this week in music

ALICE IN THE PANDEMIC

White Snake Projects
October 23, 25, 27, free with RSVP, 7:30
www.whitesnakeprojects.org

Alice goes down a very different kind of rabbit hole in Alice in the Pandemic, a virtual opera from Boston-based White Snake Projects. The production seeks to push the envelope of technological innovation during the Covid-19 lockdown as performers — and their 3D avatars — sing from wherever they are sheltering in place. The show features a libretto by creator Cerise Lim Jacobs, with music by Jorge Sosa, direction by Elena Araoz, and art by Anna Campbell; the cast includes Carami Hilaire as Alice, an ER nurse at Fair Hospital; Eve Gigliotti as Mrs. Lee (Alice’s mother, who falls ill) and other characters; and Daniel Moody as the White Rabbit, who Alice meets in the subway. Tickets are free with advance RSVP; there will be live shows October 23, 25, and 27 at 7:30. The sixty-minute digital opera will be told in ten scenes in one act, leading the audience on a wild ride through an alternative wonderland and a health crisis that is all too real.

REIKO YAMADA: SOUND INSTALLATION ON SILENT FILMS

Reiko Yamada will present the virtual world premiere of the Japan Society commission Sound Installation on Silent Films on October 21 (photo © Carolyn Drake)

Who: Reiko Yamada, Yoko Shioya
What: Livestreamed world premiere performance and artist Q&A
Where: Japan Society online
When: Wednesday, October 21, $15, 8:00 (available on demand through November 4)
Why: Japan Society’s virtual 2020-21 Performing Arts Season kicks off with the commissioned world premiere of Hiroshima-born multimedia artist Reiko Yamada’s Sound Installation on Silent Films. On October 21 at 8:00, Japan Society will livestream the prerecorded performance, filmed live in Yamada’s home, in which she accompanies a trio of silent films with music played on broken accordions. “During the pandemic, our everyday lives have been greatly compromised, leaving us at times painfully dependent on the internet for connection. But while some advances in technology take a center stage in this climate, others that changed the world but have since become commonplace — cinema, instantly available music, global transportation — have been halted,” Yamada said in a statement. “The three antique films that I have selected for this concert — a reel of sumo wrestling matches, an almost abstract animation, and a documentary on the history of railroads in Japan – were the new technologies of their day, light entertainments in the truest sense. Recontextualizing these movies as ‘streaming performances’ supported by music provides me a canvas to present our relationship to entertainment over time.”

The performance will be followed by a live Q&A with Japan Society artistic director Yoko Shioya and Yamada, whose other works include the experimental opera Mask Your Sonic Story, the score for the dance piece You Took a Part of Me, the solo exhibition Small Small Things, and the orchestral composition New Shadows in Raw Light of Darkness. “I have an affinity for the accordion, having used it as a primary instrument in past projects,” Yamada, who is currently based in Barcelona, continues. “Though the accordion has no significant role in the history of Japanese silent film, I find the instrument, even (and perhaps especially) in a dilapidated state, can convey a depth of experience and an almost tactile sense of sound. By filtering my performance live through a computer, I can better isolate the unique personality of each instrument. The films that make up this performance were painstakingly digitized, recaptured like butterflies on pins for a modern audience that may find them rendered alien out of context. Much as each frame of these films has been renovated by both analog and digital processing, I will be transforming these nearly nonfunctional accordions into time machines, linking the performance’s many parts across oceans and centuries.” Tickets for the fifty-minute show are $15; the stream will be available through November 4.

STEVIE NICKS 24 KARAT GOLD THE CONCERT

Who: Stevie Nicks
What: New concert film
Where: Tavern on the Green and other locations
When: Wednesday, October 21, and Sunday, October 25, $20, 7:30
Why: In an August 10 journal entry on Facebook about Covid-19, Stevie Nicks wrote, “If I get it, I will probably never sing again. Put me on a ventilator and I will be hoarse for the rest of my life ~ I don’t have much time . . . I am 72 years old. . . . Everyone gathering at the beaches ~ in the bars ~ block parties ~ etcetera ~ Let’s get drunk and make out and by the way ‘Can I have the other half of your drink?’ ~ We are heading for a crash. People are dying because people aren’t wearing their masks.” Off the road because of the pandemic lockdown, Nicks is now offering fans of her solo career and work with Fleetwood Mac the chance to gather together in person and enjoy her music — masked and socially distanced — with two special screenings of the film Stevie Nicks 24 Karat Gold The Concert, taking place at theaters, drive-ins, and other exhibition spaces across the country. Here in New York City, the film, which features such songs as “Rhiannon,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Edge of Seventeen,” “Stand Back,” and “Landslide” and takes audiences behind the scenes of the tour, will be shown outside at Tavern on the Green in Central Park on October 21 and 25 at 7:30; tickets are $20, and all attendees must wear masks and follow official city Covid-19 regulations.

Doors open at 7:00, and the venue will seat groups together as long as social distancing can be maintained, and drinks will be available for cash purchase. You can get a taste of what you’re in for with the above clip of “Gypsy,” performed during the 2016-17 tour, which crossed the United States and also traveled to Canada, Australia, and the UK; directed and produced by Joe Thomas, the film was recorded at the March 2017 shows in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh and includes Nicks sharing personal stories about Tom Petty, Prince, Lindsey Buckingham, and others. “The 24 Karat Gold Tour was one of my favorite tours I’ve ever done,” Nicks wrote on Facebook last month. “It’s a trip. It’s a journey. Come with me!‬”

FORWARD. TOGETHER.

Who: Jelani Alladin, Jacqueline Antaramian, Antonio Banderas, Laura Benanti, Kim Blanck, Ally Bonino, Danielle Brooks, Jenn Colella, Elvis Costello, Daniel Craig, Alysha Deslorieux, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Holly Gould, Danai Gurira, Stephanie Hsu, David Henry Hwang, Oscar Isaac, Nikki M. James, Alicia Keys, John Leguizamo, John Lithgow, Audra McDonald, Grace McLean, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kelli O’Hara, Mia Pak, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Hyde Pierce, Phylicia Rashad, Liev Schreiber, Martin Sheen, Phillipa Soo, Meryl Streep, Trudie Styler, Sting, Will Swenson, Shaina Taub, Kuhoo Verma, Ada Westfall, Kate Wetherhead
What: Virtual celebration and fundraiser
Where: Public Theater, Facebook, YouTube
When: Tuesday, October 20, free (donations accepted), 8:00
Why: Originally planned for June 1 but delayed because of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Public Theater is now holding its gala fundraiser online on October 20. “Forward. Together.” features appearances and performances by a wide range of actors, musicians, playwrights, and other creators, sharing songs and stories, from Lin-Manuel Miranda, Antonio Banderas, Elvis Costello, Daniel Craig, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and John Leguizamo to Danielle Brooks, Jenn Colella, Audra McDonald, Phillipa Soo, Meryl Streep, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. One of the highlights will be Jelani Alladin performing a brand-new song from the Public Works production of Hercules. The cochairs are Kwame Anthony Appiah, Candia Fisher, Joanna Fisher, Laure Sudreau, and Lynne Wheat, honoring Audrey and Zygi Wilf and Sam Waterston; the evening is directed by Kenny Leon, with music direction by Ted Sperling.

Admission is free but donations will be accepted; twenty-five percent of the proceeds will go to eight Public Works partner organizations and Hunts Point Alliance for Children. You can also participate in the online auction, where you can bid on such items as a virtual conversation with Queen Latifah and Lee Daniels, a coffee chat with Liev Schreiber, ten years of premium reserved tickets to the Delacorte for Shakespeare in the Park, a private Zoom cooking class with Andrew Carmellini, and lunch (on Zoom or in person) with Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis. The Public has presented several outstanding productions during the pandemic, including The Line, What Do We Need to Talk About?, and the current audio play Shipwreck, so give if you can to help support this ongoing dream from Joe Papp.

LOVE STORY, THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

Yoshiko Chuma’s Love Story, The School of Hard Knocks is a twenty-four-hour durational online experience

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
Saturday, October 17, 11:00 am – Sunday, October 18, 11:00 am, $5 – $400 (pay what you can)
lamama.org/love-story

Osaka-born multidisciplinary artist Yoshiko Chuma celebrates the fortieth anniversary of her collective, “The School of Hard Knocks” (SOHK), with the live, twenty-four-hour virtual work Love Story, streaming through La MaMa beginning at eleven o’clock in the morning on October 17. SOHK debuted at the 1980 Venice Biennale and became an official company four years later; the troupe has traveled the world with such shows as AGITPROPS: The Recycling Project, 7 x 7 x 7, and Pi=3.14 . . . Ramallah-Fukushima-Bogota Endless Peripheral Border, many of which were developed and premiered at La MaMa as well as PS122 and Dixon Place here in New York. A durational performance installation that incorporates dance, music, film, visual art, and narrative storytelling, Love Story deals with such timely topics as immigration, national security, and war; Chuma, who has been based in the United States since 1977, will also be looking at her personal and professional past, present, and future, focusing on the idea of borders, which have taken on a whole new level of importance under the Trump administration while also impacting how art is now created online as well as how Chuma has shunned the limitations of genre in her career.

Love Story — which consists of live and prerecorded segments, with part of the show taking place in La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre — was conceived, choreographed, and directed by Chuma, working with artist liaison Ai Csuka, creative producer and musician Ginger Dolden, actor Ryan Leach, Middle East specialist Ruyji Yamaguchi, and dramaturgs and designers Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan. Among the cast of more than fifty international performers are Deniz Atli from Turkey, Agnè Auželytė from Amsterdam, Los Babuinos from Venezuela, Sahar Damoni from Palestine, Tanin Torabi from Iran, and Martita Abril, Mizuho Kappa, Heather Litteer, Devin Brahja Waldman, and zaybra from New York, with live, original music by Robert Black on double bass, Jason Kao Hwang on violin, Christopher McIntyre on trombone, and Dane Terry on piano.

“This week I was supposed to be in New York for performances celebrating Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks’ forty-year anniversary,” Auželytė recently wrote on Facebook. “While my physical body will stay put in Amsterdam for a long while to come, I will still be there, online and energetically, sharing the screen with a group of artists, some whom I had the opportunity to get to know for a long time already and some whom I only ever met on Zoom! (How weird is that? Is it still weird?) I am also touched to see some of them physically at the theater at La MaMa, which has been closed to the public for seven months now! We’ve had a lot of late-night conversations during this process and it continues to make me think about how to reimagine theater in the era of self-isolation and Zoom life. What does local-global mean anymore? Where are our bodies? What are our bodies?”

The multidisciplinary Love Story streams live from Saturday to Sunday morning (photo courtesy La MaMa)

The list of collaborators on Love Story is long and impressive. In addition to those listed above, there will be choreography by Yanira Castro, Ursula Eagly, Allyson Green, Jodi Melnick, Sarah Michelson, Anthony Phillips, Peter Pleyer, Kathryn Ray, Steve Recker, and Vicky Shick; poetry by Kyle Dacuyan, Bob Holman, and Anne Waldman; music by Mark Bennett, Tan Dun, Nona Hendryx, Christian Marclay, Lenny Pickett, and Marc Ribot; film and video by Chani Bockwinkel, Jacob Burckhardt, Rudy Burckhardt, Andrew Kim, Jonas Mekas, and Charlie Steiner; photography by Robert Flynt and Dona Ann McAdams; set designs by Tim Clifford, Alex Katz, Elizabeth Kresch, and Elizabeth Murray; and appearances by Barbara Bryan, Rachel Cooper, Mark Russell, Yoko Shioya, Bonnie Sue Stein, Laurie Uprichard, David White, Donald Fleming, Dan Froot, Kaja Gam, Brian Moran, Nicky Paraiso, Harry Whittaker Sheppard, Gayle Tufts, Sasha Waltz, David Zambrano, Nelson Zayao, Emily Bartsch, Peter Lanctot, Kouiki Mojadidi, Emily Marie Pope, Isaac Rosenthal, and Aldina Michelle Topcagic. Of course, it takes a lot of work to fill up 1,440 continuous minutes of performance, and Chuma has assembled quite a team.

You can get a sneak peek and behind-the-scenes look at the collaborative project on October 15 at 8:00 when La MaMa will present a livestream preview that includes archival footage, sketches, and rehearsal clips. In preparation for Love Story, La MaMa has also been hosting such live Saturday morning Zoom events as “Secret Journey: Stop Calling Them Dangerous” and “SML: Zooma — Dead End” in addition to evening shows that give a taste of what we’re all in for from Bessie Award winner Chuma and her unpredictable troupe, a virtual hybrid that should offer, at the very least, a twenty-four-hour respite from this school of hard knocks we are living through in 2020.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER: BEETHOVEN / EGMONT

Liev Schreiber narrates new English translation of Egmont with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (photo by Chris Lee)

Who: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Liev Schreiber and Karen Slack
What: Livestreamed world premiere
Where: IDAGIO Global Concert Hall
When: Saturday, October 17, $15, 8:00
Why: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra goes virtual and global with “Speaking Truth to Power,” an online performance of Beethoven’s Egmont, Op. 84, with a new English translation by Philip Boehm commissioned for the New York City ensemble, narrated by actor Liev Schreiber. A series of incidental music pieces written by Beethoven for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1787 play, Egmont, the work has reunited the full orchestra, which has not been together since the pandemic began; they performed it recently as a socially distanced unit at the Beechwood Park bandshell in Hillsdale, New Jersey. “One of Beethoven’s masterworks, this work has yet to find its way into the major concert halls in the US and I believe that this new version will be worthy to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday this year,” Orpheus executive director Alexander Scheirle said in a statement. “Especially in a time where concert halls are closed, it will be a magical moment for our musicians and all the other family members of Orpheus. A spectacle not to be missed.”

Soprano Karen Slack performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New Jersey (photo by Chris Lee)

The hourlong piece, which also features soprano and activist Karen Slack, will be available from the online hub IDAGIO Global Concert Hall beginning October 17 at 8:00 and continue through October 22 at midnight. In preparation for the concert, you can watch a “Thursdays with Thomas” chat between Slack and baritone Thomas Hampson here, and on October 15 at 7:00 a Zoom Concert Preview will take place with Orpheus artistic directors Christof Huebner, Dana Kelley, and Miho Saegusa along with Scheirle and Boehm at 6:00 and an opening night gala at 7:00 honoring Consul General of Germany David Gill. The new translation is rather timely, as evidenced by this quatrain: “Many wish their rulers nothing but good will / While others hope the current state won’t last, / Many just abide the present, keeping still, / While in their hearts they’re yearning for the past.”

HISPANICIZE #UnidosTogether VIRTUAL SUMMIT

Who: Jessica Flores, Enrique Sapene, John Leguizamo, Edward James Olmos, Jessica Alba, Oscar De La Hoya, Mario Lopez, Carlos Ponce, Melissa Fumero, Xolo Mariduena, Aymee Nuviola, Laith Ashley, Ellen Ochoa, Pitizion, Victor Ramos, RaqC, Rebecca Antonia Rodriguez, Kim Guerra, John Henry, Julian Castro, more
What: Live virtual gathering of Latinx influencers, content creators, entrepreneurs
Where: Hispanicize
When: Thursday, October 15, free with RSVP, noon – 6:00
Why: Hispanicize is following up its July 1 summit, which you can watch here, with another virtual gathering of Latinx creators and influencers, this time in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month and with an eye to the upcoming presidential election. The Hispanicize #UnidosTogether Virtual Summit is taking place October 15 from noon to 6:00, including keynote addresses, roundtable discussions, performances, and breakout sessions featuring appearances by Jessica Flores, Enrique Sapene, John Leguizamo, Edward James Olmos, Jessica Alba, Carlos Ponce, Melissa Fumero, Xolo Mariduena, Aymee Nuviola, Laith Ashley, Ellen Ochoa, Pitizion, Victor Ramos, RaqC, Rebecca Antonia Rodriguez, Kim Guerra, Father Augustino Torres, John Henry, Julian Castro, and many more, hosted by Jessica Flores and Enrique Sapene. Below are only some of the special events; you can also check out Hispanicize’s VODcasts here.

DJ Mando Fresko Pre-Show, 11:30

Welcome & Blessing, with cohosts Jessica Flores and Enrique Sapene, noon

Keynote: Jessica Alba in conversation with Anne Vazquez, 12:15

Latinx Hollywood, with Julissa Calderon, Melissa Fumero, Ben Lopez, and Xolo Maridueña, 12:45

Latinx Unity & Empowerment, with Kim Guerra, John Leguizamo, Edward James Olmos, Monica Ramirez, and Claudia Romo Edelman, 1:15

Keynote: Oscar De La Hoya in conversation with Mario Lopez, 2:30

Latin Music Industry: Rising Stars, with Mariah Angeliq, Pitizon, Byron Salas, Anaid Quijada, and RaqC, 3:30

Hispanic Kitchen with Chef Eddie Garza, 4:15

Latinx Vote 2020, with Cristela Alonzo, Mayra Macias, Mike Madrid, Alicia Menendez, and , 5:10Henry Muñoz III

Meet Andrekza: Dim Mak En Fuego’s First Latina Artist, 5:45

DJ Chava & After Party, 6:00