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 …
Federal prosecutors in New York filed a request on Friday that they be allowed to enter more evidence of uncharged crimes allegedly committed by the R&B singer in his trial next month.
The Apple TV+ series about an American football coach who winds up coaching soccer in the U.K. is nominated for 20 Emmys Awards. The new season of Ted Lasso is just as warm and funny as the first.
Grant started out in romantic comedies. Now he's up for an Emmy for his role as a narcissistic doctor accused of murder in the HBO series The Undoing. Originally broadcast Dec. 1, 2020.
No costumed crowds are thronging the streets of San Diego this weekend: For the second year in a row, Comic-Con is online only. But organizers are hoping for a small in-person show in November.
In this music parody game, The War Report podcast hosts Shalewa Sharpe and Gastor Almonte are served a hefty helping of Supremes songs rewritten to be about fast food chains.
Hosts of the podcast The War Report, Shalewa Sharpe and Gastor Almonte, play this word game in which every answer is the title of a movie, with one of the words replaced with a rhyming body part.
Shalewa Sharpe and Gastor Almonte, hosts of the podcast The War Report, figure out which corporate relationships are true and which are false. Pet food candies? Cheesecake workouts? Who's to say.
FINALLY, MATH! Love About Town podcast hosts Kenice Mobley and Rohan Padhye will multiply, divide, add and subtract their way to the answers. You know what? DON'T Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
Love About Town podcast hosts Kenice Mobley and Rohan Padhye hear only the first second of popular songs, and must identify the song based on that alone!
