This week on Open Air, KALW’s radio magazine for the Bay Area performing arts, host David Latulippe talks with West Edge Opera’s general director Mark Streshinsky, about the company’s 2019 Summer Festival, which runs from August 3 - 18 at the Bridge Yard (pictured), a newly renovated industrial facility in Oakland, where the Bay Bridge meets the waterfront.
The West Edge Festival opens on August 3 with the Three Penny Opera by Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo & Euridice opens on August 4 in a production that is entirely conducted, directed, choreographed, designed and performed by woman and non-binary artists. KJ Dahlaw makes their directorial debut, leading the production as both director and choreographer. On August 10, the festival presents the West Coast premiere of Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, directed by Mark Streshinsky and based on a film by Lars von Trier.
With Bay Area composer Vivian Fung, we talk about the US Premiere of her work Earworms, on August 10 (7pm), as part of the current Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium (307 Church St.) in Santa Cruz. The Cabrillo Festival, America’s longest running festival of new orchestral music, now in its 57th season, runs through August 11.
Conducted by music director Cristian Măcelaru, the August 10 program also includes the West Coast premieres of Hannah Lash’s God Music Bug Music and Tan Dun’s Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women, featuring harpist Sarah Fuller, as well as the world premiere of Preben Antonsen’s Psalm Without Words.
We hear the second part of David’s interview with composer Jake Heggie, about the world premiere of his opera If I Were You, commissioned by San Francisco’s Merola Opera Program, with performances at the Herbst Theatre (401 Van Ness) in San Francisco, August 1 - 6, featuring two alternating casts.
Plus, Open Air regular contributor and critic at large, Peter Robinson, reviews three art exhibits around the Bay Area: Andy Warhol - From A to B and Back Again, through September 2 at SFMOMA; Strange Days: Dada, Surrealism, and the Book, at the Legion of Honor, through November 10; and Her Side of the Story: Tales of California Pioneer Women, a year-long project of The Society of California Pioneers Museum and Library (101 Montgomery, Presidio of San Francisco).
Open Air with host David Latulippe; heard live on Thursday, August 1 at 1pm. Listen now or anytime...