Jennifer Johnson News

In Santa Barbara, Ensemble's end of season production is a rom-com about an odd couple that comes together while learning to dance. SBCAST, an art space yet underutilized by the theatre community, will host Dogstar Theater Company's drink-and-walk exhibit of scenes and short plays. In Carpinteria, catch DramaDog's production of The Lost Virginity Tours, a comedy that takes four women on a road trip of memories as they visit the sights of first love. Up in Isla Vista, UCSB is producing the student one-act plays and a main-stage play about a young woman's heroine's journey over the border. Out in the valley, PCPA presents a raucous contemporary Broadway musical in the outdoor amphitheater in Solvang for theatre under the stars.

UCSB's Department of Theater and Dance presents the third annual New Works Lab May 9 19 in the Performing Arts Theater. New Works Lab showcases bare bones developmental productions of half-hour scripted and devised plays. The program provides a basic 'fringe festival' level of technical and design support so that each work may evolve in content and structure through the final performance. The platform has most notably given Malique Guinn, a fourth-year undergraduate at the time, the opportunity to realize his play Gang Sines which would go onto to win him the 2018 Kennedy Center Hip Hop Theater Creator Award.

TimeLine Theatre Company, in partnership with the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation and the Chicago Teachers Union, will present a reading of John Conroy's play My Kind of Town in support of curriculum that teaches Chicago Public school students about the police torture scandal that plagued Chicago for more than three decades, focusing on learning about abuse of government power and violation of the public trust and empowering students to be agents of change. The reading will take place on Monday, April 29 at 11 a.m. at Chicago Teachers Union, 1901 W. Carroll Ave., Chicago, for an audience of approximately 300 students from four schools, and their teachers.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center begins the month of May with Deeply Inspired—a program of pieces by composers from four eras and four cultures—featuring baritone Yunpeng Wang, pianist Michael Brown, violinists Kristin Lee and Danbi Um, violist Matthew Lipman, and cellists Nicholas Canellakis and David Finckel (May 3). Spring highlights include the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Massarosa for Bassoon, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello with bassoonist Peter Kolkay and the Calidore Quartet(May 16); and the New York premiere of Andrew Norman's Escher for String Quartet performed by the Escher String Quartet (May 7). Both works are CMS co-commissions.

Da Camera of Houston announces its 2019/2020 season, which features a lineup spanning a multitude of styles and genres.

The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-M st announced details of their 2019-2020 season which encompasses 76 concerts over 26 weeks. One significant highlight includes a festival designed to explore music and art that was banned, marginalized, and destroyed during the Nazi's Degenerate Art movement, and the continuing impact of censorship on creative expression in society today. The festival will center on Alban Berg's Lulu, one of the 20th century's most influential operas, and includes partner programming with the area's notable arts institutions.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) continues its 2018-2019 season with Orchestral Brilliance, led by Music Director Barbara Yahr, on Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 3:00pm at All Saints Church. The program features New York Philharmonic bass trombonist George Curran as soloist in Chris Brubeck's Prague Concerto; Richard Strauss's lush, romantic Suite from Der Rosenkavalier; and Debussy's impressionistic Nocturnes led by Assistant Conductor Eric Mahl.

Will anyone else but Ambrogio Maestri bring the same dynamism to Robert Carsen's 1950's take on Verdi's masterpiece, FALSTAFF? Time will tell. But the return of the wonderful production, with the great Met orchestra under conductor Richard Farnes and an all-around terrific cast, brought a little sunshine into the gray winter in New York.

Barrel of Monkeys presents the annual all musical edition of its much-lauded sketch show: THAT'S WEIRD, GRANDMA: Stories That Sing and Dance, directed by Artistic Director Brandon Cloyd, playing Fridays and Saturday at 7:30 pm from May 3 - 25, 2019 at the Neo-Futurist Theater, 5153 N. Ashland Ave. in Chicago.

92Y's Tisch Center for the Arts is proud to announce its 2019/20 Classical season, with more than 50 concerts from mid-October through early June. Curated by DirectorHanna Arie-Gaifman with Artistic Administrator Nicholas Russotto, it may be 92Y's most ambitious season to date, in both size and artistic scope. From solo recitals to chamber operas, the 19/20 offerings epitomize the world-class artistry and intelligent programming for which 92Y is known. Details on individual series and programs follow, along with a chronological list of concerts.

Falstaff, Verdi's exuberant final opera, returns to the Met for performances February 22-March 16, 2019. Robert Carsen's acclaimed production moves the action from Shakespeare's era to 1950s England. Fresh off his much-lauded performance as Michonnet in the Met's Adriana Lecouvreur, Ambrogio Maestri stars as the notorious glutton Falstaff, reprising his celebrated betrayal in this production's premiere run in the 2013-14 season. The ensemble cast of merry wives and noblemen also includes Ailyn Perez as Alice Ford, Golda Schultz as Nannetta, Marie-Nicole Lemieux as Mistress Quickly, Jennifer Johnson Cano as Meg Page, Francesco Demuro as Fenton, and Juan Jesus Rodriguez as Ford. Conductor Richard Farnes, the former longtime music director of Opera North, makes his Met debut on the podium.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic announces its 98th summer season at the Hollywood Bowl. The Hollywood Bowl summer season features world-class artists ranging from classical and pops to jazz, rock, and world music including the world premiere of two new LA Phil-commissioned works plus a fully-staged Broadway musical.

Boston Lyric Opera's (BLO) season of rebels and dissenters continues into Spring 2019 with tales of strong women helmed by women directors. BLO's productions of THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA and THE HANDMAID'S TALE tell startlingly relevant stories -- both with extraordinary music, and both produced in distinctive, non-traditional spaces. Artistic and General Director Esther Nelson says the spring season highlights stories from which female characters emerge as moral and societal touchstones.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra (GVO) continues its 2018-2019 season with Eastern Romance, led by Music Director Barbara Yahr, on Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 3:00pm at All Saints Church. The program features longtime Metropolitan Opera Orchestra violinist Ming-Feng Hsin leading the GVO in Dvo k's moving Romance and as soloist in Glazunov's elegant Violin Concerto. The concert concludes with Rachmaninoff's rhapsodic Third Symphony.

Carl Tanner will sing the title role in the December 28 performance of VerdisOtello, replacing Stuart Skelton, who is ill.

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Today's top stories: the star-studded cast is announced for an upcoming reading of Parade, watch the full Kennedy Center Honors, and more!

Well, it's that time of the year again--time for a look-back on what was worth making note of during the calendar year that's about to come to an end. It's from a totally personal, subjective point of view, of course, but frankly that's the way opera-lovers always seem to like it, n'est-ce pas? The productions worth noting come from places big, small and in-between, from composers old as the hills to freshly minted or somewhere in between (likewise the performers), from traditional or boldly modern to simply stand up and sing.

Talk about baptism by fire! That's what Gustavo Dudamel--that wunderkind of the classical conducting world--faced as he reached the podium of the Met for the first time Friday night. Not only was he conducting Verdi's great opera, OTELLO, but he was doing so with a last-minute substitute in the title role. The result: All went well with the Met's production of the masterwork.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center starts its 2019 winter/spring season in Alice Tully Hall with two exciting performances. The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, a Meet the Music!concert for families based on Paul Goble's haunting tale of a Native American girl who understands horses on a mystical level, will be presented on January 13. Led by series creator and host Bruce Adolphe, the performance features flutist Sooyun Kim, clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois, cellist Mihai Marica, pianist David Kaplan, percussionist Eduardo Leandro, and a free instrumental petting zoo in the lobby for kids. It will be followed by Esteemed Ensemble, which reunites close friends and colleagues pianist Wu Han, violinist Daniel Hope, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellist David Finckel,performing piano quartet classics by Suk, Brahms, and Dvo?ak on January 27 and 29.

To commemorate the start of Yannick Nézet-Séguin's new position as the Jeanette Lerman Neubauer Music Director, the Met is releasing an audio compilation of performance highlights on iTunes, as well as a series