Here’s a list of things to watch for in the coming week.
With Sam Gold’s stripped down Broadway offering provoking a lot of debate, the Milwaukee Rep offers its own take on Tennessee Williams’ American masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie. Directed by The Rep’s Artistic Director Mark Clements, it features Hollis Resnik, the award-winning Chicago actress who occasionally ventures north to tackle a major role. The production also features American Players Theatre company member Kelsey Brennan.
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra mixes Germanic classicism with French Modernism with a program that features pianist Jeremy Denk, a soloist who writes as eloquently as he plays. He’ll play the Mozart Piano Concert No. 19, and guest conductor Karina Canellakis will lead the orchestra in short pieces by Olivier Messiaen and Cesar Franck. And cap it off with Beethoven’s buoyant Eighth Symphony.
Mozart is also on the program at Milwaukee Musaik’s concert of orchestral works, which also includes music of Ottorino Respighi, Gioacchino Rossini, and Erick Korngold. Andrés Cárdenes conducts the program, and plays the soloist role with Jeanyi Kim in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.
Elsewhere, the superb Bel Canto Chorus tackles Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah, a dramatic oratorio that tells the Old Testament story of the prophet’s struggle with faith and despair. Soloists include Mathilda Edge, Nicole Warner, James Doing and Gerard Sundberg. Bel Canto director Richard Hynson conducts.
If traditional swing and jazz if your thing, there’s a full weekend of pleasures ahead at the Woody Herman Educational Jazz Festival, which features workshops for middle and high school students, and a capstone concert by the Milwaukee Jazz Orchestra and UWM Jazz Ensembles, along with special guest soloist Roger Ingram.
And for something almost completely different, Alternating Currents Live presents the composer and sound artist Olivia Block, who is noted for incorporating field recordings, electronics, and found materials into her sound pieces.
