This week on Open Air, KALW’s radio magazine for the Bay Area Performing Arts in Times of Corona, host David Latulippe talks, appropriately socially distant, with Eric Zivian and Tanya Tomkins (pictured), directors of Valley of the Moon Music Festival (VMMF), about how they are coping with the current crisis.
Zivian and Tomkins had to cancel their concerts at the Green Music Center this month - in addition to all their other gigs with groups like Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, but they continue to stay busy.
One of their new initiatives is Fermata Fridays, a series of interviews with Festival musicians, lecturers, and other members of the VMMF community, hosted by Tanya Tomkins from the home she shares with Eric Zivian in Berkeley. This week's interview (April 24) will be with violinist and early music pioneer Monica Huggett.
We check in with Joshua Kosman, classical music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, and his reflections on the current crisis and its effects on the arts in the Bay Area; and we look back with him to the ’89 earthquake to see if there are perhaps lessons to be learned, or parallels to be drawn from the recovery of the local arts scene after a major catastrophe.
We talk with general director Khori Dastoor from Opera San Jose about the launch of the free live stream viewing of the company’s breathtaking 2011 production of Mozart’s rarely produced dramatic masterpiece Idomeneo: ré di Creta.
This larger-than-life work features ground-breaking performances by artists who have since gone on to international fame, dance segments by choreographer Dennis Nahat performed by the Ballet San Jose (which ceased operations in 2016), and an orchestra conducted by world-famed Mozart interpreter George Cleve (who passed away in 2015). Idomeneo is available to stream at no charge on www.operasj.org and will be available through May 18.
Plus, Open Air’s regular contributor and critic at large, Peter Robinson, takes you on a trip down memory lane by revisiting three classic Hollywood musicals: The King and I by Rodgers and Hammerstein (1951); Follow the Fleet (1936) by Irving Berlin, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their fifth collaboration as dance partners; and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), starring Ethel Merman and Marilyn Monroe, also by Irving Berlin.
Also: an important announcement about Open Air’s upcoming Radio Theater..! Stay Tuned…!
Open Air, with host David Latulippe; heard live on Thursday, April 23, at 1pm; and afterwards anytime at this location…