This week on Open Air, KALW’s radio magazine for the Bay Area performing arts, host David Latulippe talks with Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who is in town to perform Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, during the final weekend of Rebellious Beauty: A Stravinsky Festival.
The concerts also feature Stravinsky’s ballet scores Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Performances are at Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings (8pm) and Sunday afternoon (2pm).
We have live music by members of the virtuosic Iranian musical group The Lian Ensemble, Houman Pourmedhi (tonbak) and Pirayeh Pourafar (tar). They are in town for their collaboration with leading tabla master Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, in Noor - The Path of Light, presented by the Chitresh Das Institute.
Noor (meaning light) premieres on Saturday September 29 (8pm) and Sunday September 30 (2pm) at Z Space in San Francisco. The performance is an exploration of the roots, mutual influences and resemblances between Persian, and North Indian or Hindustani classical music and dance. The Chitresh Das Youth Company will open the evening with a kathak performance choreographed by CDI Artistic Director Charlotte Moraga.
Joy Meads, the new director of Dramaturgy for the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), joins us in the studio to discuss the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that kicks off the new theater season, Sweat(2015) by American playwright Lynn Nottage.
Sweat is set in a fictional bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the American Rust Belt. The play examines the disintegration of working class America against a backdrop of job cuts, poverty, and downsizing, along with the disintegration of friendship and the social fabric of the town. Sweat runs from Sept 26 - October 21 at A.C.T.’s Geary Theater (415 Geary St.) in San Francisco.
Plus, Peter Robinson, Open Air’s regular contributor and critic at large, reviews two movies: The Children Act, with Emma Thompson; and The Wife, with Glenn Close, asking the question whether this movie will win her an Oscar.
This edition of Open Air with host David Latulippe, (normally heard live on Thursday at 1pm, on September 27) was broadcast at 6pm, due to earlier live coverage of the Kavanagh hearing. Listen now or anytime…