Robert Sims joins Oakland Symphony for Ghost Ship memorial concert

Robert Sims (photo: Christian Steiner)

Barihunk Robert Sims will perform the Brahms German Requiem with the Oakland Symphony on November 16th. He will be joined by soprano Patricia Westley under the baton of Michael Morgan.

The piece will be paired with the premiere of Richard Marriott's Ghost Ship Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, which has nothing to do with the ghost ship at the center of Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. Instead, it memorializes the 36 people who were killed on December 2, 2016 at the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland where a house music party was being performed.

In the late 1850’s, Brahms began a cantata of mourning, possibly influenced by Robert Schumann’s death in 1856. By 1861, he had selected several biblical texts and arranged a four-movement cantata.

After his mother’s death in 1865, he took up the work again and during the next two years the Requiem began to take its final shape.  Brahms did not take his text from the Roman Catholic Mass of the Dead, as had other composers before him. His intention was to select Old and New Testament texts that not only mourn the dead but also give comfort to the living. The texts he chose were taken exclusively from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible; hence the title, A German Requiem, to distinguish it from the Latin Requiem of the Catholic liturgy. However, Brahms later mentioned that he would gladly have left out the word “German” and put “Mankind” in its place.

Tickets are available online.

Barihunk Zachary Gordin in Festival Opera double-bill

Zachary Gordin sporting his Barihunk tee shirt at the gym

Barihunk calendar model Zachary Gordin is replacing fellow barihunk Hadleigh Adams in the Festival Opera's double-bill on Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins.

Gordin will sing Nedda's lover Silvio, whose affair with Canio's wife leads to the play-within-a-play's tragic turn. He'll be joined by Hope Briggs as Nedda, Alex Boyer as the jealous husband Canio and Laura Bohn as Anna, who will be led by Michael Morgan in the pit.

The Seven Deadly Sins is a satirical ballet chanté in seven scenes. Setting out on a journey across America to aid her poverty-stricken family, Anna I - manifested as two facets of one personality, one who sings and one who dances - finds herself on a seven-year, seven-city quest where she ultimately encounters each of the seven deadly sins. Anna I will be sung by Laura Bohn, who will be joined by Gordin, Kirk Eichelberger, Jonathan Smucker and Robert Norman, with Bryan Nies conducting.

With a libretto by Bertold Brecht, The Seven Deadly Sins was an artistic triumph at its premiere in Paris, but was not performed in the United States until twenty-five years later in 1958, with Lotte Lenye singing the role of Anna I.

There will be two performances of the double-bill on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25 at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, just a short train ride from both San Francisco and Oakland. Tickets are available online.