James Darrah News

In this star-studded episode of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's CLOSE QUARTERS interdisciplinary digital series melding musical and visual arts, guest conductor Grant Gershon leads the LACO-commissioned world premiere of Hyo by 2020-21 Sound Investment Composer Peter S. Shin.

Long Beach Opera presents Philip Glass's Les Enfants Terribles, performing May 21, 22 and 23, 2021 at the 2nd and PCH rooftop garage at 2nd Street and Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. 

“Desert in” is a groundbreaking new television miniseries that combines the talents of eight extraordinary, award-winning composers and interlocking stories from rising and veteran screenwriters.

Jessie Montgomery, one of America's most relevant and sought-after composers, provides musical curation for two back-to-back episodes of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's lauded CLOSE QUARTERS interdisciplinary digital series that melds musical and visual arts premiering on Fridays, April 23 and May 7, 2021, 6:30 pm.

Long Beach Opera has announced a revised 2021 Season, which will include an exciting return to live opera performance in May with an immersive drive-in Phillip Glass opera, the company’s first venture into longform digital content with a world premiere operatic television series in June, and an outdoor live performance of two operas in August.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra CLOSE QUARTERS interdisciplinary digital series melding musical and visual arts continues with Concertmaster Margaret Batjer leading a performance of Beethoven's “Serioso” String Quartet in F minor, arranged for string ensemble by Mahler.

The team behind the operatic miniseries 'desert in,” now in production for a June 2021 debut on Boston Lyric Opera’s streaming service, announced today an award-winning roster of composers and performers working on the project.

Gil Shaham makes a special guest appearance with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performing Boulogne’s virtuosic Violin Concerto No. 9 in G major, on the Orchestra’s groundbreaking CLOSE QUARTERS interdisciplinary digital series that melds musical and visual arts.

Santa Fe Opera and PBS have joined forces to present the Lord of the Cries series, running July 17 - August 17, 2021.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's lauded digital CLOSE QUARTERS series continues with a musically and visually rich take on Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat (“The Soldier's Tale”), interpreted by the musicians of LACO for 2021 and conducted by Music Director Jaime Martín.

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, led by Music Director Jaime Martín, announces the second half of its highly successful all-digital 2020-21 Season, CLOSE QUARTERS, an interdisciplinary series that melds musical and visual arts in “digitally native” programs created specifically for streaming that have garnered nearly 1 million streaming views since the series debuted last fall.

LA Opera will co-present an online stream of Breaking the Waves, an opera by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek that was previously scheduled to open on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage this month. The opera will begin streaming on March 12, 2021, in collaboration with Opera Philadelphia.

An exciting new era beckons for LA’s oldest opera company. Long Beach Opera announces the appointment of James Darrah as its new Artistic Director and Chief Creative Officer. His tenure will begin immediately, and he will remain with the company until at least 2024.

Before the shutdown, the final piece I reviewed for Broadway World was Boston Ballet’s rEVOLUTION which included Glass Pieces, a hypnotic embrace of the geometrics of a theatre space by Phillip Glass and Jerome Robbins.

Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’ Lumee’s Dream, is the expansion of Lumee’s Act II short monologue sung while smoking outside a nightclub in p r i s m. She says she “hurls herself out the window” into the blue from which she eventually returns tired and wet. In the Dream, Lumee speaks of her favorite dream, her imagined reality.

This month, LA Opera presents the premieres of new Digital Shorts from two of today's most prominent female composers, Missy Mazzoli and Ellen Reid. Part of the company's On Now platform of online programming, offered free of charge to viewers, Digital Shorts are new commissions which pair gifted composers and visual artists.

The unforgettable world of Ellen Reid’s      p  r  i  s  m returns to LA Opera for two weeks. This time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning piece is streaming on your home screen.  Composer Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins' sobering story follows a mother and daughter as they explore the trauma of sexual abuse and the elasticity of memory that follows.

On January 28, 2021, Los Angeles Opera streamed a newly filmed version of Roxie Perkins and Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera  p r i s m. An operatic tapestry, p r i s m tells of the psychological dreams, desires and struggles of Bibi, a sexual assault survivor.

Today (January 26) in live streaming: Disney legends stop by Stars in the House, Bobby Cannavale and Marisa Tomei star in Three Hotels, and more!

When I interviewed David T. Little several years ago, he told me he told me that he “didn't even realize [SOLDIER SONGS] was an opera until [opera entrepreneur] Beth Morrison clued him in.” He probably didn’t realize it was a film either, until Singer-Director Johnathan McCullough brought him the idea--and Opera Philadelphia raised the funds to make it over for its new opera channel. The results are painfully spectacular.