ARTISTS PROFILES

Alvin Ailey® American Dance Theater

When Alvin Ailey and a small group of African-American dancers took the stage on March 30, 1958, at New York City’s 92nd Street Y, the engagement was for one night only, but it turned out to be the start of a new era in the arts. Ailey envisioned a company dedicated to enriching the American modern dance heritage and preserving the uniqueness of the African-American cultural experience. He became one of the trailblazers of modern dance, and the work of his Company grew to encompass education, community outreach, and cultural diplomacy. To date, the Company has gone on to perform for an estimated 25 million people at theaters in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents—as well as millions more through television, film, and online. More than 270 works by over 100 choreographers have been part of the Ailey repertory. In 2008, a U.S. Congressional resolution designated the Company as “a vital American cultural ambassador to the world.” Before his untimely death in 1989, Ailey named Judith Jamison as his successor, and over the next 21 years, she brought the Company to unprecedented success. Jamison, in turn, personally selected Robert Battle to succeed her in 2011, and The New York Times declared he “has injected the company with new life.”

Robert Battle, Artistic Director

Robert Battle became Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey

American Dance Theater in July 2011 after being personally selected by Judith Jamison, making him only the third person to head the Company since it was founded in 1958. A frequent choreographer and artist-in-residence at Ailey since 1999, he has set many of his works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II, and at The Ailey School. The Company’s current repertory includes his ballets Ella, For Four, In/Side, Love Stories finale, Mass, and Unfold. In addition to expanding the Ailey repertory with works by artists as diverse as Ronald K. Brown, Rennie Harris, Jessica Lang, and Wayne McGregor, Battle has also instituted the New Directions Choreography Lab to help develop the next generation of choreographers. Battle studied at Miami’s New World School of the Arts and the dance program at The Juilliard School. He danced with The Parsons Dance Company from 1994 to 2001, then founded his own Battleworks Dance Company, which made its debut in 2002 and went on to perform extensively at venues including the Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. Battle was honored as one of the “Masters of African-American Choreography” by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005, and he received the prestigious Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation USA in 2007.

Emerson String Quartet

Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violins ; Lawrence Dutton, viola ; Paul Watkins, cello

The Emerson String Quartet has maintained its status as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles for more than four decades.

“With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.”

The Quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings, and has been honored with nine GRAMMY®s (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award. The group has partnered in performance with such stellar soloists as Renée Fleming, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, and Yefim Bronfman, to name a few. The Quartet collaborates with some of today’s most esteemed composers to premiere new works, keeping the string quartet form alive and relevant.

Michael Gerdes, lecturer

Michael Gerdes is Director of Orchestras at San Diego State University, where he conducts the San Diego State Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, and Opera Orchestra. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education and Bachelor of Arts Degree in Philosophy from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Selected by the San Diego Union-Tribune as one of three “Faces to Watch in Classical Music” during his first year as Director of Orchestras, Gerdes is focused on creating a thriving orchestral community at San Diego State University.

Melissa Hié, djembe

Melissa Hié grew up in a musical family and was a member of the family band from a very young age. Her father taught her how to play several instruments: balafon, barra and djembe. This enabled her to acquire a strong knowledge of African traditional rhythms and develop her own soft and melodic touch. At nine years old, she chose djembe as her main instrument. She then began playing in various formations and bands as a percussionist. In order to reinforce her skills, she continued to discover other instruments such as the conga. She further developed her artistic skills (singing, dance, computer music) through several collaborations, including major projects with artists such as Damon Albarn and Fatoumata Diawara. Today, she enjoys experimenting with music in unexpected ways and explores various genres ranging from jazz to electronic music.

Robert John Hughes, interviewer

Journalist, broadcaster, musician, author, record producer. Hughes has interviewed hundreds of musical artists in classical, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, and blues, including Sting, Wynton Marsalis, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, B.B. King, Adele, and Peter Gabriel. As a record producer and member of the GRAMMY ® Academy, Hughes has released five albums of live performances by artists heard on San Diego FM station 102.1 KPRi. Hughes has hosted La Jolla Music Society Preludes since 2018.

Zakir Hussain, tabla

The preeminent classical tabla virtuoso of our time, Zakir Hussain is appreciated as one of the world’s most esteemed and influential musicians. A child prodigy who began his international touring career by the age of eighteen, Hussain has been at the helm of many genredefying collaborations including Shakti, Remember Shakti, Masters of Percussion, Planet Drum, Tabla Beat Science, and Sangam. As a composer, he has scored music for numerous feature films, and has composed three concertos, including the first-ever for tabla and orchestra. He is the recipient of countless awards, including 2 GRAMMY®s, Officer in France’s Order of Arts and Letters, and several honorary doctorates. Voted “Best Percussionist” by both the Downbeat Critics’ Poll and Modern Drummer’s Readers’ Poll over several years, Hussain was honored with SFJazz’s Lifetime Achievement Award at their 2017 Gala. In 2022, he was named the Kyoto Prize Laureate in Arts and Philosophy. He is the founder and president of Moment Records, an independent record label presenting rare live concert recordings of Indian classical music and world music.

Sabir Khan, sarangi

Sabir Sultan Khan is an Indian sarangi player and the son of legendary sarangi player and vocalist Padma Bhushan Ustad Sultan Khan. He belongs to the Sikar gharana (school) of music, which has given several stalwarts to Indian classical music, and is the tenth generation of his family to take up sarangi. His greatgrandfather Ustad Azim Khan Sahab was a court musician at Sikar, Rajasthan. Khan has performed with his father in concert and also solo. In addition to Hussain, he has performed alongside artists such as Pandit Birju Maharaj, Ustad Rashid Khan, Gazal maestro Ustad Gulam Ali, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and more. He has performed in feature films like Laal Singh Chadda, Dangal, Badlapur, Rog, Dor, Sanwariya, Jodha Akbar, and many more, and was featured in A.R. Rehman and Shreya Ghosal's episode of MTV Unplugged. Khan has also composed songs for movies like The Dark Side of Life, Mumbai City, Direct Ishq, and Ghustakiyan.

Igor Levit, piano

The New York Times describes Igor Levit as one of the “most important artists of his generation.” He was Musical America’s Recording Artist of the Year 2020 and the 2018 Gilmore Artist. In November 2020 he was nominated for a GRAMMY® for “Best Classical Instrumental Solo.” As a recitalist Levit regularly performs at the world’s most renowned concert halls and festivals, and with the world’s leading orchestras, such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic. Levit’s upcoming schedule includes concerts in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Vienna and Tokyo. In 2021 the

Lucerne Festival announced a multi-year collaboration for a new piano festival curated by Levit starting in 2023, and in 2022 he premiered a new piano concerto written for him by William Bolcom. For his political commitment Levit was awarded the fifth International Beethoven Prize in 2019 and the award of the “Statue B” of the International Auschwitz Committee in January 2020. In 2020 he was recognized with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and in December 2022 he received the Carl von Ossietzky Prize for Contemporary History and Politics.

Yo-Yo Ma, cello

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s life and career are testament to his enduring belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works from the cello repertoire, collaborating with communities and institutions to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity. Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began studying the cello with his father at age four. When he was seven, he moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies at The Juilliard School before pursuing a liberal arts education at Harvard. Yo-Yo has recorded more than 100 albums, is the winner of 19 GRAMMY® Awards, and has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. He has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He has been a UN Messenger of Peace since 2006, and was recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Yo-Yo’s latest album is “Beethoven for Three: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5,” recorded with pianist Emanual Ax and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.

Tupac Mantilla, percussion

Tupac Mantilla was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and graduated with a Master of Music Honors Degree from the New England Conservatory. He has performed with Bobby McFerrin, Esperanza Spalding, Danilo Perez, and Julian Lage in what might loosely be called the world of jazz, but he was also the First Prize winner at the

2002 Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra’s Classical Soloist Competition. Mantilla has been associated with Stanford University’s Jazz Workshop and the Berklee College Global Jazz Institute, and lectures and administers percussion programs worldwide through his PERCUATION’s Global Rhythm Institute. He has appeared at venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Barbican, Tanglewood, Montreux, and the Newport Jazz Festival, among many others. Much of his current performing focuses on his “Solo Percussion” project, which has led him to develop RITMO (Rhythmic Immersion Training for Multidimensional Openness), a holistic learning methodology that studies life and rhythm and the use of the body as a musical and evolutionary tool.

Midori, violin

A visionary artist, activist and educator, Midori transfixes audiences around the world. She has performed with, among others, the London, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. She has collaborated with such outstanding musicians as Claudio Abbado, Emanuel Ax, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Biss, Christoph Eschenbach, Paavo Järvi, Mariss Jansons, Yo-Yo Ma, Zubin Mehta, Donald Runnicles, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Midori’s latest recording, with the Festival Strings Lucerne of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and two Romances, was released in 2020 by Warner Classics. Her diverse discography includes recordings of Bloch, Janáček, and Shostakovich and a GRAMMY® Award-winning recording of Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting the NDR Symphony Orchestra. Nonprofit organizations she founded include Midori & Friends, which provides music programs for New York City youth and communities, and MUSIC SHARING, a Japanbased foundation bringing both Western classical and Japanese music traditions into young lives throughout Asia. She is a United Nations Messenger of Peace and the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. Midori is Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and a Distinguished Visiting Artist at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She plays the 1734 Guarnerius del Gesù ‘ex-Huberman.’

Kristi Brown Montesano, lecturer

Chair of the Music History Department at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, Kristi Brown Montesano is an enthusiastic “public musicologist.” She is an active lecturer for the LA Philharmonic, the Opera League of Los Angeles, the Salon de Musiques series, and Mason House Concerts. Her book, The Women of Mozart’s Operas (UC Press, 2007), offers a detailed study of these fascinating roles; more recent scholarly interests include classical music in film, women in classical music, and opera for children.

Molly Puryear, interviewer

Molly Puryear brings passion for dance and nonprofit administration to her position as Executive Director of Malashock Dance. Puryear has worked with Malashock Dance since 2006, and previously served in the role of Education Director. She strategically aligns artistic and educational efforts to create a dynamic relationship between programs, the communities they serve, and the organization’s valuable funders. Puryear is committed to serving the San Diego community through the development and administration of vibrant dance programs. She believes that dance is an avenue for personal expression that engages people from all walks of life.

Maria Schneider, composer and conductor

Maria Schneider’s music has been hailed by critics as “evocative, majestic, magical, heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and beyond categorization.” She and her orchestra became widely known starting in 1994 when they released their first recording, Evanescence. The Maria Schneider Orchestra has performed at festivals and concert halls worldwide. Schneider herself has received numerous commissions and guest-conducting invitations, working with more than 90 groups in over 30 countries. Schneider’s music blurs the lines between genres, making her long list of commissioners quite varied, from Jazz at

Lincoln Center to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to collaborating with David Bowie. She is among a very few to have received GRAMMY®s in multiple genres—both jazz and classical categories, as well as for her work with David Bowie. Schneider and her orchestra have received fourteen GRAMMY® nominations and seven GRAMMY® awards. She’s been awarded many honors by the Jazz Journalists Association and Downbeat and JazzTimes Critics’ and Readers’ Polls. In 2019, the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed on Schneider the nation’s highest honor in jazz, naming her an NEA Jazz Master. Schneider and her orchestra’s latest album, Data Lords, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and garnered two GRAMMY® awards in 2021 for Best Instrumental Composition (“Sputnik”) and Best Large Ensemble album.

Navin Sharma, dholak

Navin Sharma is the great young master of the dholak (a doubleheaded hand drum), part of Indian folk tradition. He studied dholak with his first teacher, his father, Shri Shyam Rughuram Sharma. Having taught him much, Shri Shyam then sent Navin to the great Ustad Allarakha (playing partner of Pandit Ravi Shankar; together they were essential in introducing Indian music to the U.S.) to study the tabla. Life being the great circle it is, Sharma now finds himself playing with Allarakhha’s son Zakir, having already played with Zakir’s brothers Shri Fazal Quereshi and Shri Taufiq Quereshi, Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Shri Ranjeet Barot, Shri Selvaganesh, Shri Shivamani, and the maestro of the ghatam, the clay pot drum, “Vikku” Vinayakram. Sharma has also worked extensively in Bollywood.

Kathryn Stott, piano

At the age of five, Kathryn Stott made friends with the upright piano in her family’s living room, and by the age of eight, she found herself at a boarding school for young musicians, the Yehudi Menuhin School. During her studies there she was heavily influenced by two occasional visitors to the school: Nadia Boulanger and Vlado Perlmuter. From them, her great passion for French music was ignited and Fauré in particular has remained the musical love of her life. Further studies at the Royal College of Music in London then led her very abruptly into the life of a professional musician via the Leeds International Piano Competition.

When, quite by chance, she met Yo-Yo Ma in 1978, it turned out to be one of the most fortuitous moments of her life. Since 1985, they have enjoyed a collaboration which has taken them to many fascinating parts of the world and led to musical adventures with musicians who shared so much from their own traditions. Presently, Stott enjoys the challenge of creativity in a different way by bringing many musicians together once a year in her role as Artistic Director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Working with young musicians is something she feels passionate about, and she presently teaches at the Academy of Music in Oslo. She has also had some truly exciting music written for her and enjoyed a particularly close collaboration with composer Graham Fitkin.

Chucho Valdés, piano

In a career spanning more than 60 years, both as a solo artist and bandleader, Cuban pianist and composer Chucho Valdés has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock, and more, into a deeply personal style. Winner of seven

GRAMMY® and four Latin GRAMMY® Awards, Valdés received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Science last year and was also inducted in the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame. As comfortable offering solo performances as leading small and large ensembles, Valdés is also the co-author with pianist, composer and educator Rebeca Mauleón of Decoding AfroCuban Jazz: The Music of Chucho Valdés & Irakere. Valdés recently completed a two-year tour with Trance, a two-piano duo project, highlighted by a live recording, Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac, which won a GRAMMY® for the Best Latin Jazz Album. In 1998, having won his second GRAMMY® the previous year for Habana, Valdés launched a parallel career as a solo player and small-group leader, releasing albums such as Solo Piano, Solo: Live in New York, and New Conceptions, as well as quartet recordings such as Bele Bele en La Habana, Briyumba Palo Congo, and Live at the Village Vanguard, which won a GRAMMY® for Best Latin Jazz Album. Valdés has also won GRAMMY®s for Juntos Para Siempre, the duet recording with his father, Bebo; and for Chucho’s Steps, which introduced his new group, the Afro-Cuban Messengers.

Alisa Weilerstein, project creator, cello, FRAGMENTS

One of the foremost cellists of our time, Alisa Weilerstein is in high demand as a solo recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist with leading orchestras worldwide. She was recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship in 2011. An authority on Bach’s music for unaccompanied cello, Weilerstein recently released a bestselling recording of his solo suites on the Pentatone label, streamed them in her innovative #36DaysOfBach project, and deconstructed his beloved G-major prelude in a Vox.com video, viewed almost 1.5 million times. Her discography also includes charttopping albums and the winner of BBC Music’s Recording of the Year award. She has premiered and championed important new works by composers including Pascal Dusapin, Osvaldo Golijov, and Matthias Pintscher. Other career milestones include a performance at the White House for President and Mrs. Obama. Weilerstein has appeared with all the major orchestras of the US, Europe and Asia, collaborating with conductors including Marin Alsop, Daniel Barenboim, Jiří Bělohlávek, Semyon Bychkov, Sir Andrew Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Mark Elder, Alan Gilbert, Bernard Haitink, Paavo Järvi, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Ludovic Morlot, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Rafael Payare, Donald Runnicles, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas, Osmo Vänskä, and Joshua Weilerstein. Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age nine, Weilerstein is a staunch advocate for the T1D community.

Elkhanah Pulitzer, director, FRAGMENTS

Elkhanah Pulitzer is an esteemed director of opera, theater, and other staged works. In 2022, she directed a new production of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra—a project four years in the making which premiered at San Francisco Opera. Recent projects include David Lang’s prisoner of state with the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican; the live tour of Esperanza Spalding’s album 12 Little Spells; and DIORAMA, an art installation at the I.O.U. in San Francisco. She has directed projects at the LA Philharmonic including John Adams’ Nixon and China and Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, the latter of which was also staged at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. She has also directed John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony, and Lucia di Lammermoor and Judas Maccabaeus at Los Angeles Opera. Past work includes collaborations on next-generation projects with Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and the Canadian Opera Company. Theater directing credits include work with Impact Theater, Cutting Ball, Riverside Theater, and Ensemble Theater Company.

Seth Reiser, set and lighting designer, FRAGMENTS

Seth Reiser is a New Yorkbased designer who works in theatre, opera, dance, and music. Reiser’s work has been seen throughout the United States and internationally. Recent work in music includes Handel’s Aci Galatea é Polifemo with the Philharmonia Baroque Opera in San Francisco directed by Christopher Alden; Henze’s El Cimarrón at Festival Impulso in Mexico City directed by Robert Castro; the set and lighting design for Bernstein’s MASS at the LA Philharmonic and NY Philharmonic, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer; J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (Berlin Philharmonic) at the Park Avenue Armory directed by Peter Sellars; Claude Vivier’s Kopernicus at Theatre Cardin in Paris, directed by Peter Sellars; John Adam’s Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony directed by Elkhannah Pulitzer; Sufjan Stevens’ Round Up at BAM; Messiaen’s Des Canyon Aux Etoiles with the St. Louis Symphony, directed by Deb O’Grady, which was seen throughout the United States, at the Sydney Opera House, and the Barbican; and The Indian Queen in Concert with MusicAeterna, directed by Robert Castro which toured Germany. Reisder also regularly designs lighting for SF Symphony’s Sound Box concerts.

Carlos Soto, costume designer, FRAGMENTS

Carlos Soto is a designer and creative director based in New York City. With the director Zack Winokur he has designed Tristan und Isolde (Santa Fe Opera); Only an Octave Apart with Justin Vivian

Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo (St. Ann’s Warehouse, Wilton’s Music Hall); The No One’s Rose with composer Matthew Aucoin and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith (Stanford Live); and The Black Clown with Davóne Tines (ART, Lincoln Center, 2018–19). Soto worked with Solange Knowles and Wu Tsang on Passage (International Woolmark Prize 2021); Solange’s In Past Pupils and Smiles (Venice Biennale, 2019); Witness! (Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg/Sydney Opera House, 2019–20); When I Get Home (film and concert tour 2019). He has also designed costumes and/or scenography for Wagner’s The Valkyries by Yuval Sharon (Detroit Opera); Triptych (Eyes of One on Another) by Bryce Dessner, director Kaneza Schaal; Roomful of Teeth (BAM, Holland Festival, Kennedy Center, UMS, 2019); and The Mile-Long Opera by Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine, and David Lang, 2018. Soto has collaborated closely with Robert Wilson since 1997, most recently on Bach 6 Solo, Der Messias, and I was sitting on my patio this guy appeared I thought I was hallucinating

Hanako Yamaguchi, artistic producer/advisor, FRAGMENTS

Artistic producer and consultant Hanako Yamaguchi believes in the transformative power of the arts. In addition to producing FRAGMENTS, she has also recently served as artistic advisor to the Celebrity Series of Boston, WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Little Island (NYC). Over her thirty-year tenure at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Yamaguchi emerged as a key leader in Lincoln Center’s evolution from classical music presenter to commissioner and producer of multidisciplinary presentations, involving music, dance, theater, film, and the spoken word. As Director of Music Programming, she was a co-creator of the White Light Festival, a force behind the revitalization of the Mostly Mozart Festival, and curator/ producer of the long-standing Great Performers concert series. Throughout her cultivation and advocacy of a wide range of artists, her desire for new collaborations, and her commitment to making the performances unforgettable have been her signature. Yamaguchi is currently a board member of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), a global association of arts management leaders, who come together with the shared goal of strengthening and developing the arts internationally.

MAK GRGIC´ CINEMA VERISMO

SATURDAY, MAY 13, 2023

6:30 PM & 8:30 PM

Samara Joy

SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2023

3 PM · THE JAI

8 PM · THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL

Weʼ ve expanded our Discovery Series to showcase the rising stars from the next generation of jazz musicians! Our first ever Discovery Series jazz artist, Samara Joy, won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and two 2023 GRAMMY®s. With a voice as smooth as velvet, Samara has already performed in many of the great jazz venues including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, The Blue Note, and Mezzrow, in addition to working with jazz greats such as Christian McBride, Pasquale Grasso, Kirk Lightsey, Cyrus Chestnut, and NEA Jazz Master Dr. Barry Harris.

Jimmie Herrod

SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 2023

5 PM & 7 PM

Described by The Seattle Times as “a voice like a beacon of hope,” Jimmie Herrod has been bringing audiences to their feet with his miraculous, transporting voice (and dazzling smile) since he started touring with Pink Martini. Hear Jimmie Herrod, Golden Buzzer winner during the 2021 season of Americaʼs Got Talent, in an intimate and mesmerizing evening of music.

2023 GRAMMY® nominee Mak Grgic´ , proclaimed “imaginative, gifted and expressive” by the New York Times and a “guitarist to keep an eye on” by The Washington Post, is an innovative player who programs music as far-reaching as works from the avant-garde to the great classics of guitar repertoire and early works. This program takes listeners down memory lane by offering originals and adaptations of music featured in films such as The Deerhunter, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Chariots of Fire, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and many others.

Scott Silven

WONDERS

FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023

6 PM & 8:30 PM

SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 2023

5 PM & 8 PM

An unforgettable performance of awe-inspiring intrigue. As a child, Scott Silven reveled in mystery. This innate fascination with the enigmatic and unexplainable guided him to the craft of illusion at a young age, and evoked a sense of wonder that he knew he had to share with others. Wonders is a show for these extraordinary times; a shared experience that explores the power of connection through unforgettable illusions. Silven is a modern-day marvel like no other, at the top of his profession.

Complexions

Contemporary Ballet

ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

STAR DUST: FROM BACH TO BOWIE

SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2023 · 7:30 PM CIVIC THEATRE

Founders Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, armed with a rich Alvin Ailey lineage and a cadre of 18 spectacular dancers, have re-envisioned ballet through technical precision, athletic prowess, and sheer passion. Their blockbuster hit, STAR DUST: From Bach to Bowie, honoring two musical icons, has rocked the dance world and will make your spirits soar!

THE ConRAD KIDS series

Pianimal

SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2023 · 10 AM & 11:30 AM

The JAI

Recommended for ages 5–10

Founded in 2011 by director Elizabeth Schumann and her sister, Sonya Schumann, Piano Theatre began as a collaboration to create a concert tour integrating literature, music, art, and multimedia for children. This project presents piano pieces, theatre, and artwork inspired by animals, with integrated live video projections and artwork to promote arts education. Pianimal includes the music of Dvorˇák, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Scriabin, Dutilleux, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saëns.