Friday and Saturday, February 3 –4, 2017, 8pm Zellerbach Hall

Available Light

Music Choreography Stage Design Lucinda Childs Frank O. Gehry

Lighting Design Costume Design Sound Design Beverly Emmons Kasia Walicka Maimone Mark Grey John Torres

Performed by Lucinda Childs Dance Company Katie Dorn, Katherine Helen Fisher, Sarah Hillmon, Anne Lewis, Sharon Milanese, Benny Olk, Patrick John O’Neill, Matt Pardo, Lonnie Poupard Jr., Caitlin Scranton, Shakirah Stewart

Produced by Pomegranate Arts Linda Brumbach, executive producer

The revival of Available Light was commissioned by Cal Performances, University of , Berkeley; Festspielhaus St. Pölten; FringeArts, Philadelphia, with the support of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage; Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center and The Philharmonic Association; International Summer Festival Kampnagel, ; Onassis Cultural Centre – Athens; Tanz Im August, Berlin; and Théâtre de la Ville – and Festival d’Automne à Paris.

The revival of Available Light was developed at MASS MoCa (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art).

Light Over Water by John Adams is used by arrangement with Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company, publisher and copyright owner.

This evening’s performance will be performed without intermission and will last approximately 55 minutes.

This performance is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors Gail and Daniel Rubinfeld, and Patrick McCabe.

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PROGRAM NOTES

Production History John Adams (composer ) The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Composer, conductor, and creative thinker— Angeles originally commissioned Available John Adams occupies a unique position in the Light in 1983 during a period when the mu - world of American music. His works, both op - seum was under construction and working in eratic and symphonic, stand out among con - site-specific locations. Under the guidance of temporary classical compositions for their founding curator Julie Lazar, the Stages and depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the Performances series at MOCA commissioned profoundly humanist nature of their themes. artists to collaborate with architects, p hotogra - Works spanning more than three decades phers, writers, and designers to create new have entered the repertoire and are among the works for select sites through - out the community. Lucinda Childs was the first artist invited to create a new collaborative piece with maverick LA-based architect Frank O. Gehry, who was known for his sculptural ap - proach to buildings and use of modest materials. Con - currently, California-based composer John Adams was asked to join the collabora - tion and create 55 minutes of music that he called Light Over Water . Childs then invited couturier Ronaldus Shamask to design the cos - tumes. Gehry was subsequently engaged by the museum to l l e renovate its transitional pro - h c t i M gram galleries; two city- a t t e owned warehouses newly r a g r dubbed the Temporary Con - a M temporary. The two oddly John Adams angled buildings that to - gether comprised the TC inspired Gehry’s design for Available Light . most performed of all contemporary classical Available Light inaugurated MoCA’s public music, among them , Shaker programs bringing together leading contem - Loops , , porary artists at a pivotal moment in their Symphony , Short Ride in a Fast Machine , and the careers. Following the premiere, a proscenium Concerto. His stage works, all in collab - version was created by for the oration with director Peter Sellars, include Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Opera House (1987), that fall as part of the Next Wave Festival. (1991), El Niño (2000), Doctor Atomic (2005), A Available Light has rarely been seen since. Flowering Tree (2006), and the oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012).

Opposite: photo by Craig T. Mathew  ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Recent works include for orches - ing his own works with repertoire ranging tra; (based on fragments of late from and Mozart to Ives, Carter, Beethoven quartets) for string quartet and Zappa, Glass, and Ellington. He has conducted orchestra; The Gospel According to the Other ensembles such as the Houston Symphony, Mary ; the Saxophone Concerto; and Second Toronto Symphony, Los Angeles Philhar- Quartet . City Noir and the Saxophone Con - monic, and the New World Symphony, as well certo, as well as The Gospel According to the as the Orquesta Nacional de España in Madrid. Other Mary , were recently released on None - Adams is currently Creative Chair of the Los such Records and Deutsche Grammo phon, re - Angeles Phil harmonic. Recordings include the Deutsche Grammo phon re - lease of The Gospel According to the Other Mary featuring the Los Angeles Philhar - monic; City Noir and the Saxophone Concerto with the St. Lou is Symphony; the Gram my Award-winning album featuring Harmonie - lehre and Short Ride in a Fast Machine with the San Fran - cisco Sym phony; and the None such DVD of the Met - ropolitan Opera production of Nixon in China, conducted by the composer.

Lucinda Childs (choreographer ) Lucinda Childs began her career at the Judson Dance n o s Theater in New York in 1963. a M s Since forming her dance a l g u o company in 1973, she has cre - D Lucinda Childs ated over 50 works, both solo and ensemble. In 1976 she spectively. The year 2015 saw the premiere of was featured in t he landmark avant-garde opera Adams’ new dramatic symphony for violin by and and orchestra, Scheherazade.2 , written for , for which she won an Obie . Award, and she subsequently appeared in a Adams has received honorary doctorates number of Wilson’s productions, including , I from Harvard, Northwestern University, Cam - Was Sitting on my Patio This Guy Appeared I bridge University, and the Juilliard School. A Thought I Was Hallucinating , Heiner Muller’s provocative writer, he is author of the highly ac - Quartett , Wilson and Glass’ opera White claimed autobiography and Raven , Wilson’s video project Video 50, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Marguerite Duras’ Maladie de la Mort opposite Book Review . Michel Piccoli . Most recently she appeared in As a conductor, Adams appears with the Wilson’s production of Arvo Pärt’s Adam’s world’s major orchestras in programs combin - Lament and collaborated on the movements

 PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS and spoken text for Letter to a Man , based on Frank O. Gehry (set designer ) Nijinsky’s diaries and performed by Mikhail Raised in Toronto, Frank Gehry moved with his Baryshnikov (seen here in Zellerbach Hall in family to Los Angeles in 1947. He received his November 2016) . bachelor’s degree in architecture from the In 1979 Childs choreographed one of her University of Southern California in 1954, and most enduring works, Dance, with music by he studied city planning at the Harvard Uni - Philip Glass and film décor by Sol LeWitt; versity Graduate School of Design. Since then, the work continues to tour internationally and Gehry has built an architectural career that has been added to the repertory of the Lyon has spanned over five decades and produced Opera Ballet, where Childs recently choreographed Beet - hoven’s Grande Fugue . In 2015 Childs revived Available Light , created in 1983 with John Adams and Frank Gehry, which was presented at the Festival d’Autumne in Paris. Last fall, the Thaddeus Ro pac Gallery in Pantin presented her choreographic scores in an exhibit titled Nothing Per sonal in collabo - ration with the Centre Nati - o nale de la Danse, to which Childs has donated her archive. Since 1981 Childs has choreographed more than 30 works for major ballet com - panies including Paris Opera Ballet and Les Ballets de Monte Ca rlo. In the past 20 years she has directed and choreographed a number of contemporary and 18th- Frank O. Gehry century operas, including Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice for the Los Angeles Opera, Mozart’s for La public and private buildings in America, Mon naie in Brussels, John Adams’ Dr. Atomic Europe, and Asia. His work has earned Gehry for the Opera du Rhin and San Francisco several of the most significant awards in Opera, Stra vin sky’s Le Ros signol and Oed ipus the architectural field, including the Arnold W. Rex , Vivaldi’s Farnace , and Han del’s Alessandro . Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, Her production of Jean Baptiste Lully’s Atys the Pritzker Prize, the Wolf Prize in Art premiered at Oper Kiel in 2014 and her pro - (Architecture), the Praemium Imperiale Award, duction of Jean-Marie Leclaire’s Scylla and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award, the Glaucus will premiere there on May 6, 2017. National Medal of Arts, the Friedrich Kiesler Childs is the recipient of numerous presti - Prize, the American Institute of Architects Gold gious awards and holds the rank of Com - Medal, the Royal Institute of British Architects mander in ’s Order of Arts and Letters. Gold Medal, and the Prince of Asturias Award

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

for the Arts . Notable projects include the ness, among others. For the stage, Walicka Mai- Gug genheim Mu seum in Bilbao, Spain; mone has designed opera projects by Philip Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Expansion Glass ( Les Enfants Terribles, The Sound of a at the University of Minnesota; Nationale- Voice, and Book of Longing ) as well as many Nederlanden Buil ding in ; DZ Bank collaborations with the Philip Glass Ensemble. Building in Berlin; Richard B. Fisher Center She has designed experimental pieces by Robert for the Per forming Arts at Bard College in Woodruff ( Oedipus Rex ) and Richard Foreman Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Maggie’s (Maria del Bosco and King Cowboy Rufus Rules Centre, a cancer patient center in Dundee, the Universe ), and has collaborated with chore - Scotland; Walt Dis ney Concert Hall in Los ographers Susan Marshall, Twyla Tharp, Angeles; Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge in Donald Byrd, and David Dorfman. Millennium Park in Chicago; Hotel Marques de Riscal in El Ciego, Spain; Transformation Art Beverly Emmons (lighting designer ) Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Peter B. Beverly Emmons’ lighting credits include Annie Lewis Science Library in Princeton; the Lou Get Your Gun , Jekyll & Hyde , The Heiress , Ruvo Brain Institute in Las Vegas; the Ohr Stephen Sondheim’s Passion , , O’Keefe Museum in Biloxi, Mississippi; New and , for which she won a Tony Campus for the New World Symphony in Award. Her Off-Broadway work includes The Miami; Eight Spruce Street Residential Tower Vagina Monologues and several works by Joseph in ; Opus Hong Kong Resi - Chaiken. She has also designed productions at dential; Signature Theatre in New York City; the Kennedy Center, the Guthrie, Arena Stage, House for the Make it Right Foun dation in New and the Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis. She Orleans; Biomuseo in Panama; the Foundation has lit eight productions for Robert Wilson, Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris, France; and including Einstein on the Beach . Along with her the Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building for the work with Lucinda Childs, she has designed University of Technology, , Australia. lighting for choreographers Alvin Ailey, Trisha Current projects include: Guggen heim Abu Brown, Martha Graham, and Merce Cun ning - Dhabi; LUMA Foundation in Arles, France; ham. Her honors include seven Tony nomina - and the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, tions, the 1976 Lumen Award, two “Bessie” DC. Projects under construction are the Divan awards (1984, 1986), a 1980 Obie Award for Orchestra in Berlin, and the West Campus for Distinguished Lighting, and several Maha ram/ Facebook in Menlo Park. American Theater Wing Design Awards.

Kasia Walicka Maimone (costume designer ) John Torres (lighting designer ) Kasia Walicka Maimone recently worked on the Work includes designs for dance, theater, music, Scott Cooper film Black Mass , starring Johnny fashion, and print. With Taylor Mac, designs Depp, and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, include performances at the Curran Theatre, starring Tom Hanks. Other film credits include MASS MOCA, NYLA, and St. Ann’s Ware - Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher ; Theodore Melfi’s St house. Other productions have included Ein - Vincent ; J.C Chandor’s A Most Violent Year ; stein on the Beach (2013 –15 world tour), Cheek Bennett Miller’s Moneyball and Capote ; Wes to Cheek Live! with Tony Bennett and Lady Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom ; George Nolfi’s Gaga ( PBS Great Performances ), La Traviata The Adjustment Bureau , starring Matt Damon (Landes theatre Linz), Garrincha (SESC Teatro and Emily Blunt; Joachim Back’s Academy Paulo Autran, São Paulo), and Hermes: Here/ Award-winning short The New Tenants ; Ang Elsewhere (Cedar Lake, NYC) . Torres has also Lee’s short Chosen , starring Clive Owen; Alison worked with choreographers and Maclean’s Jesus’ Son , starring Billy Crudup; and Lucinda Childs. For more information, visit Mira Nair’s Amelia and Hysterical Blind - nytelytedesign.com

 PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Mark Grey (sound designer ) work television. Fisher recently received a Mark Grey is a sound designer and composer. commission to choreograph a piece featuring He was the first sound designer in history to de - interactive technology at the Microsoft Global sign for the , the Lyric Exchange conference. She is cofounder of Safety Opera of Chicago, Disney Concert Hall, and Third Productions, a media company focused the in New York City. on branded digital content. Fisher has been a Grey’s designs have been heard for over two member of the Lucinda Childs Dance Com - decades throughout most major concert halls, pany since 2008. theaters, opera houses, and HD-simulcast loca - tions worldwide. Grey continues his 25-year Sarah Hillmon (dancer ) is a native of Rochester, tenure as sound designer and close collabora - New York. There, she trained with Garth Fagan tor with John Adams and worked with Kronos and Timothy M. Draper, and was a member of Quartet for over a decade. As a composer, he the Rochester City Ballet. She graduated with a was commissioned by La Monnaie, Brussels, BFA in dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the the national opera of Belgium, to write an Arts, where she had the privilege of performing evening-length grand opera, and his substan - works by artists including Sidra Bell, Lucinda tial body of work—including solo, chamber, Childs, Gus Solomons Jr, and Charles Weid - orchestral, and choral works—has been per - man. While in New York City, Hillmon has formed worldwide danced for Lucinda Childs Dance Company, Suzanne Beahrs Dance, BodyStories, AMS Katie Dorn (dancer ) is a graduate of the Project, and MATYCHAK. She is a founding University of North Carolina School of the member of RedCurrant Collective. Arts, where she earned a high school diploma and a BFA in contemporary dance. In 2006 Anne Lewis (dancer ) was born in Des Moines, she completed her MFA from the Hollins Iowa, and is a graduate of Mount Holy oke University/American Dance Festival MFA College, where she earned a BA in critical so - program. That same year, she received the cial thought and dance. Prior to attending Martha Hill Young Professional Award as an Mount Holyoke, she trained at the Harid Con - outstanding young performer. Since moving ser vatory in Boca Raton, Florida, on a full to New York City, Dorn has worked with the scholarship. Outside of the dance studio, Lewis Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Gus Solomons Jr., has directed performances by Mount Holyoke’s Mary Seidman and Dancers, and Robert Wil - Unusual Suspects, one of the country’s only all- son and Philip Glass on the revival of Ein stein female comedy troupes. on the Beach. She also performed James Lee Byars’ The Mile Long Paper Walk , a solo work Sharon Milanese (rehearsal director, dancer ) is that was restaged by Lucinda Childs for the originally from New Jersey, where she began Marron Atrium at the Museum of Modern Art dancing at a performing arts school at the age of in New York in August 2014. Dorn has been three. She earned her BFA in dance perform - dancing for Lucinda Childs since 2009 and has ance from Southern Methodist University, is a set Childs’ work on students at the University certified Pilates instructor, and teaches profes - of Michigan and the University of North Caro - sional ballet classes in New York City and lina School of the Arts. abroad. Milanese has performed with New York Theatre Ballet, Cortez and Company Con - Katherine Helen Fisher (dancer ) is a Los temporary/Ballet, Verb Ballets, Ramón Oller Angeles-based performing artist and director and the Peridance Ensemble, Corbindances, Liz whose work explores the intersectionality be - Gerring Dance Company, Heidi Latsky Dance, tween dance and new media. She has appeared Motley Dance, Patricia Hoffbauer, and Dusan at venues such as Radio City Music Hall, Tynek Dance Theater. LACMA, Art Basil Switzerland, and on net -

 Members of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in Available Light . Photo by Craig T. Mathew.

Benny Olk (dancer ) is from Minneapolis, School of the Arts and while in the program Minnesota, and a graduate of NYU. He has enjoyed the opportunity to work with artists in - worked with choreographers Lucinda Childs, cluding Cherylyn Lavagnino, James Martin, Moriah Evans, Sarah Michelson, Anna Rogo - Alberto Del Saz (Nikolais Dance Company), voy, and Daniel Roberts. Olk performed in a and Doug Varone, as well as with his extremely reconstruction of ’s Crises talented peers. O’Neill’s love for performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art and does not end with dance, but extends into cho - Suite for Two at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. reography, theater, and voice.

Patrick John O’Neill (dancer ) was born and Matt Pardo (dancer ) holds an MFA degree raised in Rochester and Buffalo, New York, and from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has been dancing since the age of two, under his (2016) and an advanced honors BFA from mother’s guidance. O’Neill has studied all types the Univer sity at Buffalo (2007). He has danced of dance at various local dance studios in the for the Eisenhower Dance Ensemble, Ground - Rochester and Buffalo. He graduated with a works Dance Theater, RG Dance Projects, and BFA in dance from New York University’s Tisch the River North Chicago Dance Company (ap -

 PLAYBILL prentice). Pardo was recognized as one of the The Daughter of the Regiment , directed and “Top 100 Dancers in the World for 2010 –11” choreographed by Séan Curran. Pardo is a co- (one of only 10 Americans cited) by Dance founder of the Pittsburgh-based organization Europe magazine. Teaching and choreographic The Blanket, a project that aims to expand the credits include Skidmore College (guest chore - dance community in Pittsburgh. He is also a ographer 2014 –15; guest faculty 2013 –14), proud member of the Actor’s Equity Union. Montclair State University, Universidad de Las Americas Puebla, the University at Buffalo, and Lonnie Poupard Jr. (dancer ) grew up in Mon - Point Park University (guest choreographer roe, Michigan, and attended Western Michigan 2015; adjunct professor 2015 –16), to name a few. University, where he was selected as the In 2011, Pardo joined the Lucinda Childs Dance Presidential Scholar in the dance department. Com pany and he now teaches company class for Since moving to New York, he has worked with LCDC while on tour. His opera credits include artists including Mark Morris, Jody Oberfelder, the world tour of the Olivier award-winning Gabrielle Lansner & Co., Mark Dendy, Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach and Catherine Miller, and Neta Pulver macher. His performances with the Pittsburgh Opera in the duet performance at City Center’s Fall for

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dance Festival was chosen in New Yorker Recent credits as production manager/techni - magazine as one of the “Ten Best Dance cal director include Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade Performances of 2009.” Poupard has been a fea - History of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Ware - tured dancer for both film and television. He house, De Materie at the Park Avenue Armory, majored in aviation flight science and holds a Available Light , and Einstein on the Beach in private pilot’s license. Poupard has been a mem - South Korea. As owner of Lydic Design and ber of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company Production, he recently built selected props since 2011. for Broadway productions including Some thing Rotten , Cats , On the Twentieth Century , Finding Caitlin Scranton (dancer ) studied dance at Neverland , Fish in the Dark , Gigi , The Last Ship , the Dance Theater of Iowa, Idyllwild Arts and Book of Mor mon . Academy, and the Ailey School, and in 2005 received her BA in history from Smith College. Jason Kaiser (stage manager ). Projects include In New York she has worked with Cornfield Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Dance, Mark Dendy, the Metropolitan Opera Music , The Source (MASS MoCA, BAM), None- Ballet, Paul Singh, Ramón Oller, and the such Records at BAM with and Peridance Ensemble. Since 2010 Scranton has Philip Glass , the world tour of Ein stein on the danced for the New York-based choreographer Beach , three world premieres by Athol Fu - Christo pher Williams, with whom she recently gard, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović , toured Purcell’s The Indian Queen, directed by the world premiere of Nico Muhly and S tephen Peter Sellars, and a new production of Rameau’s Karam’s Dark Sisters , con ducted Dardanus by the Opéra National de Bordeaux. by Victor Borge, two European tours of Jesus Christ Scranton is also a cofounder of the Pittsburgh- Superstar , Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet at Bard based organization The Blanket, a project SummerScape, and five years with Jennifer that aims to expand the dance community in Muller/The Works dance company. Pittsburgh. She has worked with Lucinda Childs since 2009. Lilly West (front-of-house sound/sound super - visor ) recently returned to the New York area Shakirah Stewart (dancer ) began her profes - after working as a sound engineer in Chicago sional training at LaGuardia High School of for almost 20 years. She was Audio Head at the Music & Performing Arts. While there, she Goodman Theatre for 11 seasons and also did worked with Troy Powell, Jamel Gaines, Penny sound work for Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, Frank, and Elisa King. Stewart earned a BFA Blue Man Group, and many other companies, in dance from Purchase College, where she per - as well as for special events such as National formed works by Lauri Stallings, Paul Taylor, Geographic Live . West has been sound engineer Ori Flomin, Megan Williams, and Kevin Wynn. for the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s annual pro - While at Purchase, she also worked with Mark ductions of Rodgers and Hammerstein musi - Morris, performing his Gloria there, as well cals, including the recently staged Carousel . In as at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. New York City, she was front-of-house mixer After graduating, she danced at the New Dance for Peter Sellars’ production of the St. Matthew Group, Forces of Nature, and with Amanda Passion and the Metropolitan Opera’s produc - Selwyn at Notes in Motion. Stewart has also tions of Iolanta/Bluebeard’s Castle. Available performed works by Sidra Bell at Purchase Light is her fifth collaboration with sound de - College, Jacob’s Pillow, and the Modern Dance signer Mark Grey. Festival at Alvin Ailey. Alisa E. Regas (associate producer ) joined Jeremy Lydic (production manager ) works in Pomegranate Arts as associate director imme - many aspects of art and performance, as a per - diately upon its formation in 1998. She has also former, technical director, maker, and manager. served as a consultant for the National Dance

 PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Project/NEFA and Creative Capital. Previously Prior to forming her own company, she was Regas has worked at International Production the producing director of International Pro - Associates (IPA) as a project manager, working duction Associates (IPA) for 11 years, where she with Philip Glass, Spalding Gray, Improbable was responsible for overseeing all touring pro - Theatre, Twyla Tharp, Meryl Tankard, Sankai ductions of artists such as Philip Glass, Twyla Juku, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, Eliza - Tharp, Spalding Gray, Diamanda Galas, Eliza - beth Streb, Lisa Kron, and Diamanda Galás. She beth Streb, Sankai Juku, Karen Finley, and began her career on the producing team of the Meryl Tankard. Brumbach has served as a con - International Theater Festival of Chicago after sultant for Creative Capitol and the National graduating from Northwestern University with Dance Project for the New England Foundation a BA in English fiction writing and a certificate for the Arts. She has been on the advisory in the integrated arts. board of Celebrate Brooklyn and the board of

John Adams, Lucinda Childs, and Frank O. Gehry (le to right). March 1983. First meeting. Los Angeles.

Linda Brumbach (executive producer ) founded directors of the International Society of Perfor - Pomegranate Arts in New York City in 1998, ming Arts (ISPA), and currently serves as a a company dedicated to developing, producing, board member of the Association of Per for - and touring contemporary performance arts ming Arts Presenters (APAP). Brumbach is a projects. Since its inception, Pomegranate Arts graduate of the Indiana School of Music. creative productions have included the Olivier Award-winning production of Einstein on the Pomegranate Arts is an independent produc - Beach (Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Lucinda tion company dedicated to the development of Childs), Shockheaded Peter (The Improbable international contemporary performing arts Theatre), Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen, projects. Since its inception, Pomegranate Arts Philip Glass), Dracula: The Music and Film has conceived, produced, or represented proj - (, Philip Glass), Dan Zanes ects by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Lucinda Holiday Show, and most recently Available Light Childs, Batsheva Dance Company, ’s (Lucinda Childs, John Adam, Frank Gehry). Improbable Theatre, Sankai Juku, Taylor Mac,

 ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dan Zanes, Bassem Youssef, and Goran Breg - Mary Kokie McNaugher, assistant costume ovic. Special projects include the revival of designer Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Colin Davis Jones Studios and Childs’ Olivier Award-winning production of Carelli Costumes, costume construction Einstein on the Beach ; Dracula: The Music And Sharon Milanese, LCDC rehearsal director Film with Philip Glass and the Kronos Quar - tet; the music theater work Shockheaded Peter ; Pomegranate Arts Brazilian vocalist Virginia Rodri gues; the www.pomegranatearts.com Drama Desk Award-winning Charlie Victor [email protected] Romeo ; Healing The Divide , A Concert for Peace and Reconciliatio n, presented by Philip Glass Linda Brumbach, founder and director and Richard Gere; and Hal Will ner’s Came So Alisa E. Regas, managing director, creative Far For Beauty, An Evening Of Leonard Cohen Adam Thorburn, business manager Songs . Current and upcoming projects include Rachel Katwan, associate general manager the international tour of Available Light by Jeremy Lydic, production manager John Adams, Lucinda Childs and Frank Gehry; Jadd Tank, office manager Tay lor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Willa Folmar, production assistant Music ; Bassem Youssef’s The Joke Is Mightier than the Sword; and the North American tours of Batsheva Dance Company’s Last Work and Special Thanks Sankai Juku’s Meguri . Katia Arfara, Bill Bissell, Michael Chase, Rachel Chanoff, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Con stanze Production Eislet, Brigitte Fuerle, Sue Killam, Meaghan Jaison Kaiser, stage manager Lloyd, Jason McCullough, Zizi Mueller, Sven Lilly West, front-of-house sound/sound supervisor Neumann, Rachel Peters, Caro lyn Schlecker, For Gehry Partners: Leif Halverson, Andras Siebold, Michael Solo mon, Chad Smith, Meaghan Lloyd, David Nam, design team Nick Stuccio, Virve Sutinen, Matías Tarno pol sky, Tom Carroll Scenery, set construction Claire Verlet, Marc Warren, Renae Williams.

 PLAYBILL To Make a Better Piece: Composer John Adams at 70

by Larry Rothe

The internationally renowned composer In March 1985, John Adams won a gamble. John Adams celebrates his 70th birthday Harmonielehre, his largest scaled work to date, a symphony in all but name, had just received on February 15. To mark the occasion, its world premiere. From the music’s explosive Cal Performances has co-commissioned this opening to its levitating conclusion, Har - major revival of choreographer Lucinda Childs’ monielehre proved an unambiguous embodi - ment of Adams’ belief in tonal music. In those Available Light, hailed in its 1983 premiere days, a composer could get in trouble for such as “a career breakthrough... a work of blazing heresy. But Harmonielehre confirmed what formal beauty” (New York Times), and set to many listeners had suspected: John Adams’ music defines why we listen. Adams’ richly impressionistic Light Over Water, Harmonielehre signaled that contemporary with a striking set designed by Frank O. Gehry. music, no less than the works of Mozart or Beethoven, could engage a listener’s heart and We asked Larry Rothe to consider the place mind (simultaneously!). It gave other com - that Light Over Water holds in Adams’ body posers the courage to defy what in the mid- 1980s was a music establishment whose of work, and how it pointed toward the music members often seemed more interested in Adams would go on to compose. writing for each other than for concert audi -

Above: photo by Vern Evans  JOHN ADAMS AT 70

ences. Yet Harmonielehre was only one step minimalist. In 1978, de Waart appointed on its composer’s path to becoming a musical Adams his new-music adviser, a post that in eminence. 1982 morphed into composer-in-residence. Adams will hate that last word, but his de - Among Adams’ tasks was the creation of a nials make it no less true. As he turns 70, the large-scale work for orchestra and chorus. That world celebrates him and his work—work in piece was . When it premiered in which he has attempted, as he once said, to 1981, its enthusiastic reception surprised even return the pleasure principle to music. Cal its composer. Performances joins the birthday honors, reviv - Adams was becoming a presence. In 1982, ing Available Light, a 1983 collaboration be - Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art tween choreographer Lucinda Childs, architect asked him to compose music for the dance that Frank O. Gehry (who designed the set), and would become Available Light. Adams created Adams, whose contribution, a composition he the piece with what he describes today as “a titled Light Over Water, reflects his minimalist very simple digital keyboard synthesizer, very roots and vibrates with a tension that, two years simple effects with some filters, delay units, and later, would explode in Harmonielehre and in - an eight-channel tape. After I was done, I felt it augurate the past half-century’s most produc - needed something extra. So I composed music tive career in American music. for a brass ensemble, recorded that, and mixed In Hallelujah Junction, his 2008 autobiogra - it all in.” Adams looks back with chagrin on phy, Adams tells of his New England childhood, what he calls this “primitive” technology, yet his early love affair with music, the Harvard in this he is characteristically self-effacing. The years in which he studied with Leon Kirchner (a composer Ingram Marshall speaks of the work proponent of the Second Viennese School) and in grander terms, as “a kind of symphony learned to love the Beatles and American rock, played by an orchestra of both electric and nat - his disillusionment with academia, and his ural instruments.” The title, Light Over Water, journey cross-country to California, where he reflects what inspired the composition. In the settled in 1971. kind of natural setting he loves, at the retreat By the time he secured a teaching job at the established by the Djerassi Resident Artists San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Adams Program on the coast south of San Francisco, already had gravitated toward . Adams made his piece, translating into music This style, new at the time, offered composers the gradual exchange of colors between opal an alternative to serialism, the basis of so much sky and winter ocean. Minimalism seemed music alien to the emotional context of con - made for this job. certgoers. (“Something tremendously power - While Lucinda Childs went on to choreo - ful was lost when composers moved away from graph the dances in Adams’ opera Doctor tonal harmony and regular pulses,” Adams said Atomic and created a dance around his Cham - years ago. “Among other things the audience ber Symphony, Light Over Water led her into was lost.”) Minimalism, as practiced by Steve new territory. Adams himself does not think of Reich and Philip Glass, was just entering it as ideal dance music. Childs admitted in 1983 the vocabulary of composers, and Adams was that “we have learned to work with the kinds of among those who adopted its techniques. In pulses the dancers can sustain. … [The dancers] broadest terms, minimalism is defined by the have developed precision, spanning from a very repetition of short cell-like phrases, slowly specific point here to a point there, where a varied to create undulations of sound. When pulse in the music comes back for them to fol - the San Francisco Symphony’s then-music low…. If John had not made me do this, I never director, Edo de Waart, announced his open - would have.” But she met the challenge. The ness to new music and found his desk piled lack of a regular pulse, she explained, “seemed with scores arriving from hopeful composers, to be a problem at first but later presented some he turned for help to the conservatory’s young interesting possibilities.”

 PLAYBILL JOHN ADAMS AT 70

“Having your music choreographed,” Adams Early on, Adams wanted to turn up the mu - told Cal Performances executive and artistic sical thermostat. “One of the dissatisfactions I director Matías Tarnopolsky, “is more revealing had with was its coldness,” he told than any other experience you have with it. It me in 2015. “The expression of deep feelings passes through this amazing mind that hears was being co-opted by pop music. Music that music on a level of gesture…. There’s a kind of touched you the way Beethoven or Bach did— architectonic awareness that musicians don’t all that soul was being taken over by John have.” He later told me that he was “profoundly Coltrane and the Beatles and Janis Joplin and affected by how Lucinda took what I gave her Otis Redding.” and found a way to organize her extremely Adams has long been obsessed with what he complex and mathematically conceived chore - calls Beethoven’s wit and “ecstatic energy.” ography on top of this big, sprawling, chaotic “What I love about Beethoven is the combina - canvas. I basically gave her a Jackson Pollock— tion of energy and feeling.” Another character - this canvas with very little structural precision istic of Beethoven is his music’s ethical to hold on to. If I were to do it over, I would be content—explicit, as in his opera , which much more sympathetic to the needs of the deals with political repression, and implicit, as

“Something tremendously powerful was lost when composers moved away from tonal harmony and regular pulses. Among other things the audience was lost.” —John Adams choreographer. My musical language was just in the Fifth Symphony, where light (in the guise in the state of formation.” of the finale’s exultant C Major) triumphs over Adams was on the verge of tailoring mini - darkness (cloaked from the first in a furious malism to his own needs. As he said in a 1983 C minor). For Adams, as for Beethoven, music interview, “I am now seeking a way to enrich is a means to communicate with listeners about my musical language so that it will become the entangling perplexities. more powerful and able to express a wider Beethoven proves that such communica - range of human experience.” He aspired to tion—such an ethical stance—need not be what he called demanding art . “Serious music solemn. So does Adams. With director Peter demands a great deal of the listener.… Sellars, he has collaborated on (among other Demanding art ultimately delivers because projects) the operas Nixon in China (the en - it renews.” counter between leaders of East and West), The Light Over Water reveals a new sensibility, Death of Klinghoffer (the tragic world of the its minimalist procedures striving for expres - Middle East), and Doctor Atomic (the release of siveness, rising and falling in Adams’ charac - forces that can end the world). In 2005, Sellars teristic emotional highs and lows. This music told writer Thomas May about his first en - links with Harmonielehre in an obvious way: counter with Adams’ music, when he heard the last several minutes, orchestrated, became . “Here was music that was gen - Harmonielehre’ s finale, and the heroic ending uinely dramatic…. [T]his is theater music, seems to have been made expressly for the which has the ability to build and sustain ten - later work. Less obviously, in pushing the sion. It also struck me that way exactly because boundaries of minimalist repetition, Light of the tonalities involved. Through these the Over Water hints at the composer Adams piece goes back into an interesting moral would become. zone…. John’s harmonic language actually took

 JOHN ADAMS AT 70

you into areas of right and wrong, where not just When we spoke in October, Adams was com - anything goes. That was very powerful because pleting a new opera (set in a Gold Rush mining drama is always about a moral imperative.” camp), to be premiered at the San Francisco “I’ve written operas about Nixon and Mao Opera during the fall of 2017. So the work con - and communism and capitalism, about the tinues as Adams completes his seventh decade. atomic bomb, about terrorism,” Adams has said. Over the years, the honors have been many— “I don’t consider myself a political composer. among them the Pulitzer Prize, Grawemeyer I just think that I can use my musical voice to Award, Grammys, honorary doctorates. In this articulate… certain events in the national psy - birthday season, his work will be the focus of che that need to be poeticized. It’s in the way festivals and retrospectives in London, Paris, that the great dramatists were poeticizing their , New York, Los Angeles, and San experiences or Dante his.” The power resides Francisco. He also serves as the Berlin Phil - in the poetry. For music, as Adams says, is “a harmonic’s 2016 –17 composer-in-residence (in means of getting myself and my listener in addition to his regular post as Creative Chair of touch with our deepest selves.” Such purely or - the Los Angeles Philhar monic). chestral compositions as Naïve and Sentimental In mid-October, he had just returned after Music, The Dharma at Big Sur, and the recent a month in Europe, conducting his music. Scheherazade.2 , a “dramatic symphony” for vi - “I was thinking today—I could have had a dif - olin and orchestra, play on our interior stage ferent life, where at the age of 69 I might have and speak with the grace and beauty we look decided I’d made the pieces I wanted to make, for in music. As Sellars says, they supply some - and I could devote the rest of my life to tour - thing that has been missing from the world. ing and conducting, and enjoying the fruits of Adams is proud to call himself a California what I’ve done.” Such withdrawal remains an artist. “A community with a positive sense of its option for no more than a moment. The nov - own identity creates its own uniquely identifi - elist John O’Hara once stated a simple artistic able culture. Certainly some of my music— credo: “I have work to do, and I am afraid not for example The Dharma at Big Sur and to do it.” Adams describes his aspirations more Eldorado —is about trying to create a local iden - simply still. “I always keep trying to make a tity…. I like to think that, when I’m gone, better piece.” people will associate my art as speaking for the culture here, for the landscape and for the sense of discovery that flourishes here.” Larry Rothe is author of the San Francisco Symphony history Music for a City, Music for the World and co-author of the essay collection For the Love of Music. Berkeley RADICAL INCLUSION, INNOVATION , AND IMMERSION ese performances of Available Light are part of the 2016/17 Berkeley RADICAL Innovation strand, a selection of concerts and related activities that follow a group of artistic trailblazers, some celebrating key milestones, who continually ask us to perceive, to think, and to understand in new ways. Cal Performances’ next Innovation program this season features two of Canada’s most renowned and adventurous companies, choreographer Crystal Pite’s Kidd Pivot and playwright/performer Jonathon Young’s Electric Company eatre in Betroffenheit (Mar 10 –11), a gripping and emotionally visceral exploration of psychological trauma. For complete details of all performances and related activities, please visit calperformances.org.

 PLAYBILL