Blanche in this play about realism versus magic, about the life of the mind versus hard facts about the value of imagination, about the value of art versus the wisdom of the body. Like there is this real conversation happening between these two people who have diametrically opposed worldviews that I think is very relevant today.

Q: You said the great playwrights like Tennessee Williams wrote for the future, not for the past. If we were to use A Streetcar Named Desire as an example of writing for the future, what do you think A Streetcar Named Desire has to say about our present, and by extension, our future?

Owen: A line is ringing around my head right now, “Don’t hang back with the brutes.” It’s a famous line of Blanche’s to Stella about investing in your better nature. 

Westrate: The line that immediately rings in my head, though I’ll say this wrong, is “deliberate cruelty as the unforgivable sin.” “The kindness of strangers” is the line everyone remembers. But there is a call for kindness and understanding. There’s a call for listening. I think the production calls for people to listen. And the tragedy of this play is watching these characters not be able to hear each other and the situation they get in because of it. So I guess Tennessee is asking us to listen to that call from other people, no matter how strange or bizarre or troubled they might be. We’re hoping to unleash some ghosts into America that will call all of our better natures forward.

To see the full interview with Lucy Owen and Nick Westrate, please go here.

Main Photo: Lucy Owen in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Photo by Walls Trimble/Courtesy The Streetcar Project)

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Here are my Best Bets: October 28th – November 3rd:

JOAN – South Coast Repertory – Costa Mesa, CA – Now – November 24^th

Playwright Daniel Goldstein’s play, having its world premiere at SCR, is about Joan Rivers. The play looks at both the professional and personal life of the woman who made outrageous jokes and suffered enormous tragedies.

Tessa Auberjonois, who has appeared in nearly a dozen other productions at South Coast Rep, takes on the dual roles of Joan and Mrs. Molinsky. Andrew Borba plays multiple roles including Dr. Molinsky, Edgar Rosenberg and Johnny Carson. Elinor Gunn plays Melissa (her daughter) and Young Joan. Zachary Prince plays at least five roles including Jimmy, Blake, Harold and Chet.

David Ivers directs. Opening night is November 1^st. The show is recommended for audiences age 16 and older.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE – Frogtown area of Los Angeles – October 28^th – October 30^th/Venice, CA – November 1^st – November 3^rd

Tennessee Williams’ classic play has been performed more times around the world than one could possibly calculate. So there must be something unique about this production to warrant inclusion in our best bets. And there is.

Four actors, without a set or props, perform the unabridged text of A Streetcar Named Desire in unique locations. These are fully realized performances, not a reading. By all accounts of previous performances on the East Coast, this is a production not-to-be-missed.

Williams’ poetic language will be front and center in this production. Might it lead to a new understanding of Streetcar? There’s only one way to find out. 

Co-creator Lucy Owen plays Blanche DuBois. Brad Koed is Stanley Kowalski. Mallory Portnoy is Stella DuBois. James Russell plays Harold Mitchell. Co-creator Nick Westrate directs.

For tickets and more information for the Frogtown dates, please go here. For the Venice dates, please go here.

STRIKE UP THE BAND – MasterVoices – Carnegie Hall – New York, NY –  October 29^th

George and Ira Gershwin’s 1927 musical had a rocky start. It played in Philadelphia but didn’t make it to Broadway until 1930 when the original book, by George S. Kaufman, was revised by Morrie Ryskind. Many songs appear in both versions, but there are differences.

MasterVoices Artistic Director Ted Sperling has collaborated with writer Laurence Maslon to create a new version which combines “the best of the 1927 and 1930 version for the show.”

Joining MasterVoices are Shereen Ahmed, Phillip Attmore, Victoria Clark, Lissa deGuzman, Claybourne Elder, Christopher Fitzgerald, Bryce Pinkham and David Pittu.

This is precisely the kind of one night only events in New York that makes any serious fan of musical theater and/or the Gershwins wished they lived there.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS WITH DUDAMEL – Walt Disney Concert Hall – Los Angeles, CA –  November 1^st – November 3^rd

Latin American music is on the program for these three concerts celebrating Día de Muertos. 

Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No. 10, “Rasga o Coração” opens the concert. That is followed by Yanga by Gabriela Ortiz – a work that was commissioned by the LA Phil and had its world premiere performance in 2019.

The second half of the program, and my personal favorite, is La noche de los Mayas by Silvestre Revueltas.

Joining Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic are the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

LAND OF GOLD – PBS Great Performances – November 1^st (check local listings)

This is a behind-the-scenes documentary into the premiere of John Adams’ opera Girls of the Golden West which has a libretto by Peter Sellars. The premiere took place at San Francisco Opera in November 2017.

Appearing in this 90-minute documentary are Adams, Sellars and singers Paul Appleby, J’Nai Bridges and Julia Bullock.

The world premiere of any opera is a daunting task. This documentary allows viewers to get a sense of how demanding it is, particularly when you are putting a more honest spin on a part of history.

Check your local listings or go to PBS.org to watch Land of Gold.

That completes my Best Bets: October 28th – November 3rd. Enjoy your week!

Main Photo: Concept art for MasterVoices’ Strike Up the Band (Courtesy MasterVoices)

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Beginning tonight, the LA Phil is performing An Evening of Film & Music: From Mexico to Hollywood. The program, curated by John Williams and Gustavo Dudamel, features primarily Mexican composers in the first half. The lone exception is the Tribute to Mario Moreno (Cantiflas) composed by Maurice Ravel (Bolero as it was used in the film El Bolero de Raquel).

The Revueltas music includes music from two film scores that rank amongst his most popular compositions: La noche de los Mayos which is from a 1939 film of the same name and Music from Redes, a 1935 film co-directed by Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel. Zinnemann is best known for such films as From Here to Eternity and High Noon.

When listening to the music of Revueltas you hear, in my opinion, the future and the past of Mexico. You can hear references to the earliest people there, but also a reaching forward to something new. In both the orchestration and the composition itself, Revueltas offers a soundscape that is wholly original and unlike anything being used for film at the time.

In 1999, the Los Angeles Philharmonic released a recording of Revueltas’ music. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted. This is well-worth checking out as an introduction to Revueltas’ utterly compelling and fascinating music. Amongst the highlights are Sensemayá and Ventanas for Large Orchestra.

The second half features more familiar scores by George Gershwin (An American in Paris), Maurice Jarre (Dr. Zhivago), Leonard Roseman (East of Eden), Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity) and Max Steiner (Now Voyager, Casablanca).

If you find yourself at one of this weekend’s concerts and want to hear more of La noche de los Mayos, the entire composition will be performed by the LA Phil with Dudamel in Día de Los Muertos with Dudamel beginning on November 1st.

Also on the program is Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No. 10, “Rasga o Coração, a work for chorus and orchestra by the Brazilian composer. Immediately following that will be Gabriela Ortiz‘s Yanga which the LA Phil premiered in 2019.

Revueltas did not live a long life (he passed away at the age of 40). In addition to being a composer, he was an acclaimed violinist, he fought in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and he was a conductor. He composed over 40 significant works (much of which should still be recorded) ranging from piano solos, orchestral work, ballet scores and songs.

I hope this is the beginning of a greater exploration of Silvestre Revueltas and his music. There is so much here that is begging to be heard and there’s no better way to hear it than to hear it live.

I’ll be at each of these concerts and encourage you to do the same.

Photo: John Williams and Gustavo Dudamel (Courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic)

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Since 1973, Lucie Arnaz has been, as they say, treading the boards. In those early days it was in Summer Stock (you kids can look that one up). But it wasn’t too long before she originated her first role in the musical They’re Playing Our Song. The 1979 Broadway hit had songs by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager and a book by Neil Simon.

Later in her career she originated the part of Alexandra Spofford in the musical adaptation of The Witches of Eastwick.

Throughout her career Arnaz has performed such roles as Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Princess Winnifred in Once Upon a Mattress, Mabel Normand in Mack and Mabel and Berthe in Pippin. She’s had a vast career and it is precisely that career she is celebrating in her show I Got the Job! – Songs From My Musical Past which she will perform on October 22nd and 23rd at Catalina Jazz Club in Los Angeles and October 30th and November 1st at Feinstein’s at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Between those dates she’s performing An Intimate Evening with Lucie Arnaz at the Purple Room in Palm Springs October 25th – 27th.

For those who don’t already know, Arnaz is the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. She grew up in and around showbiz royalty.

Recently I spoke with Arnaz about her stage career, the shows she’s doing and what the future might have in store for her – whether on a Broadway stage or elsewhere. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: I want to ask you about something your mother is quoted as having said she said, “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” As you as you were putting this show together, what role did time and perspective give you in reviewing the jobs you got and the jobs you didn’t? 

It’s a good question, actually. You look back on it now – several decades after you’ve done some of these shows – and the choices I make, even to pick the material from the show, sometimes I picked songs that my character didn’t even sing because another song means more to me now. Or there’s a better story that goes along with it or something. In this particular show, I’m not 100% sure that it affected what I choose to sing.

It’s my most authentic show to me because it really is how I started and how I got from point A to point B by playing all these different characters. So each and every song is a little scene. It’s a playlist from that show, even if I do it in a little bit different way.

I want to take you back to when you were 22 because you appeared in two productions of musicals that are actually on Broadway now. You were Princess Winifred in Once Upon a Mattress, which was in Dayton, Ohio, and you were Sally Bowles in Cabaret in Flint, Michigan. What resonates with you most about that time of your life being in those two shows? 

Just the most amazing opportunity to really learn your craft here in regional theaters or what they used to call summer stock in those days. And you had to put a show together with a week of rehearsal. So you better come knowing your stuff. And I had been trained, you know, on live three-camera, live audience television, which we did sort of the same way. We had a week to put a show together and know everything you’re going to do and then perform it in less than a week – four days.

I guess Mattress was my first, and I just loved it. I loved that you had to work as a team and get that show on in such a short period of time. It was just fantastic training, really. I love it. I made a family of friends that I still have to this day because you’re all in the trenches together to get that to happen.

What is easier to put together that quickly: the comedic role of Princess Winifred, in the course of a week or to put together a Sally Bowles in a week? 

I think it’s equally challenging because, for example, using Once Upon a Mattress. There’s so much physical stuff to do in that show: the climbing and all of the pratfall. She was a real interesting character to play and you had to be really good at it to make it look really bad. To make it look foolish. And so they don’t have a lot of time to do that. I worked really hard to make her believable. That’s all I ever really want to do is make these people believable. It could be a comedy. It could be a drama. To me, it’s kind of the same.

My mother, you mentioned her in the beginning, she always was believable. Their writers were so good that they wrote situations that were crazy predicaments. You would think, how on earth? But they were so brilliantly constructed that you believed what they were going to go do. And as long as that’s written that way, then you can just fly with it and think this actually could happen.

Last year I spoke to Gavin Creel, who was doing Into the Woods. He talked to me about his time in Chicago working on Bounce with Stephen Sondheim. Hal Prince was director. He talked about what the experience was like to be in the room and watching people struggle to do the best work that they could for a given show. You’ve been in that situation several times. They’re Playing Our Song was one of them, where you got to be in the room with Marvin Hamlisch, Carole Bayer Sager and Neil Simon. What was that experience for you?

That is such a gift. I can’t tell you. It’s only happened to me twice in my life where I could be in the middle of the making of a brand new musical. And it’s always a little different. When I did Witches of Eastwick in London with Cameron Mackintosh and all those gals and stuff. It was a slightly different experience, much bigger deal, all the flying. It was Cameron Mackintosh and bazillions of dollars and whatnot. [With They’re Playing Our Song] we were doing a two character musical in Los Angeles. We had three weeks of rehearsal, Witches had four months. To watch these geniuses, people like Marvin and Neil, figure out what works, what doesn’t, and why.

One of the things I learned from [Marvin], which just changed the way I look at myself forever because we were rehearsing a number – one of the ballads – and I’m trying to find my way around the song. How am I going to sing it? Where am I going to breathe? And he stopped and he said, okay, okay, wait, stop. I think I want to lower the key here for you in this song. I was so devastated. I was so embarrassed. Many people heard him say that. I went, Marvin, I’m so sorry. I know I can hit these notes. I kind of go at it easy in the beginning. And then he goes, “Stop. Would you stop already? You think I’m married to these notes?” And I looked at him like, What are you talking about? He said, “Lu, I hired you for the sound, the quality of your voice. Every instrument is different.” I was a singer. A composer like Marvin Hamlisch wanted to write a song for me. It changed my life.

Then to watch Neil watch us try to stage a scene. He’s Neil Simon. He’s the most prolific comedy writer. He’s chewing on his glasses and he doesn’t look happy. I got really nervous as I thought, what if I get fired? What if he decides these kids are not the right kids for this? He got up and he left. I panicked and we finished the day. We still didn’t stage the thing properly. The next day he came in and handed us all new pages and said, “When anything is that hard to stage, it’s always the writing.” He just went home and rewrote it and he didn’t even rewrite it that much. Boom, it staged itself. I just loved that that he didn’t sit there and blame somebody else.

Let me ask you about something you posted on Facebook on October 9th. You said “It’s stressful times. Let Ron Abel [her music director] and I take your pain away for 85 minutes.” How does doing this show take away your pain and does that relief last longer than 85 minutes for you? 

This show is a feel good explosion of emotions all over the board. I focus a lot to do it. And I go into this other wonderful world, this memory world, and play a whole slew of characters that I have had the opportunity to do. I think for people who are, let’s just say a little anxious right now, it’s healthy because I truly believe in sort of a woo woo metaphysical way of looking at life. That we need to visualize what we want the new Earth to be like, the new planet to be like, the new politics, if you will. How are we going to care for one another? How are we going to learn to be kind again? When I watch too much of my favorite shows like MSNBC or CNN or whatever, or read too much of the New York Times, it can be very stressful and it’s not helping me visualize the alternatives. So these days I’m looking for Lucie Arnaz shows. I’m looking for places to go where people are going to take me out of this week.

I think people have to work hard right now to keep their batteries charged and don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. We’ll get through this together. There may be some turbulence along the way. It could be severe turbulence. Buckle up. But when we get to the other side, the dust is going to settle and it’s going to be a different, better scenario for everybody. That’s my feeling.

I’m going to ask you to go back in the time machine one more time, and that’s to September 17th, 1967. You appeared, uncredited, as the girl in the golf cart on the second episode of The Mothers in Law. What would you tell that teenage girl about what her life and her career would be?

That’s a good question. Really? If I could go back to me at that age, I would just tell her to just settle the hell down. I look back and I go, honey, I didn’t know who I was. I had this way of talking. It was just bizarre. I just had no idea what I was good at. I had no idea where I was going. My brother was already in a rock group and was a rock and roll star at 11. My mother had this great television series. My father was a producer, ran a studio. [He] had this band, he made all this gorgeous music. What is it that I do? I hadn’t found the theater yet. I would just say, Honey, know that you are enough. You will find your bliss. Find the thing that belongs to you and stick with it. That’s what I eventually did. But if I could get to her just a tiny bit sooner, I think I would have been a lot happier.

You do realize you’re describing what most teenagers go through which is not knowing what they want to do when they’re teenagers. Plus you were surrounded by a very different family dynamic.

I kind of knew I would be in the business. I just wasn’t sure how to do it. I always loved performing: a little theater, my backyard. I picked my high school because it had a theater arts department that was great. I kind of knew I was going to get there somehow. I guess if we could go to our teenage self, we’d say, settle down, you’re going to be fine. You’re good, just as you are, honey. Don’t try to be everybody else. You have to find your own voice, your own way of performing a song.

And indeed you have. That’s what you’ll be celebrating in these shows.

Indeed I will.

To watch the full interview with Lucie Arnaz, please go here.

All photos of Lucie Arnaz courtesy Catalina Jazz Club.

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“I sort of made my name playing an alcoholic, broken down chanteuse. So it seemed inevitable that I would get an award for that someday.” That was the beginning of my conversation with Mx. Justin Vivian Bond when talking recently about Bond being named the first recipient of the Judy Icon Award at this year’s Night of A Thousand Judys at Joe’s Pub in New York on June 3rd.

This is the 12th year of the event that celebrates the legendary Garland while also raising money for the Ali Forney Center, an organization that provides housing and services to homeless LGBTQ+ in New York City.

Bond, who uses v as the preferred pronoun, is a transgender singer, actor, cabaret artist whose shows (including Rare Bird which premiered at Joe’s Pub in New York in early May and will be performed May 30th – June 1st at Feinsteins At the Nikko in San Francisco; Bond will debut Night Shade at Joe’s Pub June 20th – June 30th) range from the brilliant to the absurd in equal measure. V is also one half of Kiki & Herb with Kenny Mellman.

In 2021, Bond collaborated with countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo on a show called Only an Octave Apart. The critically-acclaimed show was recorded and the album was released in January of 2022

Last week I spoke with Bond about Garland’s influence, whether having a legacy is important to v and the role of dreams in one’s life. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Bond, please go to our YouTube channel.

You are the first recipient of the Judy Icon Award at Night of a Thousand Judys. How did that feel when you found out?

I’m very honored. Justin Sayre is somebody who I’ve respected for a long time. The work that he has done in the queer community, his performances and what he has to say with his work has always been very important and inspiring. So, to be honored by him and the group of people that he works with on the show is very flattering, obviously. You know, to get a Judy award, that’s pretty fancy. 

I read an interview that Anthony Roth Costanzo gave to the New York Times in September 2021 when you were doing Only an Octave Apart. He talked about the process of working with you and said, “I’m always looking for structure. And Viv is always like, ‘Don’t box me in because it’s not going to be as good.'” That sounded like something Judy Garland would say. How much of an influence has Judy Garland been on you both as a as a professional and as a person? 

When I was a kid, as everybody who grew up the generation I did, every year The Wizard of Oz played on TV. And every year I was terrified by the flying monkeys and the Wicked Witch and I identified with Dorothy Gale. Growing up in a small town as a queer person, you know that somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly, why can’t I? That was the question I asked myself when I was very young.

Of course, when you’re young and you see these sort of tragic stories play out, they’re very dramatic. But now that I’m 61 and knowing that I’m a decade-and-a-half older than she was when she passed away, it gives you a different perspective. But she has given me, I don’t know, fodder and intellectual inspiration, I guess, for my entire life.

Has the role she’s played as an influence in your own life evolved as you’ve gotten older and as you’ve come to understand that she was much more than just the character of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz? 

Yes. There’s no way that I think you could really understand fully what she experienced if you haven’t been in show business. I also feel like being a minority in show business, a marginalized sort of person, what people try to get away with because they feel like you are more powerless than they are, can be galling. But fortunately I have somehow managed to avoid that for the most part. I do that not by being in the mainstream, but by basically forging my own path. So I think maybe I learned that from her as a cautionary tale, as well as just the brilliance of her talent and hard work. 

In a 1967 interview that Judy Garland gave Barbara Walters on the Today Show she said, “I’ve gotten to the age where I rebelled, and I’m going to hit and hit back.” With all the political rhetoric that we’re facing right now, from all walks of life, about trans, non-binary people, what’s the best way to to rebel against that vitriol that accompanies these comments and actually inspires even greater vitriol?

My strategy, for the most part, has always been to put my body where it needs to be; whether it be on the street, whether it be at a protest, whether it be at a meeting or whether it be on the stage or sometimes on the screen. I feel like the most powerful thing that I can do as a trans person is live as full and rich and joyful a life as I can possibly live, in spite of all of that. I take a lot of comfort in knowing that the people who are coming after us are invariably much less happy and much less comfortable with who they are than we are. 

There’s that old axiom that success is the best revenge. But I think happiness is the best revenge.

I agree completely, and happiness is a skill that you develop and also something that you can’t be all the time. So if you aren’t happy at certain moments, you have to address them. I have a therapist who said, “Well, you are depressed, but you have a good reason for being depressed.” So work on getting through that, addressing it and dealing with it, and then hopefully it will pass. Sometimes it takes the medication, sometimes it takes therapy and sometimes it just takes time.

Kenny Mellman last year compared your level of fandom to Garland’s. “It’s as if Viv were a Judy Garland, but alive.” Of course, that sounds like a variation of your Whitney Houston joke. Your fans will know what I’m talking about, but what parallels do you see between your fan base and the fan base that Judy Garland has? 

They have, what was the line? Judy said they have good taste. I love my fan base and I’m proud of having a very intelligent, witty, and loyal fan base. I try to keep myself as fresh and invigorated for them as possible. It makes it easy because they’re so receptive to what I do and they’re willing to go with me where ever I may take them.

This year is the 55th anniversary of Judy Garland’s death. If 50 or 55 years after you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil somebody wants to prepare a Night of a Thousand Vivs, what would you like it to be? 

I couldn’t care less when I’m dead. I really don’t care. I don’t care if anybody ever remembers me after I’m dead or not. I don’t care about that, honestly. I just want to enjoy my life. That’s up to other people, too. I don’t have that kind of ego where I feel like, oh, I want to live on forever. I really don’t. I think that’s part of why I don’t make so many records, because I don’t really care. I’m not there when people listen to them. So I don’t get any pleasure out of them. You don’t make any money. 

I like singing live, and I guess that would be something also that I have in common with Judy Garland, because her live performances are so much more legendary, and the recordings of her live performances, than her studio records. There’s that chemistry that happens, the empathy and the relationship that you develop with the live audience, that you can’t really create. I think that’s also why working on Only an Octave Apart with Anthony in the studio might have been more powerful than doing solo records in the studio, because we were there together. We were performing for each other, and that, I think, ups the ante.

Even though there’s just a few weeks difference between when you debuted Rare Bird at Joe’s Pub and will now be doing it in San Francisco, does your relationship with the material change? Do you alter the show?

The material will not be the same because when I did the show here in New York, I did it with my full band. I’m coming to San Francisco with David Sytkowski, my pianist. He’s been with me at Feinstein several times now, but the only reason I ever wish I was more famous or more successful is so I could tour with my band because it’s so expensive. It’s impossible. But that doesn’t make the show any less interesting. I spent an entire career and it was just Kenny Mellman and I – pianist and singer on stage. I don’t feel like the audience is losing out on anything. But because of that, I have to work a little harder and come up with a different set list that has a lot of the same material, but some of the things just sounded better because you had background vocalists or just little things that technically wouldn’t work as well.

You’re going to Joe’s Pub for nine performances in late June which will be a completely different show.

Yes, that show is called Night Shade. It’s about how queer people exist at night and songs about nighttime and songs that you would listen to at night. I haven’t completely narrowed down the setlist yet, but I’ve been having a lot of fun picking it out.

When you said Night Shade, I thought, oh, it could be just the crap, the shade, we throw at each other. 

It could just be what we do with eggplant emojis.

You appeared in Desert In, which is a video series that Ellen Reid and James Darrah and christopher oscar peña did. I love how unconventional that series was. What stood out to you most about being part of of that? How much do you think projects like that and Only an Octave Apart, are going to inspire people to explore other ways of presenting music that may not be conventional, or may not even be music that they’re used to listening to?

That was an amazing experience and I felt so lucky to be able to do that during the pandemic. And I have to say, Ellen James and Brad Vernatter who’s the [General] Director at Boston Lyric Opera, found a way to pivot and keep all of these artists engaged and working throughout that pandemic. It was so great because each scene was written by a different composer. It was a huge amount of people and it was so much fun. James is a terrific director. It was a wonderful way of working that I would encourage more people to try because it really appealed to a lot of people.

I think the same thing with Anthony and I. You know cabaret is not one of the top genres in popular entertainment. But I’ve always tried to stay relevant because I just tell the truth. And the only truth I can really tell is my own truth. So working with Anthony and somehow contextualizing all of this opera music that he sings, which is so beautiful…But, you know, I went to his show Orfeo ed Euridice [at the Metropolitan Opera], which premiered last week. I turned to my friend after the show and I said, “The only problem with these operas and they’re all very old – the music’s beautiful, but the characters are all idiots.” You can’t believe how stupid these characters are. So I really love contemporary opera because contemporary opera, a lot of it appeals to a much broader audience because it’s hard to sort of take these things seriously if you’re there for a story because the stories are kind of simple.

During the pandemic James created videos for Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra that took classical music off of the concert stage and put it into our day-to-day lives and I feel like Desert In is part of that as well. That’s the way people are going to get seduced by the art form.

It was an interesting story that was kind of provocative. It had queer tales, it had heterosexual [tales], it had diversity and the writing was fantastic. Yeah, that’s what we need.

In André Breton’s Manifestos of Surrealism he wrote, “I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence, and attaches so much more importance, to waking events than to those occurring in dreams.” You have spoken throughout your career about the role dreams play in your life and their significance. Is Breton right? How much does that perspective inspire you?

When I lived in San Francisco, I went to the Jung Institute and I did therapy there when I was in my 20s. When I moved to New York, I found an analyst who worked at the Jung Institute here. So dreams are very informative. Whether they’re waking dreams or just keys into what’s going on or your own anxieties, or how you relate to other people and how they appear when they’re in your dreams. So I think dreams are important. Also being in my 60s now and having had a lot of my dreams come true and finding out, you know, sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s not as exciting as you thought it would be. I think it’s important to never stop coming up with new ones.

It’s always important to realize, even when you have reached your dreams, that there are still more dreams.

Yes, absolutely. Because then if there aren’t, what’s the reason to be alive? My mother passed away last year and I told her the last day of her life how I was so fortunate to have her as a role model because she did not stop growing as a person. Becoming more open to new things and learning things and changing until the very last day of her life. And I hope that I can be that way as well.

Could you have dreamed that you would have this career, that you would be at this place in your life? 

Oh, yeah. And now I have to come up with new dreams. When I was in high school, I used to love The Merv Griffin Show because he had amazing people that were in New York that I had never heard of before. One of them was Alberta Hunter. She was this jazz singer who was successful in the 20s and 30s and into the 40s. But at a certain point, she stepped away from show business and became a nurse and she lied about her age. So when she was 70 or 72, they thought she was 65 and they forced her to retire from nursing. Then she was rediscovered and she put out a few albums and she had a residency at this club here called The Cookery every Monday night for years. And I thought, that’s how I want to end up.

I want to be an old lady who has a residency and a cabaret in New York and I can go sing my songs every week and never stop working. And that’s what I’m planning on. But I want more things to happen between now and then.

UPDATE: This story previously stated the the Joe’s Pub shows were sold out. They are not. Cultural Attaché regrets that error. There was a a link built into that paragraph where you can click co to purchase tickets and get more information.

To see the full interview with Justin Vivian Bond, please go here.

Main Photo: Justin Vivian Bond (Photo by Ruben Afanador/Courtesy Justin Vivian Bond)

The post CONGRATULATIONS: Mx. Justin Vivian Bond – 2024 MacArthur Fellow appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

This is my interview with Gavin when he was touring in Into the Woods. Thank you Gavin for your time, your artistry and your generosity. You will truly be missed.

Whether that’s intrinsically a part of the characters he’s playing or just who he is as an actor, Ceel is easily one of the most likable people in musicals today. Take his performance as The Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods. Even though The Wolf is menacing (in a dandy sort of way) and the Prince is “raised to be charming, not sincere,” Creel is sincerely charming and, when the role calls for it, charmingly sincere.

Into the Woods is finishing its mini-tour of ten cities with a final stop in Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre. The show runs June 27th – July 30th. Creel, who played the part on Broadway, is joined by many of the production’s Broadway cast including Sebastian Arcelus, Stephanie J. Block, Katy Geraghty, Montego Glover, Kennedy Kanagawa and Nancy Opel.

I recently spoke with Creel who was in San Francisco for the penultimate stop of Into the Woods. In our conversation we talked about Stephen Sondheim, why the cast took this show on the road and about his own show, Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice, which will have its world premiere in November at MCC Theater in New York. Los Angeles audiences can get a preview of that show when Creel performs at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood on July 24th.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: In 2003 you were in Stephen Sondheim’s Bounce [later renamed Road Show] in Chicago and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. What did you learn from that experience of working on Sondheim’s material that perhaps informs the work you’re now bringing to Into the Woods? 

What comes to mind is that I watched the greatest, at that time, living musical theater composer and arguably the greatest living producer director of our musical theater time: Hal Prince. I watched them in the mud. I got to watch them trying to make the lotus blossom. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t successful. Obviously it wasn’t commercially successful, but it was bumpy. 

I did this very foolish innocently enough thing of deciding that they must come out of the womb formed. These ideas must just be hatched in brilliance. And I was like, Oh yeah, this moment isn’t really that great. Sondheim can write something that’s really not that great. And then Sondheim goes, “This is really not that great. How do I make this great or I can do this here and do this, and then watch it become something that went to the next level.” To see that in front of you is very humbling and an encouraging and freeing experience. 

How would you compare the process of working on a musical with Stephen Sondheim to working on one of his most successful musicals, arguably his most successful musical, without him any longer?

It was sad, I have to say. James Lapine, on the first day of rehearsal, we all circled up and everybody and there was a space next to him. He said, “It’s odd to me that there’s a space. I feel like Steve made a space for himself. This is a bittersweet moment because we’re all here to lift this beautiful piece up and I’m honored that you’re doing this piece that I wrote with Steve, and Steve would be standing next to me.”

This is sounds woo woo, but I think Steve was guiding us from the other side. I still feel a presence. It’s a rock concert response to our show in a way that James is like, I don’t understand what’s happening. It’s crazy. I think that is definitely a testament to the show being so beloved for almost 40 years. But I also think we were guided. I think there was a spirit on the other side. The best spirit of all going, “I’m going to help.” It got into all of our hearts. 

When I saw the show at the St. James in New York in December it looked to me like everybody was having the time of their lives, which is not easy to do as an actor. How much of it is the fact that you are all genuinely having a good time?

It is really hard to fake joy in that way. Even if you’re doing a really good job of it, the audience can sniff it out. I’m personally having the time of my life. I did not expect to be a part of this. I was going to go watch my best friend Sara [Bareilles who was the original Baker’s Wife] in the concert at City Center. And then [director] Lear deBessonet called me and was like, “Hey, would you ever consider coming in?” The first time my ego was like, I don’t want to play that part. I want to be the baker. And then I thought about it. Let’s just do the job. I need the health insurance. I’ll have a good time. I’ll get to hang out with Sara again. We had such a good time doing Waitress for that small amount of time together [in 2019]. Here I am, over a year later, still getting to tell the story across the country. We are literally still having fun and I can’t believe this leg of it is going to be done in six weeks. It’s nuts. We’re very sad to let it go. 

Many of you who appeared in this production on Broadway have come together to continue telling this story. That is very rare these days for so many cast members to take a show on the road. Why do you think the mold was broken for Into the Woods? 

I think the world has changed since what we went through. The pandemic changed me. Certainly I can speak for myself of just really appreciating what you have in a new way. I just don’t think we were ready to let it go. What a gift! This just dropped in my lap. Personally, I could save money. I could work. I could see the country. I could take a breath from everything that we’ve been through. I think that story sort of whispered through the building. Gavin’s going to go and hey, you think about going on? Let me tell you why I’m going. When does this ever happen? We could actually all go together. Our show was definitely closing [in New York] because New York, New York needed a theater. We had to close, but we didn’t feel ready to be finished. 

I think one of the one of the main things that Sondheim wanted to get across with this particular work, and he said so in an interview around the time of the release of the film, was that the message of Into the Woods is about community responsibility. There’s obviously a sense of community within Broadway. There’s a sense of community within this company. Do you think that this musical offers any insight into how we perhaps can better serve ourselves by coming together as a community in our regular lives? 

Yes. I think it’s two parts, to be honest. The whole thing starts with “I wish, more than anything.” If we can acknowledge that everybody wants something for themselves then we can see the shared community in that fact. How wonderful it would be if we could help each other get what each other wants. And this musical lays that out so beautifully.

The other I was going to say is when you said that about community, no one is alone. On the surface it seems like it means I’m with you. But also I’m with you in helping you get what you want. We can work together to help you achieve your dreams. There’s always a force outside of you that’s greater than you, that is against you in some way. The giant isn’t bad. “Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what’s right. You decide what’s good.” The giant is just trying to do what they can to survive. We can see the community in that statement, which is what I think the show really illuminates. It means more than just you’re not alone, as in you don’t have to be sad and lonely. It means you’re not alone in your desires, your dreams, your wishes, your hopes. I’ve got them, too. So let’s both dream together.

You’ve been working on Confessions of a Museum Novice for a while and you’ve been performing it a concert version off and on in different places. How has the work evolved since you first started sharing this with the world? 

It continues to evolve. Originally I was invited to have a meeting with Limor Tomer and Erin Flannery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who run the Live Art series. They said, would you like to come to the Met? We’ll give you a membership card at the museum. Look around. And when you find a piece of art or pieces, anything that you’re inspired by within the building, let us know and we’ll help you produce a show for one night at the Met. I’d never been there. I was an imposter syndrome times a million. I’m not a huge fine art person. Museums tend to overwhelm me, but I went for it. 

We ended up doing it in October of 2021 with a fully masked audience for two shows and it was electric. I have to turn this into a musical. I have to expand this a bit, too. I still play Gavin Creel. It’s still about a man who’s having a sort of a midlife meltdown who for some reason called the Metropolitan Museum of Art to try to figure his life out by walking through and figuring out what’s going on. It’s about love and life and art and loneliness and ultimately forgiveness and love again.

What we’re going to do in L.A. is we’re going to do the first 45 minutes of the show to give people a taste. And then we’re going to do some covers, theater and pop covers to give people some stuff they know.

Let’s go back 17 years ago to when your album GoodTimeNation came out. You have a song on there about what Might Still Happen. What has you most optimistic about what might still happen to you personally and professionally?

I wrote that as a kid 20 years ago on the roof of my studio apartment; 250 square feet. Some of the hardest and happiest times I’ve had. One of the best lessons of living in New York in 250 square feet is you have everything you need in that much space. Anything past that is icing. I have a two bedroom apartment, thank God now, but I could live in 200 square feet if you made me. I might sell it all and just chill. My buddy Robbie Roth, who I made my first two records with, we would crawl up to the roof illegally because the fire door didn’t shut. We would sit up there, put a blanket down and pick around with melodies. That song is ultimately about heartbreak, but it’s hope.

It was a call to my future self. It makes me emotional to think about the idea of being a young person and feeling really sad but saying there’s good stuff coming, keep going. You can’t know the future, so just sit in the present. Just be. Get yourself a beer, get a friend, get a guitar, get on the roof, look out over the city. There’s possibility everywhere.

Not to bring it back to Into the Woods, but I was really broken before the pandemic, through the pandemic and after. It was just a terrible time in my life. Into the Woods was like this beautiful life raft that not only buoyed me out of storm, but it continued to lift me and set me down on solid ground. I will never forget this time that I’ve had and I just hope that we pack the house at the Ahmanson because I want to go out with a bang.

To see the full interview with Gavin Creel, please go here.

Main Photo: Gavin Creel in the Broadway production of Into the Woods (Photo by Matthew Murphy and Ryan Zimmerman for MurphyMade/Courtesy Center Theatre Group)

The post REST IN PEACE: Gavin Creel: “It’s Really Hard to Fake Joy” appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Conductor Elim Chan has had remarkable success since being named the first woman to win the Donatella Flick Conducting competition ten years ago. This month Chan is realizing two big dreams: to open the classical music season at the Hollywood Bowl and to conduct the First Night of the Proms in London at Royal Albert Hall. Not too bad for a young girl who years ago was inspired by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.

The July 9th concert at the Hollywood Bowl finds Chan conducting the same piece that led to her winning the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. The July 19th First Night of the Proms concert will open with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks Overture and close with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

Earlier this week I spoke with Chan about these two concerts and what they mean to her, her evolving relationship with Scheherazade and what new dreams she has as she moves forward with her career.

What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Chan, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Could the young girl who responded so passionately to the image of Mickey Mouse conducting in Fantasia have ever imagined these two big concerts for herself?

Absolutely not. Even though as a young girl I think I had quite a crazy imagination. Of course I have dreams. But this kind of dream, the Hollywood Bowl, it’s already very cool. And to think I’m going to start the classical season! Then the Proms is basically like a unicorn. To conduct the Proms on the first night – the biggest summer festival in the UK and famous one in the world? It’s more than a dream come true.

What was your first experience conducting the Proms, and how do you think this one will be different? 

The first time that I conducted the Proms was an amazing experience because the Royal Albert Hall, it’s a very different concert hall. You really feel that you’re in sort of like a stadium. You have the audience standing at your feet and you can literally touch them or they can touch you. The feeling of how the audience cheered for you and they really are so involved. That’s really quite something I never experienced anywhere else. That was such a huge honor. I felt like a rock star.

To know that this concert was like one of the first ones to be sold out; the tickets were gone the moment it went out there. I don’t know, I’m going to just stay open and let this just be a surprise.

We often hear about how conductors think about music. What do you think is unique about the way you hear music – whether you’re reading a score or when you’re conducting an orchestra? 

I think that’s a very interesting question. Conducting is so cool in the sense that I have this concept in my head, this story, a narrative or some sort of sound soundscape the moment I start opening a score. It starts. I can hear it. I can play it on the piano and then it builds this world that I’m hearing or envisioning.

When I’m on stage with the orchestra, I have to compare what I’m hearing with this vision in my head and then have to bring it closer. Sometimes, actually, what I’m hearing is nicer than what I thought. It’s like a constant synergy of both worlds. It’s, in a way, like a tango, right? Of course, I’m the conductor and I want to mold it in the end that we arrive at the vision that we’re all happy about.

I interviewed conductor Simone Young four years ago, and she told me that, “Everything comes from the written page. I spend hours and hours studying scores, but also studying manuscripts. References. I want to get as much info about the thought process and the work process.” Do you think there can be a definitive understanding of a composer’s thought process? Or will it always be open to interpretation?

I think the second. I also do the same. I want to really put myself back in the time, in the context. This is really, I feel, like investigative work. There’s like a crime scene. Something happened. Okay, what really happened? You can collect evidence. You can talk to people who think they saw the thing happened. But each perspective is different. Then collecting all these things and then I try to build an interpretation of what exactly happened because no one actually really knows. And I think this is so cool. That’s the beauty of it, that there’s really not one right way. We’re all interpreters in that sense.

At the Proms, you’re going to be conducting probably one of the top five best known compositions in the history of the world: Beethoven’s Fifth. With a work so familiar to audiences and so familiar to the musicians, how do you think your approach to it might be the only one that you, as an individual, could have imagined? 

Well, there’s only one Elim, right? In that sense. It will be my interpretation of it. One thing that came out from this whole crazy time, and we’re still in some crazy times, is that I really want to give this life experience to everyone who is there. That you need to be there to experience that because it only happens once.

Beethoven Five is so familiar. And the audience thinks they know, too. The world is so messed up with wars happening everywhere and we get to make music and to celebrate first night of the Proms. The beginning of Beethoven Five is like a moment to really express something that fuels it to become a Beethoven Five that is fresh and happening now.

How often do you surprise yourself in the middle of a concert?

A lot. I laugh actually when mistakes happen because that shocks everyone. I love those very raw like a minute or two and everyone is like, wait, what? Oh no. And everyone’s awareness is insane, right? I love these waking up moments.

That sounds like a jazz musician, not a classical musician. Because a jazz musician moves past the mistakes and who knows where it leads them? I bring that up because I was very surprised to see a list of the five most important works for you and Bill Evans is on your list. What inspires you most about Bill Evans and do you see a way in which the way Bill Evans created and performed music that inspires the way you create and perform music?

He’s such an immense pianist and musician and it’s not ever the same. This is something I really want to take into a Beethoven Five or a Clara Schumann or Handel, Bruckner. I’m going to just take this opportunity and just really bring in that spirit. I think we can learn so much from all the other genres.

Note: First Night of the Proms includes performances of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto by Isata Kanneh-Mason and Bruckner’s Psalm.

You’ll be leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Music director Gustavo Dudamel is set to leave soon. if the L.A. Philharmonic came to you and asked if you would like to be the next music director, what would be the first thing that you would think? 

That’s another unicorn. And then I’ll start doing a happy dance. I will probably be like, unbelievable. You know what? If that happens…thank you and let’s get to work. I want to be as ready as possible They are one of the most adventurous, curious, orchestras institutions in the world. They take chances, they take risks, and they can afford to do it. So yeah. Let’s see.

At the Hollywood Bowl you will be revisiting Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. How was your relationship to this particular composition evolved in the ten years since your winning the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition?

The piece has a very special place in my heart. It’s the piece that jump started my career. Ten years ago I was the first woman to win the competition in London. And now ten years later, I’m still the only woman to have done that. And I’m like, hey girls, where are you guys?

Talking about the piece itself, it’s literally about a woman having to stand up for herself every night telling stories, and if she doesn’t tell a good story, she gets killed. I’ve done this piece again and again and I really feel very like I identify myself with her – Scheherazade. Each time I do the piece I get more brave. I’m more convinced that we really need to be strong. My interpretation is like a steady slow cook. It takes more flavor. Every time I go back to it, I still see something new and I want to try something new so I can tell the story in different ways. I really love the fact that this piece lends itself for that. 

Rimsky-Korsakov is quoted as having said, “I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world’s music, and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.” Do you agree that all modern music, even today, owes everything to Bach? 

Wow, what a statement! I think a lot of it, yes. I always believe that we all need to actually understand what happened in the past, especially Bach as such a master. To really understand what the traditions [were] that came before. Then you can decide to keep it or break it. All the greats follow Bach. If you look back, Brahms, Beethoven, everyone basically comes from there.

We started the conversation by my asking you if you could have imagined opening the classical season at the Hollywood Bowl and then opening the BBC Proms in London. That seems like a dream come true. But everybody has to have new dreams as well. What dreams do you have beyond what this July is going to offer you?

My dream is to find an orchestra, a place where we can do some crazy things and grow together, fly together. Another dream of mine actually will come true is that I finally can do some opera. I came from voice choirs and so I love theater, I love drama. So what’s better than actually opera to have all these elements coming together? This is like in two years. There are crazy dreams to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, all this stuff. Sometimes I put a dream and then things like the First Night of the Proms comes in. So in a way, I’m like, life – come on, surprise me.

To view the full interview with Elim Chan, please go here.

All Photos: Elim Chan (Photo ©Simon Pauly/Courtesy for artists)

The post Maestra Elim Chan and Her Big July appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

There was a clear and easy top pick this week. It is:

JAZZ VOCALS:  APRIL – April Varner – Cellar Music Group

What do Vernon Duke, Pat Metheny, Frank Ocean, Prince and Simon & Garfunkel have in common? They all wrote songs invoking the fourth month of the year. Vocalist/songwriter April Varner can add her name to songwriters inspired by the month best known for April Fool’s Day and paying taxes. She wrote the songs that open and close April.

You would be a fool not to listen to this gorgeous album. Varner won the 2023 Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition. Listening to this album, that’s not a surprise. Her ability to give full emotion and meaning to each lyric and pair that with a beautiful vocal performance is incredible.

Joining Varner for this celebration of all things April are vocalist Benny Bennack III; pianist Caelan Cardello; guitarist Russell Malone; bassist Reuben Rogers; drummer Miguel Russell and saxophonist Dayna Stephens. The album was produced by Ulysses Owens Jr.

Here are my other selections for New In Music This Week: June 28^th

CLASSICAL:  DVOŘÁK  & TCHAIKOVSKY – John-Henry Crawford/San Francisco Ballet Orchestra/Martin West – Orchid Classics

Perhaps you’ve heard cellist Crawford on Christopher O’Reilly’s From the Top on NPR. That’s where I first heard him. He’s since recorded three previous albums centered on works by Brahms, Ligeti, Piazzolla, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Villa-Lobos amongst others.

This new album opens with his performance of the 8 Variations on a Rococo Theme by Tchaikovsky. The album closes with Dvořák’s Concerto in B minor for cello and orchestra.

Crawford has said in interviews that he has performed the Rococo (as he says cellists like to say) many times before getting into the studio. That experience pays off in this recording which finds him easily navigating the challenging parts of Tchaikovsky’s work and making beautiful music of them.

I’m not the biggest fan of Dvořák’s work, but I did enjoy this recording of the B minor concerto.

CLASSICAL: JOE HISAISHI IN VIENNA: SYMPHONY No. 2; VIOLA SAGA – Joe Hisaishi/Wiener Symphoniker – Deutsche Grammophon

Hisaishi is best known as the composer of film scores for filmmaker Hayao iyazaki. This album features his 3-movement symphony and 2-movement saga.

The symphony runs just under 38 minutes. The Viola Saga runs 21-1/2 minutes with Antoine Tamestit as the soloist. Both works are enjoyable and do serve as a departure from his film scores. 

Hisaishi conducts the Wiener Symphoniker in this live recording.

CLASSICAL:  WAVES (Music by Satie) – Bruce Liu – Deutsche Grammophon

Pianist Liu beautifully plays Satie’s music. In fact, he beautifully plays it twice: once on a grand piano and once on an upright piano. I’m not sure of the thinking behind recording the 6 Gnossiennes twice other than to inform listeners of the difference between two different pianos.

If you love Satie, you’ll enjoy Liu’s performances. You’ll just have to decide which piano you think sounds better.

JAZZ:  GRATITUDE & GUIDANCE – Zachary Finnegan – Shifting Paradigm Records

Not many people take nine years to create their debut album, but that persistence and patience paid off in trumpeter/composer Finnegan’s Gratitude & Guidance. I’m already interested to hear what a second album might offer – which hopefully won’t be another nine years away.

Eight of the nine tracks on Gratitude & Guidance were composed by Finnegan. The lone cover is Invitation written by Bronislaw Kaper. In the jazz world he’s best known for having composed On Green Dolphin Street. This song comes from the 1950 film A Life of Her Own.

Joining Finnegan (who arranged all the music and also plays flugelhorn) are Matt Gold on guitar; Camile Mennitte Pereyra on drums; Ethan Philion on bass, Leonard Simpson III on alto and soprano saxophones and Julius Tucker on piano. A string quartet joins for three tracks on the album.

JAZZ:  SMALL MEDIUM LARGE – SML – International Anthem

SML is a five-person ensemble that includes bassist Anna Butterss; synthesist Jeremiah Chiu; saxophonist Josh Johnson; percussionist Booker Stardum and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann.

From that line-up alone, you know this isn’t going to be an old-school approach. This is improvisation and some serious funk. It is also a recording made as much in its editing as it was in individual performances.

The result is nothing short of mesmerizing. Small Medium Large is part of the next generation of “jazz” music. As such it gives one complete optimism about what might be next.

JAZZ:  SANYAS – Steve Turre – Smoke Sessions Records

For almost 40 years you have welcomed trombonist/composer Steve Turre into your homes. Since 1985 he has been a member of the Saturday Night Live Band. Beyond that he’s been a innovative jazz trombonist and composer for more than 50 years.

This album was recorded live at New York’s Smoke Jazz Club. It features five tracks (one is listed as a bonus track). There are two of Turre’s composition on this thoroughly enjoyable album: Sanyas and Wishful Thinking. There is a cover of Lee Morgan’s Mr. Kenyatta and two standards: All The Things You Are and These Foolish Things.

Joining Turre are tenor saxophonist Ron Blake, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, pianist Isaiah J. Thompson, drummer Lenny White and bassist Buster Williams.

This is Turre’s first live-album and it’s a damn good one!

JAZZ VOCALS: TIME AND AGAIN – Eliane Elias – Candid Records

Fans of Brazilian jazz and jazz vocals have long known about Elias. She’s been recording since 1985’s Amanda which found her paired with Randy Brecker. She’s recorded albums of music by Chet Baker, Bill Evans and Jobim.  

On Time And Again the songs are all hers. Sung in both English and Portuguese, these songs bring with them her trademark vocals with terrific arrangements true to her Brazilian roots.

I love Brazilian jazz vocals, so this album was a lot of fun and brought me back to my one trip to Rio de Janeiro.  My favorite tracks are Falo Do Amor, A Volta and Making Honey. This is an album full of Carioca spirit.

MUSICALS: THE GREAT GATSBY – Original Broadway Cast – Sony Masterworks Broadway

There are two current musicals* that are adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. The first is this musical now playing at the Broadway Theatre, which has music and lyrics by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen (Paradise Square) and a book by Kait Kerrigan.

The show received only one Tony nomination for Linda Cho’s costumes. She won. But audiences appear to be won over by the performances of the cast: Jeremy Jordan as Jay Gatsby; Eva Noblezada as Daisy Buchanan and Noah J. Ricketts as Nick Carraway.

It’s hard to get a sense of the full experience of this show from the album, but musical fans already know how talented Jordan and Noblezada are from their previous shows. Rickets absolutely impresses on this recording.

 *The other musical waiting to see the fate of this musical was written by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett and had its premiere recently at A.R.T. in Boston. It plays there through August 3rd.

That’s it for New In Music This Week: June 28^th.

Enjoy the music!

Enjoy your weekend!

Main Photo: Part of the album cover art for April by April Varner

The post NEW IN MUSIC THIS WEEK: JUNE 28th appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Here are the twelve concerts I think warrant a journey to the Hollywood Bowl this summer:

JULY FOURTH FIREWORKS SPECTACULAR WITH HARRY CONNICK, JR. – July 2^nd – July 4^th

If you’ve never experienced a fireworks show at the Hollywood Bowl, you clearly don’t know what you’re missing. This year’s headliner for the annual July 4^th concerts is Harry Connick, Jr.

His most recent album centered on songs of faith, but I would expect this concert to focus more on the material he’s best known for which are jazz standards and songs from the Great American Songbook.

Thomas Wilkins leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in these three concerts.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

For those not in the Los Angeles area, he’ll be performing at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego on July 6^th; Mountain Winery in Saratoga, CA on July 9^th and 10^th and at Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville, WA on July 12^th and 13^th. These are the only dates on his schedule right now.

ALL- GERSHWIN – July 11^th

Who could ask for anything more than pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, opera’s Isabel Leonard and Broadway star Tony Yazbeck in an evening of songs and music by George Gershwin?

The program opens with the Cuban Overture and is then followed by Variations on “I Got Rhythm.“ Leonard and Yazbeck conclude the first half with selections of Gershwin’s songs.

The second act features Thibaudet playined Rhapsody in Blue and closes with An American In Paris.

Lionel Bringuier conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

MAESTRO OF THE MOVIES: THE MUSIC OF JOHN WILLIAMS AND MORE – July 12^th – July 14^th

This annual celebration of all things John Williams will be a little different. Yes, Williams curated the program utilizing his own music and many classic scores he loves from the Golden Age, but he will not be appearing this year.

Williams had to cancel all upcoming appearances due to a health issue “from which he is expected to make a full recovery.” Does that mean light sabers won’t be at the ready for the inevitable selections of music from Star Wars? Of course not. 

David Newman, who regularly conducts the first half of these concerts each year, will be conducting the full program.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

BIG BAND NIGHT – July 17^th

If you love large ensemble jazz music, this concert is for you. The evening opens with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra (who have made countless appearances at the Hollywood Bowl).

Next up is The Count Basie Orchestra who will feature vocalist Nnenna Freelon. 

The headliner is the Maria Schneider Orchestra which is celebrating its 30^th anniversary. Earlier this year Maria Schneider released a 3-lp vinyl box set entitled Decades. You can’t stream that recording, you can only get it here. But you can hear this incredible artist and her musicians live. This is her only US appearance until September.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

STRAVINSKY & KHACHATURIAN – July 30^th

I’ve written before how Aram Khachaturian’s music isn’t performed often enough. As they did in the Walt Disney Concert Hall this season, the LA Philharmonic is breathing new life into his work in this program that features the composer’s Violin Concerto and the Spartacus Suite No. 2.  Martin Chalifour is the soloist for the concerto.

The concert closes with the 1919 version of Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite. Kevin John Edusei conducts.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

PROKOFIEV & SHOSTAKOVICH – August 6^th

One of my top five piano concerti of the entire repertoire is being performed by Denis Kozhukhin in this concert. It is Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26. (My favorite recording of it is by Martha Argerich.)

The second half of the program is Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. The work was completed the same year that Joseph Stalin died and is widely interpreted as the composer’s commentary on the brutality of the Soviet government during Stalin’s reign. It’s a big and powerful symphony.

Ryan Bancroft leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

HERBIE HANCOCK HEAD HUNTERS 50^th – August 14^th

Where were you on October 26, 1973? Maybe you remember the release of Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters which is considered amongst the best jazz-fusion/jazz-funk albums of all time.

Watermelon Man may not be a title recognize, but I guarantee you the music has burrowed its way into your soul. 

This is the ONLY reunion of Hancock with the surviving members of that record:  drummer Harvey Mason; saxophonist Bennie Maupin and percussionist Bill Summers.  Playing bass is Marcus Miller as original bassist Paul Jackson passed away in 2021.

The original four-track album runs less than 45 minutes. Which means there will be a whole lot more music performed by Hancock and his bandmates.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

THE ELEMENTS WITH JOSHUA BELL – August 15^th

Joshua Bell commissioned five composers to write individual movements based on the elements: Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Space.  Those composers are Kevin Puts, Edgar Meyer, Jennifer Higdon, Jake Heggie and Jessie Montgomery.

Bell performs the work with Rodolfo Barráez conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Also on the program are Aaron Copland’s El Salón México, which opens the concert and Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story  which closes the concert.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

SARA BAREILLES WITH THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL ORCHESTRA – August 17^th

What at one point years ago might have seemed like a pop concert, is now pure heaven for musical theater lovers. Sara Bareilles is a three-time Tony Award nominee having received two nominations for Best Original Score (Waitress in 2016 and SpongeBob SquarePants in 2018) and for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for the 2023 revival of Into the Woods.

Of course, she’ll perform music from throughout her career and this is her only concert on her schedule until late September.

But wait, there’s more. Tony Award winner Renée Elise Goldsberry (Hamilton) will open the show.

Thomas Wilkins conducts the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

THE RITE OF SPRING – August 22^nd

The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky is one of classical music’s most important and enduring works. Hearing this monumental work outside is reason enough to see this concert. But fans of Stravinsky’s music are in for a full evening of his genius.

Teddy Abrams, Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra, conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a concert that opens with Stravinsky’s arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner. His Circus Polka follows and the first half closes with Leila Josefowicz performing his Violin Concerto. Then the main attraction is on tap for the second half of the program.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

DUDAMEL LEADS BEETHOVEN 9^th – September 10^th

Not sure what else anyone needs to know beyond Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. But here goes:

The soloists for this concert are bass Dashon Burton; mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey; tenor Anthony León; countertenor Key’mon Murrah and soprano Hera Kyesang Park. The Los Angeles Master Chorale also performs.

The concert opens with Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

DUDAMEL AND THE STARS OF OPERA – September 12^th

I couldn’t tell you the last time tenor Jonas Kaufmann performed in Los Angeles, but I can tell you the next time he will – at this concert where he will be joined by soprano Diana Damrau.

The two will perform selected arias and duets.

The concert opens with Verdi’s Overture to I vespri sicilliani which is followed by the ever-popular Intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana by Mascagni. Respighi’s Pines of Rome closes the concert.

Gustavo Dudamel leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

For tickets and more information, please go here.

Those are the 12 Hollywood Bowl Concerts Not to Miss in my opinion. What concerts are on the top of your list? Let me know in the comments.

Main Photo: Hollywood Bowl 2023 (Photo by Craig L. Byrd)

The post 12 Hollywood Bowl Concerts Not To Miss This Summer appeared first on Cultural Attaché.