While preparing to write program notes for the upcoming stream from Cal Performances — a concert by the Dover Quartet that premieres on 10 December — I got to submerge myself in some glorious string quartets. Along with Haydn’s Op. 76, No. 2 (“Die Quinten”) and Dvořák’s magnificent Op. 106, the Dovers will perform an early work from the years while György Ligeti was still in Budapest (Métamorphoses nocturnes).
Later this month, Cal Performances will present Triptych — a meditation on the legacy of Robert Mapplethorpe 30 years after his death that was composed by Bryce Dessner to a libretto by korde arrington tuttle. Here’s the article on this hybrid theatrical work I wrote for Cal Performances:
In this age of selfies, promiscuously disseminated Snapchat sexting, and Instagram—the omnipresent reflection of our image-saturated, disposable culture—it almost defies belief that an exhibition of photographs was once the flashpoint for the culture wars that continue to divide America…
If you can’t make the world premiere of Dreamers this weekend by composer Jimmy López and playwright Nilo Cruz, don’t miss the live stream of Sunday afternoon’s concert (3pm West Coast time). Esa-Pekka Salonen is the conductor.
For more background, here’s my preview of a work that could not be more timely.
My story on a major upcoming new premiere by Jimmy López in collaboration with Nilo Cruz has been posted here.
Music Makes the Dream Reality:
A New Oratorio Inspired by the Immigrant Experience
It has been a few years since composer Jimmy López and playwright Nilo Cruz first conceived their latest collaboration, the oratorio Dreamers. But the message behind this musical-dramatic reflection on the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants seems to become more pressingly relevant every day. The work, which was commissioned by Cal Performances and receives its highly anticipated world premiere March 17 in Zellerbach Hall, pays homage to the experiences of Berkeley students who were brought to the United States as children and now face uncertain legal status.
Cal Performances at Berkeley has an especially compelling season lined up and is genuinely engaged with issues critical to our time — including the premiere of a new work commissioned by composer Jimmy López and writer-playwright Nilo Cruz. Here’s my preview:
Last night at Zellerbach Hall, Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s remarkable staged concert,Bye Bye Beethoven, opened the Berkeley edition of the programs she just curated for the 2018 Ojai Festival. One of the most creative deconstructions I’ve seen in a while, one that really achieves what it sets out to do: to shake us out of the stupor of the safe concert routine and show us what we’ve been missing.
According to Kopatchinskaja, “the concert routine around the world is so absurd,” continually replaying the same icons “with not very much imagination relevant to our time.” Bye Bye Beethoven dramatizes her concern “about petrified traditions. I don’t think Beethoven would be happy to know that in the future his music would take so much space.”
It’s not iconoclasm—ultimately, a Puritan approach—but rather a wittily inventive transformation of perceptions that motivates Bye Bye Beethoven.
This is the kind of work being done all the time in the visual arts, in poetry, in fiction, in film. Why can’t we have more of it in concert life?
Patricia Kopatchinskaja is an ideal choice to be this year’s music director of the Ojai Festival. In advance of the festival’s northern edition, Ojai at Berkeley, here’s my profile of this incomparable artist for Cal Performances:
Matters of technical proficiency are well accounted for in the arsenal of words that critics have at their disposal to describe what sets a musician apart. What is sorely lacking is …
The move comes two days after Neil Young requested that his work be removed from Spotify in protest over coronavirus misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast.
For the anniversary of the kids' TV show, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting has more than 100 episodes set to stream online. Original cast members are celebrating on, you guessed it, Zoom.
A bot account sent mean notes to users who posted their Wordle score — and it also revealed the next day's answer. It was suspended for violating Twitter's rules.
In 2005, the British actor played brooding aristocrat Mr. Darcy in the film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Now, he's Tom Wambsgans, a scheming Midwesterner on the HBO series Succession.
The actor was "taken aback" by the studio's plan to revisit a story with problematic representation of dwarfs. Disney says it is taking "a different approach" to the live version.
Thrity Umrigar's novel is about India's humanitarian crisis — with its depictions of misogyny and scenes of public shaming, mistreatment and torture — but it's also about a transformative journey.
Tagaq, a recipient of the national Polaris Music Prize, discusses the subjugation of Canada's Indigenous people and her hopes for healing through acknowledging that difficult history.
Novelist John Darnielle — also singer-songwriter with the Mountain Goats — has a hero who wants to honor the victims he's writing about but doesn't much like them.
French fashion designer Thierry Mugler reshaped the fashion world, centering wildly inventive concepts and creating space for queer voices. On Sunday, he died at the age of 73.
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 