The first two times the Ian Judge production of Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet were performed by LA Opera, Kitty McNamee was the choreographer. It was her first time choreographing an opera. This year, the third time around for this production, McNamee is sitting in the director’s chair and serving as choreographer.

McNamee had her own dance company in Los Angeles: Hysterica which launched in the late 1990s. She’s choreographed many other opera (for LA Opera and other companies worldwide).

McNamee has also worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hollywood Bowl, Pasadena Playhouse and more.

Hopping into the director’s chair was both exciting and daunting for McNamee. Though she knew the production well, there were things she wanted to do to freshen it up. A serious re-working of the production wasn’t an option. She found the areas where she felt she could bring something new to this tragic story of star-crossed lovers.

McNamee discusses her journey on this production, the power of love stories where couples don’t end up together and whether she can see herself in her work in Romeo and Juliet. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with McNamee, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: Composer Charles Gounod is quoted as having said, “My opinion changes rapidly. One minute I can think it is very good and the next time I look at it, I see all the flaws and weaknesses therein.” How much does does that perspective reflect your experience as a choreographer and perhaps as an opera director now?

I think that resonates so profoundly with me. I mean, I could have written that myself particularly when there is an audience watching with you. You just feel so exposed because any little problem or shift in the flow, you take such responsibility for. It’s interesting because I can look at the archivals to give notes and I’m removed and it’s not people with me. I’m so much more comfortable. And you think, wow, this is really gorgeous production. I can see the strength and the beauty of it. But watching with an audience is really terrifying.

Is it more terrifying now that you’ve taken on the title of director?

Yes, because this is the first opera I’ve ever directed. Actually, Romeo and Juliet was the first opera that I’d ever choreographed. So the first time I was quite nervous. The second time, less so. But this feels right and feels like a great fit for me. But my palms were sweaty. 

There are certain restrictions on how much you can change an existing production. This one was originally directed by Ian Judge. You told San Francisco Classical Voice that you don’t have that much freedom except to “freshen it up.” How would you define freshening it up as this production looks compared to the two previous productions? 

That’s a great question. The set is as it is. I can’t change the set. I could adjust slightly, maybe the timing of transitions, but the set functions in a very specific way. I inherited that. Also, the score calls for when people enter the story, calls for who comes in and what happens. So that’s all fixed. But the nuancing of performances and making some choices. For instance, having Mercutio stay on stage after he dies. The Romeo and Mercutio, Duke [Kim] and Justin [Austin] are also friends, have worked together and they have a very dynamic chemistry. So I decided to keep him onstage.

I think my biggest impact is in the performance of of the singers and how I can perhaps add my my sense of drama, my physical interpretation of storytelling and utilize that to give their performances a little bit more freedom.

If you had the freedom to not do a 100% overhaul of this production, but say if you had the freedom to change 50% of it or more freedom than what you had, are there things that stand out to you as things that you would like to see different? 

I would like to somehow simplify the transitions. There’s quite a few. Towards the end it’s very challenging. So that would be my number one thing. I think the set is glorious. Maybe in the past we had more bodies on stage to help deal with things or the budget is not quite maybe what it was before. And I have to say a shout out to L.A. Opera, by the way, for continuing to make work and continuing to bring this extremely high level of talent to L.A. audiences.

This is your third collaboration, as we discussed, with L.A. Opera on Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. How have you seen your work grow in the 19 years since you first were involved with this production? 

I think the number one thing is that I trust my instincts more. I think that I’ve learned to trust my instincts. Within the noise of directing there are so many people asking you so many questions, which is very different from just choreographing. My assistant director, Erik Friedman, was incredibly helpful. He handled a lot of the task-oriented, schedule-oriented [work]. But also in the room he said, “You know, it’s your voice, it’s your vision that counts, Kitty. In this situation you’re the director.“

You’ve stated previously that you wanted this production to be experienced through Juliet’s eyes so there’s more agency of her story and her fate. How do you, as a director, make that something an audience is going to inherently feel or just think about?

Our Juliet is very powerful as a person. Amina is very powerful. She is insightful and not afraid to voice her opinion. When I encountered her, and she came in very late, I had to remind myself I wanted her opinion. I wanted her point of view. Duke is elegant, princely, wonderful and gentle. Like the epitome of a romantic lead. And I knew that trusting my gut was going to bring this fire, this sort of pressure to the role. So I just tried to listen to her and actually truly let her have agency, which I think comes through in the production.

The way it came through to me is and I am assuming this is part of the construction of the opera, is how quickly Juliet says yes to marrying Romeo. I just feel like only somebody who has that agency can say yes that quickly.

And is willing to risk everything for it. Particularly, for me, in the poison potion aria when she makes that decision. She’s willing to risk everything to not only fulfill her love for Romeo, but also not be given away. Not have her body given away. Not have her soul given away by her parents to someone. She had already committed to Romeo at that point.

Is it important for the audience to understand this?

Maybe I just assumed that they would. Sometimes I just make those assumptions. I just assume people would make that leap. She’s a heroine. In my mind it should have gone smoothly. This should’ve been a romantic comedy, but the parents had to get in there and society had to get in there. One thing that I really appreciated about Amina was that she’s able to pull off the lighter youthful tone in the beginning of the opera and she has the resonance and the depth of character to make the later moments plausible.

Why do you think we, as an audience, respond so strongly to stories where the couple does not end up together? Why is great love doomed to separation or death? 

It’s weird when you put it that way. It makes me want to cry. It does. And I’m not a crier. But there’s such hope for me in young people believing in love and believing in a peaceful existence. It’s so incredibly hopeful. I think that all of us wish that this never-ending hatred, this never-ending war… And people don’t know why it started, but it continues. How the young people today would love for peace and for love to rule. It’s manageable to see this tragedy in an opera. It’s done. We can walk away. It’s cathartic, but it begins with the hope and they start with the purity of love. So maybe it’s a way for humanity to sort of manage reality. 

Or get a sense of how fragile that purity of love really is. 

I thought about my first love. Other people’s first loves. How you just had every hope in the world that it would be this beautiful thing forever. Then reality smacks you in the face. The differences creep in and reality creeps in the day to day. Maybe this is just a way to hold on to that hope.

With Romeo and Juliet now open, does that fuel a desire to direct more operas? Was this so gratifying that you can’t wait for the next one?

Yes. Even though it was terrifying, I felt very much that I was in the right place. It felt so comfortable. I love music. I’ve always been obsessed with music. I’ve always been obsessed with storytelling. Usually it’s telling the story through movement and music with no text. Even though I’ve worked with opera singers as choreographer, it was different because I was working with them directly with their interpretation of these roles over time. You know, I loved it.

You’ve mentioned in previous interviews wanting to work with composers Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid, two women who I think are amazing composers and they’re also disruptors of what the form is. If you look at a couple of male directors, Yuval Sharon, James Darrah, they’re also disruptors. How important is it for you to either be a disruptor or to work with disruptors as you continue your work in opera?

It’s fascinating because my company was called Hysterica and we were in L.A. for ten solid years. But we were very much disruptors in the dance world. And all of the people that came out of my company are very much disruptors like Ryan Heffington and Nina McNeely, both of whom just won Emmys for work in a medium that ten, 15 years ago, would not have hired any of us. It’s kind of ironic that I’m in this very classical world given where I started. I was like a punk rock dance company. I feel like all of these startups are bringing me to the place where maybe I can do what I did in the dance world in the opera world.

How important is it now for you to take a risk yourself?

It’s very important because, I’m not going to lie, when I got the job, I was like, don’t fail. That’s all I kept thinking during the entire rehearsal [process]. Don’t fail. You hate to fail. I think my entire life has been open to risk. I have failed in the past and you suffer. But the joy of taking the risk is larger for me than if I didn’t take the risk and I turn the opportunity down. That is more of a failure for me. 

Martha Graham is quoted as saying, “Nothing is more revealing than movement.” What does your movement on stage, whether in Romeo and Juliet or anywhere else that people have seen your work, reveal about you?

First of all, I love Martha Graham. Some of my dancers from Hysterica days came to opening night. They said we can see your touch in this super-heightened format. They’re still human and you can feel the humanity in the way they’re moving. I think that’s really what drives me – human reaction.

And do you see yourself on the stage? Not just your work, but do you see aspects of yourself on that stage?

If I look back at my contemporary dance work, I’m like, my God. Looking back at it now, my whole psychology is on parade, right? I mean, I’m a romantic. I think that’s on display. My personal dream for that pure love is on display and my investment in that.

To watch the full interview with Kitty McNamee, please go here.

LA Opera’s production of Romeo and Juliet continues at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles through November 23rd. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Main Photo: Kitty McNamee (Photo by Nate Lusk/Courtesy KittyMcNamee.com)

The post Kitty McNamee Choreographs Her Move Into the Director’s Chair appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

“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.

Schubert now steps up for another challenge: the sole singing role in Kate Soper‘s Ipsa Dixit. Long Beach Opera is performing Ipsa Dixit at the Art Theater in Long Beach on June 8th and 9th. It’s a very difficult work that Soper wrote for herself to sing accompanied by three musicians on flute, percussion and violin.

For this production, director James Darrah is adding two dancers (Anna Souder and Leslie Andre Williams) from the Martha Graham Dance company performing choreography created by Janet Eilber.

There are also film elements from Carl Theodore Dreyer’s silent film classic The Passion of Joan of Arc. Christopher Rountree conducts.

Recently I spoke with Schubert about her passion for contemporary opera, taking over a role originally performed by composer Soper and finding the inspiration to tackle such complex roles. 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: You are a passionate advocate for new works and for contemporary classical music. What do you think are the greatest misconceptions about what new music is today?

I think one of the greatest misconceptions is that the audience won’t understand it or won’t respond to it, or especially that new audiences will not want to see it. Every time I do any new work I have people come up to me afterward that say, this was my first opera, or, this was my first time coming to see something like this. I didn’t know opera could be like this. I didn’t know that this kind of music existed. And they’re always really excited, just entranced by what they saw. 

You have worked with Kate Soper before on The Romance of the Rose. What do you most respond to in her work? 

I think an advantage that Kate has as a composer is that she knows what she wants and she’s very exact about what she writes and how she wants it in the score. Oftentimes she’ll write staging out. In The Romance of the Rose there was staging written in already. With Ipsa Dixit there’s like 30 pages or so of performance notes before the score, that have text and translations and notes about what certain figures might mean – in terms of the sound that you’re supposed to produce. Everything is written in there for you. 

But there is freedom for you as an artist to bring what you do to it as well, right? It’s not regimented.

There’s plenty of room for artistic interpretation as well. But she is very meticulous in the details of her work. More so, I think, than other composers that I’ve worked with. But yeah, there is still plenty of room for like, how do I want my face to look or what kind of a forte do I want to make this. It doesn’t have to be the exact same as everyone else’s or hers. She was the first one to perform this and the person who most performs it well.

That gives her an advantage as a composer because she is writing for her voice, which means she must know very well how to write for voice. 

I think she knows very well how to write for a lot of instruments. She does write really well for voice, but I think also she has like a unique instrument that she writes for specifically. As a soprano, I rarely have to go below a middle C, and she goes below middle C a lot because I think she has a very unique range where she can just belt out in her chest voice. I think the lowest note I have to go down to in this piece is a D flat below which I had never sung out loud before. Then the highest note is a high D, so it’s a very rangy piece.

You’re kind of trying to fit into the the box that she created for you. If maybe you’re used to kind of existing over here, well, for this piece you need to exist here. So you better figure it out.

If you were to describe Ipsa Dixit to people who have no idea what it is, how would you describe it?

I don’t know, because it’s not an opera. And it’s not a song cycle. And it’s not really a chamber piece, but it is also all of those things. It is hard to define it. It is just like a doctoral thesis, encapsulated in a piece of music. It’s very, very, complex and intricate and there’s a lot of philosophical text; there’s philosophical questions posed and answered. There’s also drama. There’s also poetry. There’s the drama of opera, but there’s also the poetic nuance of art song and then there’s also a bunch of extended technique and the wild things that we’re doing.

Given how many different sources are used for the text, is there any part of the text that you most that most resonates with you that you are most passionate about?

I think the metaphysics movement – which is movement five of the whole piece. It’s this whole existential question where she’s talking about what is matter? What is existence, really? It’s the only part of the piece where I get a break as the singer, where the instrumentalists just take over for a few pages. It’s kind of eerie, but it’s also calming in a way.

This is not your first collaboration with Long Beach Opera. Nor is it your first collaboration with James Darrah, who, I thin, in the best possible way, is a disruptor. But only in the sense of moving the art form forward. How does this production accomplish that goal?

This is an opera company and this is a very nontraditional performance for an opera company to offer. I think something that James is very passionate about, and something that I appreciate as a performer myself and someone that loves to do new works, is that he programs so much new music on the main stage. It’s part of the main season. It’s not a side project.

Opera, whether new or old, I think is at its best when it’s dealing with really big emotions and complex issues. But what are the personal challenges of delving so deeply into this kind of material?

For me, that’s always been about having some kind of balance. I know with p r i s m, it just weighed so heavily on me while we were rehearsing it. I mean, how could it not? When I’m here, in my home, your time is your own. In the weeks leading up to this, I was just rehearsing by myself at home as much as I could. Now that we’re in rehearsals, I’m trying to keep my home a much more sterile place. I’m done rehearsing for the day, I’m going to go home and do dishes and make food for myself and see my family and take my dog on a walk. I think that helps compartmentalize.

When I spoke to Kate, she told me that she hopes that one of the reasons her stuff is you’re sticking around is because it’s just really challenging and interesting and a fun experience for the performers. Is this work fun to do?

I’m going to be honest, this is one of the hardest things I’ve ever put together. I was actually going to send her an email today saying as much. Memorization wise, it’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to memorize. All new music is more challenging than we’re used to when you’re only studying super tonal, melodic, beautiful, romantic things in school – which is often the case. I don’t think that this kind of music is studied enough or prioritized enough in conservatories, at least in the US.

This music is very, very challenging, and I’m sure she wrote it to be that way. But therein lies the satisfaction of putting it together. I think she’s right about that, because it is challenging. That’s one of the reasons that it’s had a long life because everyone wants to climb that mountain, right? When you see something difficult, you’re just like, well, I want to show people I can do that.

There’s a manipulated film component to this production and that’s Carl Theodore Dreyer’s, silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Dreyer is quoted as having said, “There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside and turning into poetry.” How does the mysterious power of inspiration work in your life, both professionally and personally?

It’s still mysterious to me in a lot of ways. Inspiration strikes me at all those inconvenient times [like] when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. When I’m working on a piece and I’m just really in the thick of it, I find myself going to sleep at night and thinking about the words.

I tend to find the most inspiration when I am outside, away from overstimulation. Definitely on a hike. Or I like to be outside at night. I can’t count the number of times I’ve just gone on night walks by myself and listened to music that I love.

You have a whole universe swirling around because you’ve been able to just block out all the extraneous noise. The stillness in there. So that I think that is when I find my mysterious inspiration strikes.

To see the full interview with Anna Schubert, please go here.

Main Photo: Mona Tian and Anna Schubert in Ipsa Dixit (Photo by Jason Al-Taan/Courtesy Long Beach Opera)

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All that success would certainly lead to multiple opportunities for both her existing works and for the commission of new works. But then COVID happened and works stayed on the shelf until performances resumed. As restrictions lifted the opportunity for world premieres came back, but Reid wanted to revisit those works to see what they have to say now as opposed to what they might have said had they been performed as previously scheduled.

Amongst those works is Floodplain which is being given its world premiere by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in three concerts beginning on May 12th. There was also TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY AND TODAY which had its world premiere in February with the Seattle Symphony.

A lot to discuss with Reid for sure. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

What impact did winning the Pulitzer Prize, which you have described as “positive trauma,” have on you and your work?

I think it’s hard to know because you don’t know what the other side looks like. But I do think that as someone who has ideas that are outside the box, it’s allowed for me to have them heard a little easier, which is all the difference in the world, really.

And I think the biggest challenge for any composer today once you get a commission is finding where performances two, three, four and five are going to be.

Totally. But also you make getting a commission sound really easy.

Based on the conversations that I’ve had with other composers, commissions are easier to get than additional performances.

It’s true. Also, I like collaborating. I like things that are often a little nontraditional. So being able to bring those things into the world, there’s just a little bit more space to dream.

Floodplain was scheduled to premiere two years ago. You’ve stated that the pandemic allowed you a chance to revisit the work before LA Chamber Orchestra performs the work. Can you describe the fundamental changes between what you had written and what is being performed?

I have a few different ways to explain it. So the way that I like to work is I like to work on something a lot and then kind of put it on a shelf and work on other things and then come back to it, look at it, work on it a lot, put on the shelf and then when the deadline comes, clear everything off. You know, chop it up, mix it up, make it come together again.

I was on the second time of working through the material when COVID hit. So it wasn’t like I’m done. Final note. I had a lot of themes, a lot of material. I knew how I wanted some of it to flow.

I just made the commitment during COVID after things kept getting postponed that at a point I wasn’t going to work on something until I knew it was going to happen – as much as one can ever know anything, which is never. I decided to not work on things that weren’t within view. And so this one stayed on the shelf for a long time. I sometimes think about – this is so dorky – but think about composing like baking. You know, where part of the process of certain breads is this proofing* process? And some of them need to proof and some of them that changes the texture of the bread. So this piece proofed for a very long time.

When I got it down off the shelf I was like, What? What is this? What are you and what does this want to be? How can this feel relevant now? The work maintains a lot of the melodic themes and some of the chordal gestures. There is the rhythmic section and some other things that weren’t in the original sketches that kind of emerged from the long proof process.

Do you think that those who want to can find insight into your experience or your perspective of the COVID era or the pandemic itself?

That’s a little strong, I think. How to answer the question? It’s less direct. You know, the thing I like about the word Floodplain is it implies sometimes things go sideways. Not every day. Sometimes it’s going to flood and then otherwise it’s really fertile. So I think this kind of unpredictability, this kind of unsettledness that I still feel. I’m learning to trust and make plans again. I think some of those things are certainly somewhere in the work, but it’s not very specific.

Did the pandemic allow you time for introspection and did that change the way you thought about your work and/or how you want to express yourself?

I didn’t sit down and say, here’s what I want, X, Y, Z. But I think that any time anyone goes through anything challenging you just get to know yourself better. And you get to learn what what matters and that changes. I had to sit with myself a lot. There wasn’t as many distractions and there was a lot of unknown. And sitting with the unknown brought up some new things I’m interested in and things that I’m not interested anymore in a very clear way that it might have just taken a lot more time to find had we not had that experience.

I want to talk to you about Lunar Composition Lab, which I think is such an incredible thing that you and Missy Mazzzoli are doing in supporting female, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers. You’re six years in at this point. What impact would you like Luna and its graduates and fellows to have on the future of contemporary music? 

Great question. And the answer is kind of a non-answer, which is I want something that we can’t even see. For these fellows and alums, the fact they have their community, they have role models, they have mentorship, they have doors opening for them. I want for them to go somewhere that Missy and I and you can’t even envision. That’s what I want.

I know you’ve talked about how every project starts with a blank page. In Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George the first words are “White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge, to bring order to the whole through design. Composition. Tension. Balance. Light and harmony.” Do you see your challenges as more similar or more different than as it is expressed in the opening moment of that musical? 

I’m exploring my relationship right now with the blank page. I don’t know if that’s really accurate because we live in this multitude of our own imagination, so that the blank page is never blank. So I’m exploring how to start each piece actually with something on the page. Whether it’s finding a fragment of something and saying this is where we’re starting or the last pitch of the piece I just wrote. How actually to avoid the blank page because one hand it will be blank and it won’t be blank no matter what you do.

*proofing: the final stage of allowing dough to rise before baking

Main photo: Ellen Reid (Photo by Erin Baiano/Courtesy Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra)

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#1: The Return of Live Performances

There isn’t any one show that could top the fact that we were able to finally return to the glorious experience of live performance in theaters, concert halls, outdoor venues and more. As great as streaming programming, it could never replace the centuries old practice of communal celebration of life through plays, musicals, concerts and dance.

Yes there were new rules to get accustomed to. Some required masks, others didn’t. Proof of vaccination became required (and that’s a good thing in my book). The first time I returned to a theatre and found my seats was the best possible therapy for my soul. If you read Cultural Attaché I’m sure you feel the same way.

#2: Fire Shut Up In My Bones – Metropolitan Opera

While I wasn’t able to see Terence Blanchard‘s powerful and moving opera in person, I did take advantage of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series to see a live transmission from New York. Blanchard and librettist Kasi Lemmons have taken the memoir by Charles M. Blow and created an opera that is going to be performed around the world.

So rich is the storytelling, so brilliantly was the production directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown (who also choreographed), so spectacular was the singing, Fire Shut Up In My Bones was easily the single most impressive performance of the year.

Hopefully the Met will add additional showings of Fire Shut Up In My Bones via their Live in HD series or make it available for streaming online.

The opera will be performed at Lyric Opera of Chicago beginning on March 24th of this year. For more details and to get tickets, please go here.

#3: Caroline, or Change – Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54

I’ve been a fan of this Jeanine Tesori/Tony Kushner musical since I saw the first production (twice) in New York at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 2004. I loved the show so much I saw it a third time when it came to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles later the same year.

Color me pre-disposed to like this revival. What surprised me most was that even though this Michael Longhurst production was more lavishly produced than the original, it never lost one bit of its heart. Hugely contributing to the emotional wallop of this show was Sharon D. Clarke’s towering performance as Caroline. She’s definitely going to receive a Tony Award nomination and deserves to win for her remarkable work.

Caissie Levy, Kevin S. McAllister, Harper Miles and N’Kenge all made incredible impressions. Plus it’s always great to see Chip Zien on stage – I’ve been a fan of his since Into the Woods.

If you are in New York or going this week, you still have time to catch this amazing production before it’s last performance on January 9th. For tickets go here.

#4: Santa Fe Opera 2021 Season – Santa Fe Opera

I had never attended a production at Santa Fe Opera prior to this summer. I don’t intend to miss any seasons going forward. This is a truly magical place to see opera. This summer found a smaller line-up than in non-COVID years, but the four consecutive nights in early August were a great introduction to this wonderful tradition.

On tap this year were The Marriage of Figaro, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Benjamin Britten), the world premiere of The Lord of Cries (John Corigliano and Mark Adamo) and Eugene Onegin. My personal favorite was Britten’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.

Each night, however, had plenty of joys to be found: whether it was my second time seeing Anthony Roth Costanzo in a opera (the first being Ahknahten), revisiting the joys to be found in Tchaikovsky’s brooding opera, enjoying the staging of Mozart’s classic opera or experiencing the tailgating experience that is de rigueur before each performance.

I’m excited about this summer’s season as my favorite opera, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, is being performed at Santa Fe Opera for the first time.

#5: West Side Story

I was completely skeptical about what Steven Spielberg would do with one of my favorite musicals. That he had Tony Kushner working with him gave me some optimism. Try as I could to wrangle details from colleagues who were working on the film, I was completely unable to glean any information about what kind of updating and changes were being made.

When I saw the movie on opening weekend I was thrilled to discover that my concerns had all been for naught. Simply put, I think this is a vastly superior film than its Oscar-winning predecessor. I’ve always found this Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents musical emotional (let’s face it, it’s Romeo and Juliet), but seeing it so close on the heels of Sondheim’s passing probably intensified my emotional response.

Sondheim said how excited he was for audiences to see what had been done to West Side Story. I know he wasn’t a fan of the original film – feeling it was too close in presentation to the stage version – so I had my fingers crossed he was right. And he was. If you haven’t seen the film yet, do so. It’s the kind of film that must be seen on a big screen with terrific sound.

#6: Head Over Heels – Pasadena Playhouse

If you had asked me what the odds were that a jukebox musical using the songs of The Go-Go’s would be a show I would see at all, let alone twice, I would have given you huge odds against that happening. And I would have lost my shirt! What Sam Pinkleton and Jenny Koons did with this production was create the best party of the year.

Alaska 5000, Lea DeLaria, Yurel Echezarreta, Freddie, Tiffany Mann, George Salazar, Emily Skeggs and Shanice Williams put their hearts and souls into this story of family, acceptance and love. The all-female band rocked the house.

Both times I saw the show I opted for the on-stage/standing room seats and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. At the first performance Lea DeLaria made a comment during the show about my pants. For the second performance I had a better idea where to position myself to have an even better time than I did at the first performance.

This was a party I never wanted to end.

#7: desert in – Boston Lyric Opera

This streaming opera/mini-series is definitely not your parent’s opera. It is guided by its own rules as it tells the story of a unique group of strangers (or are they) who congregate at a seedy motel.

The music was composed by Michael Abels, Vijay Iyer, Nathalie Joachim, Nico Muhly, Emma O’Halloran, Ellen Reid, Wang Lu and Shelley Washington. The libretto was written by christopher oscar peña.

Appearing in desert in are mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (for whom the project was written), soprano Talise Trevigne, Tony-nominated performer Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway), actors Carlis Shane Clark, Alexander Flores, Anthony Michael Lopez, Jon Orsini, Ricco Ross and Raviv Ullman with vocal performances by tenor Neal Ferreira, Tony Award-winner Jesus Garcia (La Bohème), baritone Edward Nelson, tenor Alan Pingarrón, soprano Brianna J. Robinson, mezzo-soprano Emma Sorenson and bass-baritone Davóne Tines.

The project was directed by James Darrah who also oversaw the Close Quarters season of films from Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; directed a production of Les Enfants Terribles for Long Beach Opera (that took place in a parking lot) and, underachiever that he is, also directed The Lord of Cries at Santa Fe Opera.

You can still stream desert in. Go here for details.

#8: Cécile McLorin Salvant – The Ford

Without a new album to promote jazz vocalist Salvant took to the stage at The Ford in Los Angeles for a concert with Sullivan Fortner that was nothing short of pure joy. She and Fortner have such a musical bond that she can make up the setlist on the spot and he’s ready to dive right in to dazzle the audience. As they did on this late September evening.

The only problem with seeing Salvant perform is you can never get enough. Truly. Rare is the performer who can so thoroughly enrapture an audience with their skill the way Salvant can.

That should come as no surprise for an artist who has won three consecutive Grammy Awards for her three most recent albums. Her newest album, Ghost Songs, is being released by Nonesuch Records in March. No doubt the next Grammy Awards season will find Salvant’s latest album on their list of nominees.

#9: Billy Porter: Unprotected

Porter’s memoir was released in the fall and it is one of the most inspirational and entertaining memoirs I’ve ever read. He’s a Tony Award (Kinky Boots), Emmy Award (Pose) and Grammy Award (also Kinky Boots) winning performer. He’s also been setting the fashion world on fire with his inventive and creative looks on runways from the Academy Awards to the Met Gala in New York. Let’s just say he knows how to make an entrance.

In Unprotected Porter details the many obstacles put in his way through challenges at home to being subjected to harsh criticism from his church to casting directors who thought he was too much. Though it all he remains steadfast in his individualism and his talent. It’s a lesson we can all use. As he says in his memoir, “My art is my calling, my purpose, dare I say my ministry.” I, for one, found a lot to learn from his ministry.

Gay men and women are not the only audience for Porter’s ministry. The life lessons he endured and his response to them is precisely the nourishment our souls need today. You can also clearly hear Porter’s voice in the book. So engaging and entertaining is his book I read it in one sitting. I found it impossible to put down. I think you will, too.

#10: Ledisi Sings Nina Simone – Hollywood Bowl

Anyone who is brave enough to tackle material made famous by the incomparable Simone either has a lot of guts or a lot of talent. Ledisi proved she had both in this memorable concert at the Hollywood Bowl in July (which she performed elsewhere as well.)

Ledisi wisely chose not to emulate her idol. Instead she made each song her own while still retaining a sense of what Simone’s original recordings offered. She released a seven-track record, Ledisi Sings Nina Simone, but added more songs to her concert. It was particularly interesting to her performance of Ne Me Quitte Pas and then hear it performed by Cynthia Erivo less than a week later at the same venue. Who sang it better? Let each who saw both shows answer that question.

Runners up: Vijay Iyer’s latest album Uneasy; Veronica Swift for her album This Bitter Earth; The Band’s Visit touring production at The Dolby Theatre in Hollywood; Jason Moran solo piano performance as part of LeRoy Downs’ Just Jazz series; Springsteen on Broadway; MasterVoices’ Myths and Hymns and Cynthia Erivo singing Don’t Rain on My Parade at the Hollywood Bowl.

Here’s hoping there’s even more to see and hear in 2022. What’s on your list? Leave your choices in the comments section below.

Happy New Year!

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“You get to enjoy that really amazing experience of the audience responding to to what you’ve offered. But you cannot bite it. You have to you have to keep a distance from it and and be privileged to be in the same vicinity of that kind of experience.” Lyric soprano Patricia Racette has spent much of her career in such a vicinity.

Since bursting on the scene in 1992, Racette has had a robust career in opera and has appeared on stages around the world including La Scala, Los Angeles Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Santa Fe Opera.

Recently Opera Philadelphia released a film of Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine which finds Racette as a woman in the midst of a very personal phone call. We only hear her side of the call, but as written by Poulenc and librettist Jean Cocteau, it is a powerful depiction of a woman in crisis. James Darrah directed the film which is available for streaming now.

Recently I spoke via Zoom with Racette who was in her home near Santa Fe, New Mexico. We talked about the role, her upcoming plans to sing the role of Desirée in the Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler musical A Little Night Music and about the picture she paints of her career today. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

When you performed the role of Elle in La voix humaine five years ago in Chicago you said this was a part you’d always wanted to do. What was most appealing about this part for you?

The piece is endlessly rich dramatically. Vocally it is endlessly rich. The only thing you guys hear is my half of the conversation so I can change up what that conversation on the phone is and react accordingly; the context or the experience or the mode I’m in at that time can actually affect what that that experience is. It’s just phenomenal. I would never tire of doing the piece and never tire of exploring and finding new and different ways to articulate it all while keeping it respectfully with the composer’s wishes. 

How has your relationship to the material and your performance of it evolved since you first performed La voix humaine?

My first exploration of it, I, in very fine writing, wrote down in my score what I imagined he was saying. Every time I’ve revisited it it’s something else, it’s something different. It’s like any role. I’ve had the great the blessing of being able to do a lot of iconic repertoire, which means I’ve sung roles for 100 times, 200 times. And the way you see that morph and change as you as a human being and consequently an artist morph and change, it’s sort of the same thing, except it’s even richer. It’s even more detailed because there’s not a concretized exposition of what he is saying. It gets to be how I hear it, what I’m hearing, and that’s just, theatrically speaking, so rich.

You’ve also sung roles in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmélites. What is is about Poulenc’s music that you respond to?

Those who know the music of Poulenc, and even if they don’t, all they have to do is listen to a couple selections from a variety of his body of his work. You can have a sense of his very specific flavor and not following stylistic conventions of that time period and music, but really being unique in his own. And so his musical language, I think, and his marriage to the natural prosody of the French language is just is is so powerful and so immediate in its effect – at least that’s how it feels as a performer.

The film utilizes the arrangement for piano and voice, not the full orchestral arrangement of the opera. What made that the right choice for you and for the film?

It really lent itself well. The undeniable appeal of Poulenc’s orchestration is certainly duly noted and I love that. But in some ways it’s more cumbersome for such an intimate piece, for such a lonely experience that this character journeys through. The orchestration is actually quite thick in places where it, I think, can threaten the intimacy on an aural level.

I love doing it with piano because of that intimacy, because of that immediacy. It has to be said Chris Allen is a genius. He’s a wonderful conductor and his virtuosic skills of the keyboard are amazing. We did it with piano and live performance. We couldn’t see one another. We had to feel it. There are some very tricky moments and they just came off without a hitch. We had a very intimate musical relationship. 

Director James Darrah, as I’m sure you know, is a big advocate of technology and new media as a way of increasing the audience for classical music and the performing arts. What do you what role do you think projects like this one will play moving forward, not just for you, but for the art form?

I think it’s an important expansion of the art form in the way we visually articulate it. This is a film. Sometimes I’m singing and I’m not moving my mouth. It’s really a proper film. And I think that has a lot of value because it gives the the director and the art form a chance to to be really authentic in its visual expression.

Sometimes we can look funny when we’re singing and sometimes it can be distracting for the moment. I don’t know how many bad jokes I’ve heard after years when I was singing Mimi [in La bohème]. Oh, yeah. You just keep singing even though you die. This gives us an opportunity to be more realistic about what those life situations are like.

Next year you’ll be singing the role of Desirée Armfeldt in Arizona Opera‘s production of A Little Night Music. What does Sondheim’s material offer you that’s unique to his writing?

I don’t know if you know this about me, but opera has been the interloper in my life. I came into this musical world wanting to be a torch singer, cabaret, jazz, things like that. I did a lot of that. I went to school hoping to pursue that and I fell into opera. Suffice to say, no regrets, of course. I reintroduced it into my musical life in 2004 and have been doing it regularly. 

For me it’s like coming home. My recitals are my cabaret show. That’s where I have the chance to have that sort of intimate interchange, musically speaking, with the audience. I can’t wait to do this. It’s worth noting that my my wife, Beth [Clayton], who’s kind of a retired mezzo, is coming out of retirement to sing Charlotte.

I do think that one of the toughest songs in the world to get right is Send in the Clowns.

I think the context in which it happens in the show is so devastating. I’m just just now diving into it. Obviously I know the song, but I’m just now diving into the character. It has to be something that isn’t too intentionally presentational. It has to invite you, the audience, into that moment of loneliness and pain in a way that that’s quite precious and painful. The pain in that song is almost unbearable. I haven’t gotten through it yet without tearing up.

Poulenc said “My music is my portrait.” What is your portrait?

I’ve been always very adamant that in order to be an effective artist, you have to have – and I’ll speak for myself – a well-balanced life. My marriage to Beth, which was 24 years this year, is of the utmost importance in my life. And we are one another’s eyes and ears in terms of this art form. So we meld on so many levels.

I’m at a loss for words that truly connect to the profound experience that this art form can house. When I’ve had the feelings at my very best performances, I feel like a vessel. I feel like the artistic energy is occupying me. It’s coming and it’s very much personal. It’s very much mine. But it’s just coming out of me and it’s almost like you’re aware of it, but you just don’t get in its way. 

I pride myself on always fleshing out a character and making it as authentic as possible. I’m hoping that has mattered. It’s not about the the most beautiful voice, the best singer, the best technique that matters; not to me at all. It matters to me that it’s truly invested and unique. I consider that the most humbling part of this art form.

All photos from La voix humaine by Michael Elias Thomas/Courtesy Opera Philadelphia 

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Soper used the stories of eight women from fiction, written by men, to explore how they were treated by their creators in her work which is a song cycle for voice and ensemble. Amongst the sources and characters to be found are Lady MacDuff from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Emma Bovary from Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Daisy Buchanan from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Jenny Wong will be leading Wild Up! in these performances.

Last week I spoke by phone with Soper about Voices from the Killing Jar and how timely the work feels now nearly ten years after she composed it. What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

A decade after completing Voices from the Killing Jar, what are your thoughts about the work and your relationship to it?

I guess I do sort of think of it as a piece from an earlier time, but in terms of my relationship, it has changed. I think it was the start of me becoming more interested in works that had explicit theatrical elements and a legible kind of quasi-narrative element. And it was really a chance for me to really see how versatile I could be as a performer. I think those are all the things that I kind of tried out for the first time with that piece that have become just part of my regular practice. I think like all pieces of music – probably for most composers – it’s also a record of a time in my life that had its interesting things. A time when I was really connected to the ensemble I was working with and I was finding my compositional voice as they say.

Do you think the #MeToo movement in some way now makes this work more prescient and more topical?

That’s not for me to say. That’s probably just for people receiving the work now to say. Of course, I have thoughts and sadnesses about how things have changed even since I wrote that piece. And in a way I think things haven’t gotten better necessarily with regard to gender equality.

Here we are on the call and you ask me about #MeToo. Of course, I get it. I’m not upset or even surprised that you would bring that up. But I don’t know. If people who are not in the majority point of view, everyone who’s not the straight white man, it’s like I did write this piece about these female characters. So I can’t really say that it doesn’t involve gender or my feelings about it or that it would be inappropriate for you or anyone else to want to talk about that in context of the piece.

To be clear, the reason I asked is that there are certain pieces of art that get created and then become more resonant because of what has happened, not as a result of that work necessarily, but just what has happened with time after their debut.

That makes sense.

I recently spoke with conductor Ruth Reinhardt and we talked about when it was going to be that a woman is a composer or a conductor and not a woman composer or a woman conductor. Do you see that shift in perspective happening in your lifetime?

I guess I’m not super optimistic about great strides for equality in my lifetime at the moment. This is such specific moment where it’s difficult to be optimistic about cultural shifts.

What was your reaction when Yuval Sharon suggested pairing your work with the Schoenberg?

I think we had talked about a couple different things of mine. I didn’t really realize that they premiered exactly one hundred years apart. That seemed very cool to me; a nice synchrony. I think it makes a lot of sense. They’re both minor dramas. They both have kind of like a weird instrumentation. They both are for unconventional singers. So I’m pleased and honored to be half of that double bill.

How challenging is it for you as a composer to get additional performances of a work beyond a premiere? Many composers with whom I’ve spoken said getting the first performance is easy, but getting the subsequent performances is much more challenging.

I’m very grateful that people are doing my work. Sirens has been done a couple of times and Voices from the Killing Jar, too. I was writing things that I thought would be really fun and challenging for me to do as singer that I wasn’t getting the opportunity to do. I want to be theatrical. I want to play an instrument while I’m up there or whatever. So I think what’s been really gratifying to me is to see other singers say, “that looks really fun and I want to try that” or “I’ve got some friends I want to do this piece with.” I hope that one of the reasons my stuff is sticking around is because it’s just really challenging and interesting and a fun experience for the performers.

As somebody who doesn’t sing, it’s doesn’t look like it’s easy at all.

It’s not easy. As someone who didn’t get a vocal degree and didn’t really start studying voice in any serious way until basically after I wrote for voice, I know it’s possible to do without achieving a higher level of vocality. The singers who tend to do my work tend to have more thorough training than I do. Maybe it’s an opportunity for them to do some of these others thing you don’t encounter in vocal pedagogy.

Composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger said “A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.” Do you agree with her or is there another way to describe what a great work or a great composition is today?

Well, how do you interpret what she means by that?

That that are certain rules you start following as a composer, but there’s this liberty to go off and do you want to do as well. That it’s this combination of the structure you’re taught and then what you choose to do with it.

Now there’s less of a sense of you’re taught about a certain structure because we’re even much further from any kind of common practice than she was. For me I’m trying to figure out what’s effective and it helps to have some rules. And you can do anything you want. I don’t know that I would say anything in particular is the characteristic of a good work.

I like a really good quote by Iris Murdoch, the novelist. What is it? It’s like the moment from after something is a space where the work hasn’t totally committed itself. Like it’s too late to go back, but it’s too early to say what it is, is like a really important moment. And that genius is when that moment is spread over the whole working process. I think it’s sort of this balance of trying to hone in on it, but also being open to changing your mind and breaking all of your rules at any given moment.

For tickets for Saturday’s performance, please go here. For tickets for Sunday’s performance, please go here.

Photo: Kate Soper (Photo by Liz Linder/Courtesy KateSoper.com)

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Corigliano and Adamo, who have been together personally for 26 years, wrote The Lord of Cries specifically for Costanzo. When I spoke to Corigliano recently he said, “When you see a countertenor in a modern role it’s very interesting. I think it’s important for someone like Anthony, who is a star, to be in a big real piece and a modern piece.”

“It was really exciting,” Costanzo told me via a Zoom call last week. “I’ve always had the utmost respect for his music. John, and he’ll say this, likes to work with abstraction. He doesn’t like to work with 1990s New York. He likes smoke and ghosts and things like that. This sat in a world of abstraction that worked for his music. But it also had concrete dramatic themes that I felt would really speak to an audience.”

In short, The Lord of Cries uses characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to tell the story Euripides wrote in Bacchae. If that sounds confusing, it initially was for Costanzo as well.

“At first I thought I don’t sort understand the combination of these two disparate works. Within five minutes of talking to them about it, immediately it became clear that it was actually kind of a brilliant way of seeing the underpinnings of the story of Dracula that we all know in this Greek tragedy.” (To see how Corigliano and Adamo describe their opera, please go here.)

Costanzo, who became one of the best known opera singers in the world through his performance in Akhnaten by Philip Glass, regularly worked with the creators to help them fully realize the role, just as opera singers have done for centuries.

“I did go in at different points and try things out and sing things through and let John hear it. I think that gave him something for his inner ear as he was composing to hear it be realized. If you think about the history of opera, a lot of these roles were written with a specific singer in mind. Then other singers went and did it. But that specificity you hear in your mind helps the music take on a shape that I think makes it very singable and very accessible in the best sense.”

The themes Costanzo felt were relevant today tackle both repression and one’s place in society.

“This is an opera about repressed desire and what that does. But even more topical in some ways is this idea of place that’s really in the Euripides as well as the Stoker. One line in the opera they say a lot is ‘Deny him not his place.’ And I think what the repressed Victorian London is kind of saying is ‘He has no place here. You have no place here. There’s no place for an outsider.’

“There are a lot of different things happening in our world and reckonings about identity, whether that be sexual identity or gender identity or racial identity. There is this problematic sense of whether somebody has a place or doesn’t have a place. And I think what Dionysus and Dracula both try and show through being the stranger and the outsider is that we are all the same basically. We come from distinct backgrounds, but we share this communal psychology and I think that’s a powerful message for now.”

As Costanzo was coming of age and becoming aware of his own sexuality, he was very supported by his parents. As he told me, he didn’t have to struggle as much as others with being gay. He did, however, have his own hurdles to climb within the world of opera.

“I had a fairly easy time of it all because my parents are both psychologists and they were very accepting. That said, within the field of opera sometimes I felt that I should fit into a mold, a pre-determined mold. It took a while for me to feel like I could fully actualize my own concept of self in something like Akhnaten which has a gender fluidity and queerness, but also a real sort of powerful beauty and mystery in it. It took me a while to understand I could forge my own path. Now I think that’s a really crucial for art and for our platform as we move forward.”

His increasing fame came along with greater opportunities and greater responsibilities.

“I’m going to be the artist-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic next season and the pillar of the programming I have curated is called Authentic Selves. My work over the pandemic creating and producing Bandwagon was both a joy and an education. It was an initiative which first brought a pickup truck to all different neighborhoods. As an extension of that we created partnerships with different institutions. Rather than say we are the New York Phil and we will tell you what we want to do and if you want to participate great. Instead we would go to the National Black Theatre, El Puente Arts, Casita Maria, Flushing Town Hall and say ‘We’ll pay you, we’ll pay the artists, we’ll give you the stage. What do you want to do?’ How can we hand over control in small ways until these seismic changes of representation happen within the field. I think we have to be thinking both micro and macro at all times and working very hard and tirelessly to implement those changes.”

Of course, the classical music world and opera in particular move at pretty slow paces. With the clock ticking ever more loudly about representation in front offices and on-stage, Costanzo feels there’s no time to waste.

“I agree that life is short and opera is long as they say. But I think it is crucial that we be thinking about this all the time. There’s no time to waste. And I think that in the past year we have seen some progress which is encouraging. But I think we are in danger of losing the momentum as we return from COVID and crave the comfort of things going back to the way they were. It’s very important; however, as Masha Gessen said in The New Yorker, not to rebuild what we have lost. We have a chance here to rebuild and we better increase the momentum as opposed to letting it wane in our search for quote unquote comfort.”

For tickets to The Lord of Cries please go here. There are performances on August 5th, 11th and 17th.

This is the fourth in a series of interviews with artists performing at Santa Fe Opera this season.

All Photos: Anthony Roth Costanzo in The Lord of Cries (Photo by Curtis Brown/Courtesy Santa Fe Opera)

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Our top pick this week is actually a twofer. Jazz vocalist Jazzmeia Horn, who has taken the world by storm since her 2017 debut album A Social Call, is featured in two concerts you’ll want to watch this weekend.

With several operas, a very wide range of dance, play readings and more, it will seem at first glance like a pretty intense selection of programs. However, nothing is what it seems this week. Read about each of these programs and you’ll find they almost all represent a new way of telling both familiar and new stories.

Here are the Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st.

*TOP PICK* JAZZ: Jazzmeia Horn – SFJAZZ – June 18th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT and Cal Performances on demand through July 21st

This week’s Fridays at Five offering from SFJAZZ is a 2019 performance from the 37th San Francisco Jazz Festival in support of her second album, Love and Liberation.

She rose to prominence after winning the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition.

In a 2017 review of a performance Horn gave at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in New York, Giovanni Russonello wrote in the New York Times after calling her one of the most talked-about jazz singers to emerge since Cécile McLorin Salvant and Gregory Porter:

“…she’s possessed of some distinctive tools, all of which were on display: a pinched, sassy tone in the highest register; a fondness for unguarded duets with her bassist (at Dizzy’s, it was Noah Jackson); an array of rough, pealing nonverbal sounds that add drama to codas and interludes, hinting at meanings in the music that go beyond what fits on the page.”

Should you be unable to catch the streaming of this concert on Friday, there is an encore showing on Saturday at 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT. Tickets are $5 which includes a one-month digital membership to SFJAZZ.

If you want to explore more of what Horn can do (and perhaps see and hear how she evolved her performances and her set list almost two years later), you can check out a concert filmed at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge in February of this year for Cal Performances.

That concert is available for on-demand streaming with prices ranging from $5 for Cal students and $15 per non-student viewers up to $68 for those who have the ability to pay.

Horn is a force to be reckoned with. These two concerts allow you to chart her growth as, we hope, a new album will soon be on the horizon.

OPERA: Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex – LA Opera – Now – July 18th

Igor Stravinsky composed this opera/oratorio in 1927. Based on the tragedy by Sophocles, it is a work for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. If you believe you know well the story of Oedipus, I think you’ll be surprised at all the ultimately timely material to be found in this story.

For this filmed performance of Oedipus Rex, Los Angeles Opera has assembled a terrific ensemble.

Singing the title role is tenor Russell Thomas. The role of his mother, Jocasta, is sung by mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. Creon and the Messenger are sung by John Relyea. Tiresias is sung by Morris Robinson. The role of the Shepherd is sung by Robert Stahley. Serving as narrator is Stephen Fry (via video).

James Conlon conducts the LA Opera orchestra.

I attended a rehearsal of this production two weeks ago (prior to a live performance in Los Angeles – LA Opera’s first live performance back in their home at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). Collaborating with them is Manual Cinema. They are the Chicago-based company that did a truly memorable production of A Christmas Carol that was streamed last December (and was also a Best Bet).

At 50 minutes, this is a terrific way to get some opera into your weekend. And it’s free; though donations to LA Opera are encouraged.

If you want to see more of what Thomas and Bridges have to offer, let us remind you of LA Opera’s Signature Recital Series which has recitals by each of them available for streaming through the end of the month. Check out our preview here.

PLAY READING: Dear Elizabeth – Spotlight on Plays from Broadway’s Best Shows – Now – June 21st

You don’t need to know who poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were. You don’t need to know that they became very good friends, mostly through the hundreds of letters they wrote to each other. Nor that they had an affair. You don’t even need to know that this play, which had its New York premiere in 2015, is written by award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl.

All you really need to know about this reading is that it stars Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep. The two famously appeared together in Sophie’s Choice. This was the film that earned Streep her second Academy Award. They also appeared as exes in Jonathan Demme’s Rikki and the Flash in 2015.

Not to be outdone, Kline won an Academy Award for his performance in A Fish Called Wanda.

They appeared on stage in the 2001 production of The Seagull and the 2006 production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theater as part of The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park series.

This seems like a pretty easy choice to make for your weekend plans. Why not see these incredibly talented actors together again? This is the final play in the Spotlight on Plays series. They are clearly going out on a high note.

Kate Whoriskey directs.

Tickets are $19 and allow for streaming through Monday, June 21st at 6:00 PM ET/3:00 PM PT. Proceeds benefit The Actors Fund and The Acting Company.

OPERA/MINI-SERIES: desert in – Boston Lyric Opera – Now available

As befits a project from the mind of James Darrah, desert in does not fit easily into any one category. It is a mini-series. It is an opera. It contains nudity. There’s strong sexual content and adult language. It also comes from the minds of playwright christopher oscar peña and Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Ellen Reid.

In other words, it’s like nothing you’ve seen before.

The stories of multiple characters swirl around a lodge in the desert and its swimming pool. A combination of trysts, betrayals and shamanic ceremonies result in the lodge’s owners Cass and Sunny and new guests Ion and Rufus caught up in its mysterious ways.

Appearing in desert in are mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (for whom the project was written), soprano Talise Trevigne, Tony-nominated performer Justin Vivian Bond (Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway), actors Carlis Shane Clark, Alexander Flores, Anthony Michael Lopez, Jon Orsini, Ricco Ross and Raviv Ullman with vocal performances by tenor Neal Ferreira, Tony Award-winner Jesus Garcia (La Bohème), baritone Edward Nelson, tenor Alan Pingarrón, soprano Brianna J. Robinson, mezzo-soprano Emma Sorenson and bass-baritone Davóne Tines.

Joining Reid in composing music for desert in are Michael Abels, Vijay Iyer, Nathalie Joachim, Nico Muhly, Emma O’Halloran, Wang Lu and Shelley Washington. Each one a truly fascinating composer.

Six of the eight episodes have been released and are available for viewing on operabox.tv. The final two episodes will be released in the next couple of weeks.

You have several options for viewing with varying price points. You can subscribe to operabox.tv, purchase on-demand streaming of the entire series or for individual episodes. Details can be found here.

CLASSICAL MEETS HIP-HOP: Common with the Los Angeles Philharmonic – Debuts June 18th

We’ve previewed the second season of the LA Philharmonic’s Sound/Stage series, but can attest from personal experience that seeing Common on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl with the orchestra is an event like few others. Frankly, it’s almost one of a kind, except that they created this 17-minute film available for free streaming that didn’t come from that concert.

Common is one of the most important and exciting performers in hip-hop. Gustavo Dudamel leads one of the most adventurous orchestras in this country. This pairing is going to please those who can’t imagine hip-hop with classical music institutions and those who can’t imagine a symphony orchestra with hip-hop.

Other episodes in this series are available for streaming and can be found at the link above.

OPERA: This Little Light of Mine – Kentucky Opera in collaboration with the Santa Fe Opera – June 19th – 6:00 PM ET/3:00 PM PT

Here’s a great opportunity to see a work truly in development. The Santa Fe Opera commissioned this opera inspired by the story of Fannie Lou Hamer. She was a voting rights activist whose relentless efforts lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Chandler Carter is the composer of This Little Light of Mine. The libretto is by Diana Solomon-Glover.

The two had previously collaborated on No Easy Walk to Freedom about Nelson Mandela. Solomon-Glover portrayed Winnie Mandela in that work.

On Saturday they will be streaming a workshop of This Little Light of Mine that was filmed on Monday at Kentucky Opera. This opera had been scheduled for a workshop last fall, but was cancelled due to the pandemic.

Nicole Joy Mitchell sings the role of Fannie Lou Hamer. Aundi Marie Moore sings the role of Dorothy Jean Hamer and Heather Hill sings the roles of June Johnson and an Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Worker. The workshop is directed by Beth Greenberg.

There is no charge to watch This Little Light of Mine. It will be available on Kentucky Opera’s YouTube channel.

ONE-ACT PLAYS: Unmasked: A Theatrical Celebration of Black Women’s Liberation – The Wallis – Debuts June 19th

The Wallis collaborated with Black Rebirth Collective on Unmasked, one-act plays by four Black female playwrights that was filmed in the Lovelace Studio Theatre at The Wallis.

Those writers are: Ngozi Anyanwu, Jocelyn Bioh, Dominique Morisseau and Stacy Osei-Kuffour.

Anyanwu is best known for Good Grief, an award-winning play that was first performed at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2016. Her play is called G.O.A.T. which finds three close friends who try to determine who is the greatest of all time (hence the title) through a sacred ritual.

Bioh, best known for School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, has written White-N-Luscious. While appearing on a talk show a Nigerian pop star and an Afro-British scholar face issues of self-representation and beauty standards.

Morisseau, who was Tony nominated for writing the book for Ain’t Too Proud and also wrote The Detroit Project trilogy of plays, contributes Jezelle the Gazelle. As the title perhaps alludes to, the title character is a young female runner who is easily the fastest on her block. But does she have the skill set to navigate what life has in store for her and still remain on top?

Osei-Kuffour’s work is called Madness. While handling an issue at work on a phone call, the protagonist is offered a new way to address the situation by a new colleague whom she doesn’t know. Osei-Kuffour’s ANIMALS was recorded by the Williamstown Theater Festival and can be heard on Audible.

The ensemble cast – Kelly M. Jenrett, Masha Mthembu, Candace Thomas and Jonah Wharton – are accompanied by violinist Katherine Washington. Unmasked was co-drected by Kimberly Hébert of Black Rebirth Collective and The Wallis’ Camille Jenkins.

Tickets are $19 for all four plays. If you only want to watch one of the plays, you can purchase a single ticket for $5. Please go here for details on ticket sales. Unmasked will be available for streaming on demand through July 2nd.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Jenn Colella – SETH Concert Series – June 20th – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

I’ve never been lucky enough to see Broadway star and Tony-nominated actor Jenn Colella in any of the shows in which she’s appeared (Come From Away, If/Then, Chaplin, High Fidelity and Urban Cowboy). But that last show did lead to a chance to see her early in her career and I realized how special she was immediately.

Colella was a guest at a concert by composer Jason Robert Brown in North Hollywood. (He music directed Urban Cowboy). When she sang a couple songs with him it was like the best possible hurricane just blew into and through the theater.

I can only imagine what Colella will do this weekend as Seth Rudetsky’s guest in his concert series.

If you’re unable to see the live stream on Sunday as scheduled, there will be a re-stream of the show at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM the same day. Tickets for either showing are $25.

DANCE: Broadway Bares: Twerk from Home – Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS – June 20th – 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT

Just as Broadway is on the cusp of coming back comes an annual tradition that is one of the toughest tickets in town. And because Broadway isn’t back yet…we all get a front row seat.

Broadway Bares is an annual dance/performance fundraiser, usually performed on a Broadway stage.

For the uninitiated, it is one where clothes become less necessary as each performance goes on. This year’s show is called Twerk from Home and it will debut on Sunday night.

Two-time Tony Award winning choreograph Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots, the 2005 revival of La Cage Aux Folles), is the creator of Broadway Bares and once again he directs this year’s show. Joining this year as co-directors are Laya Barak and Nick Kenkel.

Over 170 dancers are participating in Twerk from Home. Joining them will be Harvey Fierstein, J. Harrison Ghee, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Robyn Hurder, Peppermint and Jelani Remy who make special appearances. This year’s Broadway Bares culminates in a finale extravaganza that was filmed outdoors in Times Square.

There is no charge to watch Twerk from Home, but donations are encouraged. This is one of their biggest fundraisers of the year. Last year’s virtual edition raised $596,504 for Broadway Cares. You can watch the show on BC/EFA’s YouTube Channel.

MODERN DANCE: Future Dance Festival – 92Y – June 21st – July 4th

From a pool of 185 applicants, seven panelists selected 21 choreographer finalists to be part of the 92nd Street Y’s first Future Dance Festival. The goal of the festival is to pair emerging choreographers and creators with working directors.

Beginning on Monday, those 21 finalists will have their work showcased in three different programs that will all be available for free streaming.

Program 1 features work by Annie Rigney, Max Levy, Madison Elliott, Leonardo Sandoval, Burr Johnson, Nicole von Are and Brian Josiah Martinez.

Program 2 features works by Barkha Patel, Adrienne Lipson, Jessie Lee Thorne, William Ervin, Vera Kvarcakova & Jeremy Galdeano, Brian Golden and Caroline Payne.

Program 3 features works by Taylor Graham, Baye & Asa, Patrick Coker, Charly and Eriel Santagado, Jamal Callender, Beatrice Panero and Nicholas Ranauro.

The panelists, who come from Ballet Hispánico, Dance Magazine, Martha Graham Dance Company and other organizations, will introduce each work.

Registration is required.

Here ends the Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st. But just a couple reminders:

The Metropolitan Opera celebrates Father’s Day with Verdi’s Rigoletto from the 1981-1982 season Friday; his Don Carlo from the 2010-2011 season on Saturday and his Luisa Miller from the 1978-1979 season Sunday. If you’re not a father, consider this the end of Verdi Week.

Next week the Met will be celebrating Pride Week. Monday that program gets launched with the 2017-2018 season production of Thomas Adés’ The Exterminating Angel. We’ll have the full line-up for you on Monday. We strongly recommend this opera.

Your last chance to watch A Tribute to John Williams from the Boston Pops Orchestra is Saturday. Film music fans, what are you waiting for?

On Monday South Coast Rep starts streaming the final production of their Pacific Playwrights Festival. It’s a concert performance of Harold & Lillian. You can find details here.

You’re now fully loaded with options to enjoy the performing arts this weekend. That’s all for this week’s Top Ten Best Bets: June 18th – June 21st.

Enjoy your weekend!

Photo: Jazzmeia Horn (Photo by Emmanuel Afolabi/Courtesy imnworld.com)

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Our top pick this weekend is the voice of playwright Adrienne Kennedy whose play Ohio State Murders stars one of the greatest voices of our time: Audra McDonald.

The music of Adam Guettel, new experiments with voice, the voice of jazz’s future, the history-making voices of male ballerinas, Broadway stars galore and more are all available for your enjoyment.

So let’s get to it. Here are the Top Ten Best Bets: June 4th – June 7th:

*TOP PICK* PLAY READING: Ohio State Murders – Spotlight on Plays – Now – June 7th

Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders is this week’s offering from the Spotlight on Plays series from Broadway’s Best Shows.

The play is set at Ohio State University where Suzanne Alexander, an African-American writer, was a student in 1949. She returns to discuss the themes of violence in her writing.

The stories she tells and the violence she’s examining take viewers down a shocking path as the mystery slow reveals itself.

This reading will star six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Warner Miller, Lizan Mitchell and Ben Rappaport. Kenny Leon, who directed the 2014 revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directs this reading. Of note, both he and McDonald won Tony Awards for work on that production.

Ohio State Murders had its world premiere in 1992 at the Great Lakes Theater Festival. In 2007 the play opened off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street.

Charles Isherwood, writing for the New York Times, said of the play:

“Like all truly scary horror stories, the tale told in Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders leaves a lasting chill in the bones. Hours after seeing this short, sharp, quietly hypnotic play about an infanticide that ruptures a Midwestern winter in the 1950s, you might find yourself looking anxiously over your shoulder or starting awake with an unsettling thought or image in your head.”

Tickets are $19 with proceeds benefitting The Actors Fund. Tickets allow for on-demand streaming through Monday, June 7th at 6:00 PM ET/3:00 PM PT.

CHORAL/VOCAL: Myths and Hymns: Chapter 4: FAITH – Now – June 30th

The fourth and final chapter of Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns from MasterVoices is now streaming.

In this last part of the series, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Jennifer Holliday, Mikael Kilgore, Theresa McCarthy, Miles Mykkanen, Kelli O’Hara, Larry Owens and Nicholas Phan give voice to the final five songs in this song cycle.

Costanzo also directed The Great Highway (which also features O’Hara and Phan). Ted Sperling, the artistic director of MasterVoices directed two of the segments and Tony Award nominated director Trip Cullman directed the final segment, Saturn Returns: The Return.

Joining them are, of course, the MasterVoices singers.

This episode and the entire series are available for viewing on MasterVoices’ YouTube Channel. I love all four chapters of this series. You will, too. Take a look.

There’s no charge to watch Myths and Hymns. Donations are encouraged.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Victoria Clark – Broadway Stories & Songs with Ted Sperling – June 4th – June 5th

As long as we’re on the subject of Ted Sperling, his guest for this weekend’s Broadway Stories & Songs is the Tony Award-winning Victoria Clark. She was named Best Actress in a Musical for her performance as Margaret Johnson in Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza.

Her performance in that musical was extraordinary.

Clark’s additional Broadway credits include the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, the 1995 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Titanic, Urinetown, Sister Act, Cinderella and more.

She and Sperling have been friends since college. Their personal and professional familiarity will make this a show that’s a must-see for all fans of Broadway.

Victoria Clark will be live on June 4th at 5:00 PM ET/2:00 PM PT. Tickets are $25 and allow for a second viewing (or a first viewing if you can’t watch the show live on June 4th) on Saturday, June 5th at 2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT.

CHAMBER MUSIC: Tchaikovsky Serenade – Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra – Debuts June 4th – 9:30 PM ET/6:30 PM PT

The wildly ambitious and very successful series Close Quarters concludes what I hope will just be its first season with this final episode. Throughout all 14 episodes, James Darrah and LACO have redefined how classical music can be presented.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, composed in 1880, is being performed in this film.

Grant Gershon, Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, leads LACO in the performance. There are four movements in Tchaikovsky’s composition and in this particular film/performance, the running time is 30 minutes.

Darrah told me recently that this final episode reflects a summation of the entire series and a look at how Los Angeles weathered the pandemic.

You probably don’t need to have watched all previous thirteen episodes. But I can assure you if you just watch this one, you’ll be likely to want to watch all fourteen.

DANCE DOCUMENTARY: Ballerina Boys – American Masters on PBS – June 4th (check local listings)

This fascinating, amusing and moving documentary takes a look at Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (The Trocks). They are an ensemble of male ballet dancers who take their dance seriously and present it with whopping doses of humor.

As the British might say, they take the piss out of the art form. But they do it with a absolute respect for the work.

Filmmakers Chana Gazit and Martha Barylick take a look at the 45-year history of The Trocks. Ballerina Boys features interviews with founding members and also current members as it charts its way through over four decades of entertaining audiences. And as their trailer says, “Changing the world one pirouette at a time.”

I’ve seen this film and it is wildly entertaining and, at times, deeply moving.

JAZZ: Immanuel Wilkins Quartet – Vermont Jazz Center – June 5th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

I’ve written several times about Immanuel Wilkins and how amazing he is. This Saturday is the best chance for you to see precisely what critics have been talking about.

Wilkins will be joined by Daryl Johns on bass; Kweku Sumbry on drums and Micah Thomas on piano.

This Tiny Desk concert for NPR should give you a good idea.

When I interviewed Wilkins last August as his album Omega was about to be released, he told me that he wrestled with releasing an album during the pandemic and not being able to tour behind it. Amongst the things he told me was:

“People need to hear it live. The band is a live band. It’s definitely something that should be played live and it would have been nice to have a proper release concert.”

Saturday’s concert will be a big step forward for Wilkins and for all of us to hear how dynamic this music is live.

There’s no charge to watch the concert; however, donations are encouraged.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL MUSIC: Bang on a Can Marathon of Song – June 6th – 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT

Fans of contemporary classical music, particularly those works that showcase the human voice, will be keenly interested in this Sunday’s Bang on a Can Marathon of Song. Expect multiple uses of the human voice to be employed here.

There are eleven world premieres scheduled.

This streaming marathon runs for four hours. Here is the line-up:

1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT

Arlen Hulsko performs the world premiere of and there was by Mary Kouyoumdjian. Composer Peni Candra Rini gives the world premiere of her new work. Ken Thomson gives the world premiere performance of Zero at the Bone by Anna Clyne. Composer Albert Kuvezin gives the world premiere of Eremchick (The Spider).

2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT

Julian Otis performs Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan D’Arc by Julius Eastman. Composer Fred Frith gives the world premiere performance of his new work. Kyle Brenn’s Still/Exist will be performed. Taja Cheek, performing as L’Rain will perform. David Cossin will give the world premiere performance of RYB by Florent Ghys.

3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

This hour opens with the world premiere of witness by Matana Roberts. Mark Stewart will perform the world premiere of a new work by Trevor Watson. Composer Eddy Kwan gives the world premiere of his new work. The final performance is by Allison Russell.

4:00 PM ET/1:00 PM PT

Vicky Chow gives the world premiere of a new work by Sophie Cash. Robert Black gives the world premiere of Audible Autopsy by Charles Amirkhanian.

There is no charge to watch the marathon. Donations are encouraged.

CABARET: Alex Newell – The Seth Concert Series – June 6th – 3:00 PM ET/12:00 PM PT

You might know Alex Newell from Glee. You might have seen Newell in the 2017 Broadway production of Once on This Island.

Or you might have seen as Mo on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. (If you haven’t watched this NBC series, you’ll definitely need to make up for lost time.)

However you know Newell, there’s one thing you know for sure, he can sing!

Newell and Rudetsky will of course share plenty of music along with the kind of stories that only Broadway insiders know and fans of musical theater will want to hear. As June is Pride Month, what better way to spend some time this weekend than with Alex Newell and Seth Rudetsky.

If you are unable to watch the show at 3:00 PM ET, there is an encore showing at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT. Tickets for either show are $25.

TRIBUTE TO BROADWAY: Curtain Up, Light the Lights – Roundabout Theatre Company – June 7th – 7:45 PM ET/4:45 PM PT

If you live in New York, you can join this 2021 Roundabout Theatre Company Gala live in Central Park. Luckily for those who don’t you can stream it live. Either way, here’s what you’ll get:

Tony Winner Jane Krakowski will perform live from Rumsey Playfield with the New York Pops.

Joining her for part of the concert will be Tituss Burgess (her co-star from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). Just for good measure there are a few special guests: Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, Oscar winner Emma Stone (La La Land), Grammy and Emmy Award winner Blair Underwood and Tony Award-nominee Vanessa Williams. Those are the announced special guests. There is word of even more stars to be participating.

As the ghost lights will soon be relieved of 24-hour a day duty and the marquees of Broadway relit in anticipation of theaters re-opening, Curtain Up, Light the Lights will be a great way to welcome the return of Broadway.

Virtual tickets start at $25.

BROADWAY VOCALS: Pajama Cast Party – June 7th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

If I only said Kristin Chenoweth would that be enough? Certainly she’s popular enough. And maybe she’ll be wearing pajamas.

Yes, the three-time Tony Award nominee (and winner for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown) and star of Wicked is joining Jim Caruso on Monday for the 61st episode of Pajama Cast Party.

In addition to singing, she’ll be sharing some of the young talented performers who are participating in Broadway Bootcamp of which she is one of the directors.

Also joining is Ryan Silverman who appeared in the 2013 Classic Stage Company production of Passion and appeared on Broadway in the 2014 revival of Side Show.

There is no charge to watch the show. Donations are encouraged with a portion of the proceeds going to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and The Actors Fund.

Those are our Top Ten Best Bets: June 4th – June 7th. Just a few reminders and on other note before we finish.

A few weeks ago we highlighted We Have to Hurry by Dorothy Lyman. It’s a moving play about two neighbors at a retirement community who fear time is not on their side during a quarantine. The play was so popular that a second live performance of the play is taking place this weekend with the playwright as Margaret and the enormously talented Alfred Molina as Gil. They have two performances (one Saturday and one on Sunday.) You can find details here.

Metropolitan Opera’s programming this weekend features the 2019-2020 season production of Porgy and Bess on Friday (highly recommended); the 2014-2015 season production of Macbeth on Saturday and the 2019-2020 season production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten on Sunday (also highly recommended).

On Monday the Met presents classic operas told in new ways. Monday’s offering is the 2012-2013 production of Rigoletto. We’ll have full details in Monday’s preview of the entire week.

That officially concludes all the offerings I have for you in our Top Ten Best Bets: June 4th – June 7th. Have a great weekend. Enjoy the performing arts!

Main Photo: Audra McDonald (Courtesy her website)

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