Zachary Gordin to sing West Coast premiere of Fairouz works

Barihunks calendar model Zachary Gordin will join pianist Lara Downes and the amazing Del Sol String Quartet for a concert of works inspired by ancient Arabic texts set to music by composer Mohammed Fairouz. The concert will feature the West Coast premieres of several of Fairouz’s solo and chamber works inspired by literary and historical influences reaching back to ancient cultures of the Arabian Peninsula.

The performance will take place at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum on November 1st and tickets are available online. 

Regular readers will recall another Barihunks calendar model, Dan Kempson, premiered Mohammed Fairouz’s opera Sumeida’s Song in 2013.

You can enjoy Zachary Gordin all year in our new calendar, which features him in two months. Click on the LULU button below to order your copy today.

Green Sneakers "Dream Team" reuniting in San Antonio

Cellist Kathryn Bates and Jesse Blumberg in Green Sneakers

One of our favorite collaborations in all of opera is coming to Opera Piccola of San Antonio. Barihunk Jesse Blumberg will be rejoining the acclaimed young director John de los Santos and the riveting Del Sol Quartet for a repeat of their powerful performance of Ricky Ian Gordon's Green Sneakers, which played for one night in San Francisco last year. We were at that performance and there wasn't a dry eye in the theater when the opera ended.

Opera Piccola will present two performances on May 10 and 12 in a double-bill with Gordon's Orpheus and Euridice. Tickets are available online.

Green Sneakers, which is broken into nineteen songs and runs about 80 minutes was written with Jesse Blumberg in mind. The piece is scored for baritone, string quartet, and empty chair, with a libretto by the composer. It premiered on July 15, 2008 in Vail, Colorado and has had a number of subsequent performances since, mostly with Blumberg.

Ricky Ian Gordon today wrote the mini-opera as a way of dealing with the loss of his lover Jeffrey Grossi to AIDS in 1996. In an interview with the Advocate Gordon said, "The world is so different now than it was when Jeffery died in 1996. Young people today missed seeing what it was really like at the height of the AIDS crisis so for them they think it’s OK because you just get to take a few pills all the time. Today, HIV is romanticized in a way because you get to be like that character in Rent, but young people need to know that there’s nothing romantic about it."

You can read the entire interview HERE. 

Director John de los Santos and composer Ricky Ian Gordon

Jesse Blumberg just wrapped up a successful run as Papageno in the famous Barrie Kosky/1927 production of Mozart's Magic Flute at the Minnesota Opera. Blumberg can next be heard performing Schubert's Winterreise at the Kerrytown Concert House on May 17th and Aeneas in Purcell's Dido & Aeneas at the Connecticut Early Music Festival on June 7 and 8.

De los Santos has just brought Bizet's Pearl Fishers to life at the Fort Worth Opera Festival, which has a final performance tonight. From July 16-19, the wunderkind director will work his magic with Rossini's L’Italiana in Algeri at the Seagle Music Colony.

Ricky Ian Gordon has been one of the busiest composers in the world, with premieres of his new operas A Coffin in Egypt and "27." A Coffin in Egypt can next be seen at Opera Philadelphia from June 6-15 and "27" will premiere on June 14 at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

West Coast premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's "Green Sneakers" creating media buzz

Cellist Kathyrn Bates Williams and Barihunk Jesse Blumberg (Photo by Michael Colbruno)

The West Coast premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon's "Green Sneakers" has created quite a media buzz before its one-night only performance tonight at Fort Mason's Southside Theater in San Francisco. The Jewish Weekly, Bay Area Reporter and San Francisco Chronicle all named it as one of their top theater picks for the week.

The Advocate ran a lengthy interview with Ricky Ian Gordon today, who wrote the mini-opera as a way of dealing with the loss of his lover Jeffrey Grossi to AIDS in 1996. Gordon told the Advocate, "The world is so different now than it was when Jeffery died in 1996. Young people today missed seeing what it was really like at the height of the AIDS crisis so for them they think it’s OK because you just get to take a few pills all the time. Today, HIV is romanticized in a way because you get to be like that character in Rent, but young people need to know that there’s nothing romantic about it."

You can read the entire interview HERE.

Jesse Blumberg and the Del Sol Quartet (Photo by Michael Colbruno)

The San Francisco Examiner hailed Gordon as a natural successor to Stephen Sondheim along with Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel and John Michael LaChiusa. You can read the entire article HERE. San Francisco's KDFC radio also aired an interview with the composer.

Green Sneakers, which is broken into nineteen songs and runs about 80 minutes, is being directed by one of operas most exciting young talents John de los Santos. The theatrical song cycle was written for Baritone, String Quartet, and Empty Chair, with a libretto by the composer. It premiered on July 15, 2008 in Vail, Colorado and has had a number of subsequent performances since, mostly with Blumberg. Remarkably, it had never been performed in the two cities most impacted by AIDS - New York City and San Francisco. This performance and an upcoming show at Lincoln Center on April 6th finally bring this important piece to the audiences most touched by the epidemic. 

Jesse Blumberg in rehearsal for Green Sneakers in San Francisco (Photo by Michael Colbruno)

Tickets for the February 19th performance are available at the Fort Mason website. Tickets for the New York show are part of the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center and available HERE.

A complete photo album from the San Francisco rehearsals is available HERE.