Even if you’ve never been to LA’s train station, you’ve probably seen it in such movies as Blade Runner, Bugsy, Catch Me If You Can and The Dark Knight Rises.

The public piano is re-opening at Union Station and to celebrate they are going to start posting archived pop-up performances of five different pianists making great music called Play On! Each performance will be streamed beginning at 7 PM on the Facebook and Instagram page and YouTube channel for L.A. Union Station. The performances will remain available on the YouTube channel.

The series starts today, July 19th, with pianist and producer Jamael Dean – my personal favorite of the five soloists. He’s performed with Kamasi Washington, Thundercat (who joined Washington for Sunday’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl) and more. He’s a musician who knows the traditions of jazz and just how far he can play with them to create his own sound.

Tuesday, July 20th Donia Jarrar will be performing. She creates a fusion of classical music, improvisation, electronic and more to create her own kind of music that has found its way into film, dance, theater and more.

Wednesday July 21st will feature Ukranian Inna Faliks. Classical music is her speciality and she’ll be performing the music of Maurice Ravel and Franz Liszt. She’s the head of piano for UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music and has performed with Camerata Pacifica, Bodytraffic and more.

If jazz and funk is your thing you’ll want to check out Brandon Coleman on Thursday, July 22nd. Coleman has also collaborated with Kamasi Washington and Babyface, Flying Lotus and Donald Glover. His music is as infectious as his omnipresent smile.

The series closes out with jazz on the Latin side with a performance by Puerto Rico’s Jonathan Montes. He was instrumental (pun intended) in the music on Jane the Virgin and has collaborated with many of the top Latin Grammy nominated artists of our time.

There’s only one other artist missing from this list: you. If you find yourself at Union Station and have the talent and nerve to tickle the ivories, the piano is waiting for you. After the hiatus forced by the pandemic, it’s my understanding that the piano has not been drinking. (Extra points if you get that reference!) So play on!

Main photo: Jamael Dean/All photos courtesy of L.A. Union Station

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For Invisible Cities, you begin your journey in Harvey House, a restaurant space that houses the orchestra. From there, you follow whichever characters you like as they walk and sing through Union Station. Along the way you might encounter other singers, dancers, and most certainly the general public. And the whole time, you’re wearing headphones that amplify the musicians and the singers.

“Los Angeles is the inspiration for the work that I’m doing with the Industry in every way,” Sharon explained on the phone during a rehearsal break a few days before opening night. “Doing the opera at Union Station reflects that. It is an icon of Los Angeles that honors both the architecture and the city itself.”

But who stages an opera in a train station? “Composer Christopher Cerrone proposed the work when I was project director at New York City Opera’s VOX. The inner life of the music had to be made manifest on a stage. Calvino’s novel is more a piece of philosophy, a tone poem rather than a novel in the traditional sense. The opera is very quiet. Singers sing at low volume for most of the opera. You want to feel that the characters are singing in your ear.” It was then that the idea of using headphones and roaming around a large physical space was born.

“What you are hearing has no connection with what you are seeing,” Sharon says. “You have the opportunity to create relationships between eyes and ears. The book is fundamentally about what happens to us internally when we face a journey anywhere in the world. How much external reality is just a reflection of what’s happening with us. This was the perfect way to realize the piece that Christopher had been trying to create.”

The only thing missing was the location. “I started thinking where was a place the audience could move freely? Where could we do an intervention that wouldn’t disrupt daily life? The romance, the beauty around Union Station—you are instantly back in 1939 imagining the past in L.A. All of this speaks beautifully with the themes of the book and the opera.”

While the opera is being performed, trains continue shuttling passengers to and from the City of Angels. “Everyday life is a crucial part of the way the piece works. The life of the station, the people, and the subtle displacement are key elements,” Sharon says. “We are used to having our physical and mental reality not necessarily reinforcing each other. We carry so much in our phones.  As our lives get so digitized, these experiential type of performances resonate very deeply because they are something that our phones can’t do. The headphones and the public space are not the show. They are the means to experience a really beautiful opera.”

If the day-to-day hustle and bustle of Union Station isn’t enough, on Halloween there’s another level of engagement. “The life of the station on Halloween is going to be so electric. Costume designer E.B. Brooks and I had the idea of having a costume contest. It doesn’t change the nature of the performance at all. The creative act does not reside only by the artist. It is the spectator that is doing creative work with the artist.”

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