Jennifer Johnson News

Broadway might be dark this month, but that doesn't mean that theatre isn't happening everywhere! Below, check out where you can get your daily fix of Broadway today, April 8, 2020.

Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra have announced their schedule for the ensemble's 2020-21 season at Severance Hall. 

As part of a year-long contemporary performance series Assemblage, Detroit-based performance company The Hinterlands presents Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA) in their hallucinatory work Leonora & Alejandro: La Maga y el Maestro April 2-5 at the Jam Handy Building. The production is a co-presentation by Detroit Public Theatre.

On Saturday 21 March, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Chief Conductor, Vasily Petrenko will perform Mahler's Third Symphony with real church bells for the first time ever in the UK. Liverpool Philharmonic owns 14 church bells, and is the only British orchestra to have collection of this size.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) will present its season finale, Stealing Fire, led by Music Director Barbara Yahr and Associate Conductor Eric Mahl, on Sunday, May 3, 2020 at 4:00pm at Peter Norton Symphony Space. The program includes the NY premiere of Jonathan Leshnoff's Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon, co-commissioned by the GVO, and the US premiere of Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad's Saravá. Also on the program are Beethoven's Overture to 'Creatures of Prometheus,' and Respighi's Pines of Rome.

I admit this is an absolutely personal, totally one-sided view of what gave one man opera thrills last year and what I will look back on with delight. Some are old works, some are new, some are individual performers, some are ensembles, some are complete productions, some are merely the highlight of an evening, most are domestic, a few are foreign. In any case, as the new decade begins, I recall that these are the vocal highlights that made my heart beat a little faster and made me look forward to the year ahead.

January at 92Y brings three consecutive evenings devoted to the Inflection series, January 22 - 24. Inflection, which spotlights bold collaborations across multiple disciplines, is the creation of Hanna Arie-Gaifman, who celebrates her 20th anniversary this season as Director of 92Y's Tisch Center for the Arts.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) presents its first concert of 2020, Classic Romantics, led by Music Director Barbara Yahr and Associate Conductor Eric Mahl, on Sunday, February 9, 2020 at 3:00pm at All Saints Church. The program explores portrayals of romanticism in music from the early classical period through the 20th century. Associate Conductor Eric Mahl leads the first half of the concert, opening with the overture to Mozart's last opera, The Magic Flute. Then, the orchestra shines in the suite from Igor Stravinsky's neoclassical ballet Pulcinella. Music Director Barbara Yahr takes the podium for Jean Sibelius' majestic Symphony No. 5 to round out the program.

Nicholas Phan's January engagements showcase his passion for art song, his love of collaborative work, and his extraordinary gift for musical curation. On January 13-24, with the support of an outstanding roster of fellow singers and instrumentalists, the tenor co-curates and headlines 'Emerging Voices: Art Song & Social Connection' at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.

Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) presents new music piano trio Longleash in their 5BMF debut, performing Beethoven Reflections on Friday, January 10, 2020 at 7:30pm at Flushing Town Hall in Queens and Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 3:00pm at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. The program includes two of Beethoven's celebrated trios - the Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1 No. 3 and Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70 No. 1 'Ghost' - paired with two contemporary responses: John Zorn's Ghosts, and the world premiere of Reiko Füting's free - whereof -- wherefore, co-commissioned by 5BMF and Longleash.

January at 92Y brings three consecutive evenings devoted to the Inflection series, January 22 - 24. Inflection, which spotlights bold collaborations across multiple disciplines, is the creation of Hanna Arie-Gaifman, who celebrates her 20th anniversary this season as Director of 92Y's Tisch Center for the Arts. The series opened in November with the Geneva Camerata's Dance of the Sun, which set the orchestra in motion as they played works by Lully and Mozart. January's events explore the sometimes porous boundary between speech and song, on a continuum ranging from heightened speech to chanting, Sprechstimme, and full-throated vocalizing.

Collaboraction, Chicago's theater for social change, announces its inaugural full-length youth production, All I Want for Chicago Isa??, a holiday-themed, world premiere devised work of theater that showcases the voices and wishes of Chicago high school students. Performances are December 7-15, 2020. Press opening is Saturday, December 7 at 7 p.m.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) presents its annual holiday concert, led by Music Director Barbara Yahr and Associate Conductor Eric Mahl, on Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 3:00pm at All Saints Church. The concert's theme is Partnerships and Collaboration and features a side-by-side performance with student musicians from the 3rd Street Music School. The family-friendly program opens with Vivaldi's Flute Concerto in E-minor, with the GVO's own Simon Dratfield as soloist. The students from 3rd Street Music School join the GVO for Karl Jenkins' Palladio. Next, Eric Mahl leads the orchestra in the March from Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges. Young violinist Ben Lerman performs the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D-major. The concert concludes with the finale of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade, featuring the high school students from the 3rd Street Music School.

DACAMERA of Houston's 2019a?"20 season continues with A Woman's Life: The Diary of Virginia Woolf at Zilkha Hall, The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) presents Defying Death, led by Music Director Barbara Yahr and Associate Conductor Eric Mahl, on Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 3:00pm at All Saints Church.

DACAMERA of Houston's 2019a?"20 season continues with A Woman's Life: The Diary of Virginia Woolf at Zilkha Hall, The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m. Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano joins DACAMERA Artistic Director Sarah Rothenberg in this performance of two song cycles, composed 135 years apart, depicting radically different views of two artist-women's lives. The program juxtaposes Robert Schumann's Fraunliebe und Leben, a romantic vision of wife and mother; and Dominick Argento's From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, musings of a literary genius struggling to find her voice and place in the world. 

Barrel of Monkeys concludes its 2018-19 season with THAT'S WEIRD GRANDMA: Fantastic Beasts and the Stories About Them

Theatre Baton Rouge's production of 33 VARIATIONS is a theatrical delight. Written by Moises Kaufman and directed by Shannon Walsh, it is a mixture of a biographical play about Ludwig van Beethoven, and a 21st Century music scholar hoping to understand the origins behind his Diabelli Variations. It is a powerful exploration of obsessive artistic drive, the limitations of time, and the bonds of family.

This weekend Boston Lyric Opera concluded the run of THE HANDMAID'S TALE - the first performances of a new edition by composer Poul Ruders, commissioned by Boston Lyric Opera. The production starred Jennifer Johnson Cano and Caroline Worra.

The powers of passion and parenthood combine into a touching, complex story as Theatre Baton Rouge takes on Moises Kaufman's 33 VARIATIONS, directed by Shannon Walsh. The play focuses on an ailing musicologist who's struggling against time to unlock the mystery behind one of Beethoven's last projects.