Long Beach Opera’s timing couldn’t have been better. Linda Fairstein, the attorney who prosecuted the five men, wrote an op-ed defending her actions in response to Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us on Netflix. The increased scrutiny she faced as a result of that documentary has lead to her resigning from the boards of several charities, being dropped by Dutton who published crime novels she wrote and her agency, ICM Partners, dropped her as well.

The Central Park attack on Trisha Meili occurred in 1989. Intense police interrogation by officers with the New York Police Department lead Antron McCray, 15; Kevin Richardson, 14; Yusef Salaam, 15; Raymond Santana, 14; and Korey Wise, 16 to admit to the crime. In 2002, after an admission of guilt by serial rapist Matias Reyes (plus the DNA evidence), the wrongful convictions were overturned.

Donald Trump, who is depicted in The Central Park Five, published full-page ads in several New York newspapers in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the five youths. When the City of New York settled with the five men, Trump railed against the payout as a sign of incompetence. As recently as this week he still made comments about the guilt of the five men.

Davis has written several operas and seems keenly interested in true stories. Amongst his operas are X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Tania (about Patty Hearst) and Amistad (about a slave uprising on board a ship.)

Derrell Acon plays Anton McCray, Bernard Holcomb plays Kevin Richardson, Cedric Berry plays Yusef Salaam, Orson Van Gay II plays Raymond Santana and Nathan Granner plays Korey Wise. The production is directed by Andreas Mitisek. The conductor is Leslie Dunner.

This is perfect story for an opera. There’s a crime, five young men are falsely accused and imprisoned, there’s the real perpetrator, a media circus and the man who would be President ignoring science and confessions to prop himself up in the public eye.

For tickets go here.

Main Image:  Nathan Granner as Khorey Wise, Cedric Berry as Yusef Salaam, Derrell Acon as Antron McCray, Orson Van Gay as Raymond Santana, and Bernard Holcomb as Kevin Richardson

All photos by Keith Ian Polakoff/Courtesy of Long Beach Opera

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The first concert offers Sanchez performing the score to Birdman live at Royce Hall on Friday. On Saturday, Sanchez and his band Migration will perform at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel. I recently spoke with Sanchez about these two concerts and also about his Grammy-nominated record, Bad Hombre.

The title of your most recent album doesn’t require much time to figure out the inspiration. How can non-verbal music make political statements, particularly in our culture that seems to respond more to imagery?

I think it is very capable of doing that. I think the way you name the project or a specific tune can give the listener a really good idea of where you were at when you created it and what was going through your mind. I’m surprised not more people are doing that to be honest. Jazz musicians tend to be some of the most liberal people and I don’t see that much stuff coming out that’s reflecting on the current situation.

There’s a line in Birdman that seems to apply here. “People, they love blood. They love action. Not this talking, depressing, philosophical bullshit.”

To me it goes beyond artists. It’s civil duty at this point. As an American citizen, as a Mexican citizen, as a human being, just seeing what’s being circulated rhetorically, actively and politically. What ICE is doing to people who are just living their lives and were not any harm to society, but the other way around, they were contributing. I have seen things in the news of people in rural America that were surprised that their friends were deported. They had no idea they were illegal and they owned a restaurant and they were sad – even though they agree with the immigration policies of Donald Trump. It’s great, until it impacts you directly.

The line to or from Birdman to Bad Hombre seems short. How did your Birdman experience inspire Bad Hombre from a musical point of view?

Birdman actually informed Bad Hombre and my previous record, The Meridian Suite, which we will be playing in Los Angeles. The way it informed Meridian Suite is it’s a very cinematic piece that’s conceived as a continuous composition – we start and we don’t stop until the end. It was my attempt to write a musical novel. I had a chance to develop the characters over an extended period of time instead of ten different characters in ten different songs. I love developing a story in a more concise way. The characters have the melodies, motifs and rhythms that are played through the piece.

Bad Hombre was informed by the impact that I realized drums could have for people. Bad Hombre is very visual in a way. It’s very cinematic and has a lot of texture. I wanted to continue on that road, but make my own version. Birdman I was trying to satisfy director Alejandro Iñárritu’s vision. This time my only limitation was my imagination. Technologically speaking I learned all this new stuff. A lot of things that happened in the album were by mistake. Trial and error and “what happens if I push this button?” I kind of enjoyed that process because it was very intuitive and it sparked my imagination in very different ways than my conventional albums.

Was not being nominated for an Oscar for Birdman a blessing in disguise?

I’m not sure what would have happened if I had been nominated. But I’m sure the controversy of the elimination of the score [it was disqualified because of the number of minutes of source music also used] was great publicity. I don’t think they would have let me win if I had been nominated, but it made it so the score and my name were being circulated.

You’ve spoken of that score as being an improvised experience. Fans wanting to hear note-for-note the same music in the film might be in for a surprise. How much do you vary each performance?

They vary quite a bit. I try to maintain the dramatic impact of what was created. I know the movie so well that I take my liberties. I wish I could do the movie again because now I know it better. Every performance is different, but as a jazz musician I react organically to what is going on around me.

What do you and the audiences get from live performance?

To me music is the most interesting mind-enhancing drug. It’s fascinating that you can get ten or 10,000 people in a field and all they are doing is absorbing sound waves. That makes you feel something. That makes everyone feel something different. To me that’s incredibly fascinating – the nature of music and what happens to people.

Through music, and it’s been done many times with social change and empathy, the possibilities are endless. I’m getting involved in a project called Tiny Walls. That is going to bring musicians that live in the United States to the US/Mexico border and we’re going to perform with musicians on the other side of the border to make it obvious that walls do not exist when it comes to humanity, empathy, art and culture. It’s just one human relating to another human. I think art and music are some of the most powerful tools at our disposal.

Photo Credits: Main photo courtesy of CAP-UCLA, all other photos by Fernando Aceves and courtesy of AntonioSanchez.net.

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Beginning tonight and running through Sunday, Finley will be performing The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery at REDCAT. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Finley about that show, the state of the world and her passion for performing.

Your new show is very topical about multiple subjects including Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. You first performed it over a year ago. So much has happened since that time, does your show change to reflect all that’s happened since you first created it?

That’s such a good question. I did feel this was going to be happening. The performance is not just about Trump. The beginning is where I’m performing as a unicorn and there is a lot of symbolism with the unicorn. But it’s really about whiteness and this mythical landscape in belief and it’s very funny. It’s about liberalness and whiteness and discomfort with items that are meaningless. Like not getting the frisee lettuce at the farmer’s market. I’m really looking at the gratitude and gender disparity of Hillary Clinton and her gratefulness and thankfulness, which I just can’t stand. The gendered way of being that I think helped her lose the election.

What is the Donald Trump component of the show?

I go into the psychosexual dynamics between Hillary and Donald and how we view those. I perform as Trump, but I’m not performing him. Alec Baldwin as Trump is very polite. It’s almost like a soap opera version of a doctor on General Hospital or something. My work is much more unhinged and I expose the projection within his language so everyone knows and I go into the psychosexual language like deleted e-mails, deleted ‘male,’ unpacking language in those kind of ways. It also has a lot of humor in it as well. You aren’t going to have a moment of tears with Saturday Night Live. In my work you’ll be laughing, but you’ll be having an intensity of an understanding. It’s not just satire.

What is the state of the arts in the states today?

I think it’s a very good question. I think that people are very concerned about the arts, but they are more concerned, I think, about every day you just don’t know what’s happening in the world. You wake up and you don’t know, are we still here? I’m so happy to be at REDCAT, which is funded and supported by the community and a foundation, but I have a concern about younger artists being able to be funded and creating work. I’m very excited about work going on on the Internet where you don’t have to wait to be accepted or recognized or written about and that to me is exciting.

In a culture where 140-character tweets define political policy and reflect attention spans, what are the challenges for you in reaching people who think brevity is a sign of genius?

I find when people come to my performance they usually want to be there and they are focused and they still love the live experience. I think people are hungry for the live experience. I know I am. I love being in a room with my fellow humans, being in this cultural moment and I think people still yearn for that. You can’t get that on your phone or just Google it. I love performing and that moment in the celebration of human activity. I get nervous and my whole body I’m very anxious about it. I love that physicality that happens in my body, it means I’m alive and I’m thinking of the beauty of people coming to my show, getting dressed up, meeting people. I think my performance celebrates that because I’m not a tacit performer. We are going to be with this asshole for another three years. We might as well use our First Amendment right as long as we have it and go in the tradition of theatre and unpack what’s going on and that’s what I’m trying to do.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Carolina Restepo at La Mama Experimental Theater Club; Photo by Hunter Canning; Photo courtesy of Theo Cote at La Mama Experimental Theater Club

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But that doesn’t mean she can’t voice what’s on her mind. On Tuesday, September 29, she will take the stage of the Valley Performing Arts Centerwith family friend Dan Guerrero to talk about her life, her career, and the music that inspired her. Here Ronstadt not only looks back on the diversity of her career but has plenty to say about the disease she’s battling and the politics that inhibit a possible cure.

Looking over your career, it’s safe to say you can’t be pigeonholed into one category. Was that a calculated approach or did you follow your instincts?
I hope you can’t. I’m a music fan, and if I heard different things that I admired greatly early enough, I tried to emulate that. If I didn’t hear it before I was ten, I couldn’t approach it with any authenticity—a visual artist friend said he could draw fish but couldn’t draw horses because he didn’t know horses. And I felt that way about music. Growing up in Tucson, I loved Mexican music and hoped I could sing it, but it was years before I could get aligned with a band and musicians and do the woodshedding I needed. Rock ‘n’ roll was on the radio, and I loved that. There was a reason why I made those choices though wildly diverse.

Is any of the work you’ve done—from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance to the Nelson Riddle-arranged What’s New to your hit songs—closer to who you are?
The Mexican music is closest to my heart. The first songs I heard were in Spanish. Those songs are so full of emotion and are so powerful. Mexicans value poetry above all else. The Aztecs felt poetry was essential for expressing any profound emotion. It was the most distilled way to express yourself. It’s a rich tradition. I love music from farmers living close to the land, and those songs are about that. Romance comes out of that concept.

Obviously your fans are going to be happy to see you on stage again, but what do these Q&As offer you personally?
It’s a chance to think about things in a different way. I get a lot of interesting questions from the audience. It’s an ongoing conversation with them. You get the benefit of hindsight, which is helpful. It will be based on my book Simple Dreams, and we have photos and videos from my career.

Given today’s emphasis on brand more than music, do you think the music industry was easier for you than it is for women today?
I think there’s plenty of music out there. Talent doesn’t leave the gene pool. The girl from Alabama Shakes [Brittany Howard] is a really, really good singer. I think Amy Winehouse was incredible. Adele is great. Taylor Swift writes great songs and is a great role model. She doesn’t have the Joni Mitchell voice, but she’s a good storyteller. It comes down to communication.

I don’t think it’s ever easy. You have to show up with something to say. It doesn’t matter how good a voice you have or how much talent, your message has to come across with startling clarity and resonate with the zeitgeist. It’s disturbing when I hear someone really good and the culture doesn’t pick up on it. The zeitgeist is so slow to Barack Obama, who is a person with great ability. The zeitgeist embraces a buffoon like Donald Trump. What’s happening to this culture that they talk about that? It’s disturbing that the idea that a Mexican national who is perfectly legal is getting beaten upbecause of Trump. It’s like the Weimar Republic beating up Jews in Germany. The harm can’t be undone.

How does your Parkinson’s influence your daily decisions?
Parkinson’s is about finding everything I can about stem cell research. Why don’t we have it? Making stem cells from your own cells and body fat. I don’t see anything wrong with fetal tissue. People who are desperately sick can’t use it. The Republicans have stopped that research and it’s really a shame. Stem cell research shows incredible promise for diseases like diabetes and cancer and spinal cord injuries. We have to have a sane, competent person in the White House, not a buffoon with the ability to use nuclear weapons.

Photography Courtesy: Facebook/LindaRonstadt

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