Joshua Bell performs with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra this week. From Thursday through Sunday, in addition to performing music by Hindemeth and Brahms, he will present the world premiere of “Asimov at Star’s End” from composer Charles Zoll, a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, who was the 2012 Rapido! Composition Competition winner.
Bell has recorded more than 40 CDs since his first LP recording at age 18. Over the years, he has played with a disparate group of artists, including Chris Botti, Kristin Chenoweth, Chick Corea, Gloria Estefan, and Alison Krauss. Bell also collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on the Grammy-winning spoken word children’s album “Listen to the Storyteller” and performed on Bela Fleck’s Grammy Award recording “Perpetual Motion.”
In an experiment initiated by The Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, Bell performed in a Washington, D.C., Metro subway station to test how many people would stop to listen. The experiment was filmed and was later shown on a national TV news show.
A child prodigy, Bell made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1985, at age 17, with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
If you missed his performance in the subway, you can see him Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. or Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets run from $24 to $75 at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Symphonic Pops Conductor Michael Krajewski presents “The Rock Tenors,” featuring the voices of Shem Von Schroeck, Rob Evan and Micah Wilshire. The tenors will sing classic rock favorites by Yes, The Beatles, The Doobie Brothers, Coldplay, Kansas, Journey, Queen, Kenny Loggins, Paul McCartney, Chicago, Coldplay, Sting, Queen, Yes, and Crosby, Stills & Nash and more.
Micah Wilshire has appeared on seven Gold and Platinum albums and countless recordings and jingles. He has performed on “The Sharon Osbourne Show,” “The Wayne Brady Show” and Pepsi Smash. You can also hear him on albums with Amy Grant, Michael Bolton, CeCe Winans, Steve Winwood and Faith Hill.
A principal tenor for the Millennium Wagner Opera Company, Shem von Schroeck has performed with Grammy Award-winning artists, including Tom Jones, Marie Osmond, Christopher Cross, and as a music director and conductor for Kenny Loggins.
Rob Evan starred in the original Broadway cast of “Jekyll & Hyde,” playing the title role for three years, and appeared on Broadway as Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables.” A featured soloist for many leading symphonies across the nation, Evan also regularly stars in the production of “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Evan is a native of Monticello and is a former varsity athlete at the University of Georgia where he majored in finance.
Based on Green Day’s Grammy-winning album of the same name, the Broadway musical “American Idiot” comes to Atlanta May 1-4. If it’s anything like the Broadway cast in the above video, it will be a high-energy, electric show that gets you dancing in your seat.
The stage adaptation of Green Day’s rock opera is about three young guys from suburbia on an angst-ridden, media-saturated odyssey through post-9/11 America. Two of the young men flee their suburban lifestyle with parental restrictions while one stays back to work on his troubled relationship with his pregnant girlfriend.
With direction by Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening), choreography by Steven Hoggett (Black Watch) and orchestrations and arrangements by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), the result is an experience Charles Isherwood of The New York Times said was “thrilling, emotionally charged, and as moving as any Broadway musical I’ve seen this year!”
What Is American Idiot Like?
An energy-fueled rock opera, American Idiot, features little dialogue and relies on the lyrics from Green Day’s groundbreaking album to execute the story line. The stage is festooned by a collage of art and newspaper clippings as well as over a dozen embedded TV monitors. The televisions flash everything from broadcast news, graphic warning messages and clips from recognizable TV series—all while an onstage band performs, often with the actors picking up instruments themselves. The material is dark with some characters hitting rock bottom, but the rousing score keeps things upbeat.
The show runs 1 hour and 35 minutes with no intermission. Show times are varied throughout the four days.
Thursday – 7:30 p.m.
Friday – 8 p.m.
Saturday – 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Sunday – 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Tickets for “American Idiot” at The Fox Theatre May 1-May 4 can be purchased through Broadway in Atlanta.
The 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra, which bills itself as a nine-piece klezmer-funk-rock-jazz ensemble that performs original compositions and arrangements combining West African rhythms with Eastern European, plays the Marcus Jewish Community Center Atlanta May 4. The music also includes a mix of bebop, funk, swing and other styles that build on the American Jewish assimilation of klezmer.
In the local music magazine Stomp and Stammer, critic Doug Deloach says “…tunes that swing like Ellington’s jungle nights at the Apollo, carve soulfunk grooves reminiscent of Fela Kuti’s Africa ’70 and rock the bar mitzvah like there’s no Second Coming. It’s a mash-up of seemingly incompatible styles…”
In Creative Loafing, music writer Chad Radford said the band’s music is “laid down by some of the best jazz hands in Atlanta.”
The 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra plays Sunday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the MJCCA.
Ben Sidran, jazz and rock pianist/singer/songwriter/record producer/journalist and author, will present a musical performance and talk about his new book, “There Was a Fire: Jews, Music, and the American Dream.”
Sidran’s music spans from rock and roll, which he played in the early ’70s, to bebop, funky, bluesy jazz. He served as a session musician for Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones and Peter Frampton, and has produced albums with Mose Allison, Van Morrison, Diana Ross and Rickie Lee Jones. He has also played with Steve Miller and co-wrote the hit song “Space Cowboy.”
Sidran composed the soundtrack for the acclaimed film “Hoop Dreams” and scored the documentary “Vietnam: Long Time Coming,” which won the Aspen Film Festival Audience Award and an Emmy. Throughout his career spanning more than 50 years, he has released more than 30 solo albums.
Sidran’s written works include the book “Black Talk” (on the sociology of black music in America), the memoir “A Life in the Music,” and “Talking Jazz,” a collection of his interviews with jazz musicians. He has hosted a variety of jazz programs for NPR–including the Peabody Award Winning “Jazz Alive” series–and for VH1 television, for which his “New Visions” series in the early 1990s won the Ace Award.
“There Was a Fire: Jews, Music, and the American Dream” recalls how Jews came to America–mainly Manhattan’s Lower East Side–and were able to carve out a niche business for themselves by working from home as tailors. Like those Jewish ancestors, in his later years as a recording artist, Sidran too would end up working for himself, bypassing the record companies and paving his own road in music.
Ben Sidran takes the stage Thursday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus Jewish Community Center Atlanta.
Purchase Tickets & Contact Information
Ticket Prices: MJCCA Members: $12, Community: $18.
Discounts available to students, seniors, and groups.
Purchase Tickets: 678.812.4002, or visit online at http://www.showclix.com/events/15056
Pianist Jeffrey Siegel, who has been performing and educating audiences on music for more than 45 years, will present “Great Jewish Composers at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta.
Siegel will present a “concert with commentary” that includes Gershwin’s rarely heard solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue, Aaron Copland’s famous Rodeo and humorous Cat and the Mouse, Mendelssohn’s vivacious Rondo Capriccioso, The Jets from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and the melodious gems of Milhaud, Alkan, Franz Reizenstein, and Anton Rubinstein.
Siegel has been a soloist with the world’s great orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, and the Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras.
His concerts normally conclude with a fast-paced Q&A.
Siegel performs Sunday, April 6 at 4 p.m. at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, 678-812-4002. Tickets run from $20 to $28.
Renowned around the world for their shadow dances, Pilobolus will be coming to Atlanta Saturday, April 5. The dance company has been featured on numerous TV shows, including the “Annual Academy Awards,” “Oprah,” “Late Night with Conan O’ Brien” and “60 Minutes,” and has performed over 100 choreographic works in more than 64 countries around the world.
A mixture of acrobatics and dance, the performances are funny, heartfelt and utterly amazing. You may have seen shadow dancing before on TV. This is the company that started it all.
The company will present five works: AUTOMATON (2012), a collaboration with internationally celebrated choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui that questions the difference between human and machine, and [esc] (2013), a full company piece created in collaboration with master magicians Penn & Teller that explores ideas of fantasy, athleticism and escape. THE TRANSFORMATION (2009), OCELLUS (1972) and LICKS (2013) round out the evening’s featured repertory.
Pilobolus performs Saturday, April 5 at 8 p.m. at the Ferst Center. Tickets are available for $22 for children, and for $39 to $49 for adults.
You don’t have to like ballet to love Modern Choreographic Voices, the annual Atlanta Ballet performance that brings modern dances from world-renowned choreographers.
Forget everything you’ve ever seen or heard about ballet or dance styles that you see on “Dancing With The Stars” cause this is the show that will blow your mind about everything you’ve ever seen regarding dance. It’s contemporary dance from the soul.
Israeli artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, Ohad Naharin, is back again this year after last year’s phenomenal performance of his piece “Minus 16.”
Alexei Ratmansky, the current artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre and former artistic director of the legendary Bolshoi Ballet, Atlanta Ballet presents the hypnotic “Seven Sonatas.”
Atlanta Ballet dancer/choreographer Tara Lee presents the world premiere of her piece “The Authors.” In her 18th year with the company, Lee will also dance in “Secus” and “Seven Sonatas.”
The national tour of the Broadway musical “Once,” winner of eight Tony Awards including Best Musical and winner of the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, will play The Fox Theatre from March 4-9.
Featuring an impressive ensemble of actor/musicians who play their own instruments onstage, “Once” is the story of a Dublin street musician who’s about to give up on his dream when a beautiful young woman takes a sudden interest in his haunting love songs. As the chemistry between them grows, his music soars to powerful new heights… but their unlikely connection turns out to be deeper and more complex than your everyday romance.
About the Broadway production, The New York Times said: “‘Once’ features another rarity in a Broadway show: amplification that enhances rather than distorts the music. (Clive Goodwin is the sound designer.) When the violins begin to play in ‘Once’ — and the accordion and the mandolin and the guitars and the cello — the instruments swell into a collection of distinctive voices melded into a single, universal feeling. That’s the sense, carried in the corners of all human hearts, that we just missed out on the real thing. ‘Once’ massages that feeling until it hurts quite exquisitely.”
Ticket prices start at $30 and will be available at Fox Theatre box office, by visiting www.broadwayinatlanta.com or by calling 1-855- 285-8499.
