This year’s entry is “Die Liebe der Danae.” Richard Strauss’ second to last opera, it was completed in 1940 but only premiered in 1952, three years after the composer’s death.  The piece’s New York staged debut opened on Friday night and was seen on Sunday afternoon at the Fisher Center.

Besides declaring its greatness, the notes from conductor Botstein and stage director Kevin Newbury point to the opera’s appropriateness for our times.  It’s about the worship and necessity of money, the primacy of status, and the fickleness of love.  Yet the fact that the source material is Greek myth says we’re hardly the first generation to be obsessed with such matters.

In past years, Bard’s productions have been so lavish with stagecraft as to balance out the middling quality of the work at hand. But “Danae” received a modest, if occasionally clever treatment, at least by past standards.  A spray of long tinsel is lowered to form a golden (moneyed) halo, but like an ATM card it gets used a few too many times.  After intermission, Danae and Midas are living out of a beat-up blue compact car.  Otherwise, the sets are rather static projections of Manhattan buildings or a desert horizon.

The most arresting scene visually and musically was the opening.  As the orchestra plays a tight rhythmic counterpoint reminiscent of Kurt Weill, a couple dozen Wall Streets in navy suits and power ties are scurrying about, singing of unpaid bills.  Later they opened their briefcases to the heavens, like open mouthed fledglings waiting to be fed.

The second scene is an attractive pairing of sopranos Megan Miller as Danae and Sarah Jane McMahon as Xanthe that brought to mind “Der Rosenkavalier.”  Miller’s best moments come late in the opera when the textures thin and the pace relaxes.

Almost all of the vocal writing is darned tough, with long, not terribly gracious lines set high in the register. Combine this with the constantly unfolding themes and cadences in the orchestra and the effect is unrelenting.  Given their tasks, Miller and the other leads, tenor Roger Honeywell as Midas and bass Carsten Wittmoser as Jupiter, did more than admirable work.  But the playing of the American Symphony Orchestra under Botstein was more workmanlike than usual.

R. Strauss’ “Die Liebe der Danae”
3 p.m. Sunday, July 31, 2011
Fisher Center, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson

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It’s hard to imagine that the Bard Music Festival will ever get around to a season titled “Noel Coward and His World.”  So it’s probably enough that the college’s SummerScape series has mounted such a loving revival of the composer’s operetta “Bitter Sweet.”   The show opened on Thursday night, was seen at the Friday matinee and runs through August 14 in the intimate smaller theater of the Fisher Center.

While his name evokes the early to mid-20th century, the dandy Coward lived until 1973 and was once a powerhouse composer, writer, performer and producer.  These days, in the realm of classical music and opera at least, his work is a rarity.  So again, “Bitter Sweet” was a welcome arrival.

But just to be clear, this is no forgotten masterpiece either. It’s probably debatable whether the category of operetta or musical comedy is a better fit.  The numbers, often overflowing with clever inner rhymes, aren’t quiet as droll as most Gilbert and Sullivan nor as studied as some of Stephen Sondheim.

Though the music never exactly soars, there are plenty of good tunes including a one-time hit, “I’ll See You Again.”  The small orchestra, conducted by James Bagwell, is sweetened up with lots of saxophones.

The story is a touching reflection on youthful love seen through the eyes of a matron, played with wistful grace by Sian Phillips.  She’s surrounded by a cast that’s surprisingly large and pleasingly youthful and energetic.

Two of the leads certainly had an operatic confidence and power.  Mezzo Sarah Miller’s performance as Sarah/Sari only grew richer as the show progressed.  Tenor William Ferguson twice started songs without accompaniment yet was in fine tune when the orchestra joined in many bars later.

As a German chanteuse, soprano Amanda Quittieri had several fine production numbers though her finale was a garbled mix of languages.  The best showmanship came from the male quartet of droll waiters. They climaxed in the suggestive and frolicsome “Green Carnation,” Coward’s only slightly veiled reference to Oscar Wilde.

The plot jumps about between decades and across national borders.  Adrian W. Jones’ single set was elegant and efficient but it was the lavish costumes by Gregory Gale that best evoked each time and place.  A constant presence on stage was the grand piano and more than a few performers displayed fluent keyboard skills.

Noel Coward’s “Bitter Sweet”
3 p.m. Friday, August 5, 2011
Fisher Center, Bard College, Annadale-on-Hudson, NY

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Photos by Cory Weaver courtesy Bard College

LIAISONS: Off to a Good Start

Saturday April 2
University of Maryland

Anthony de Mare kicked off his American tour of LIAISONS: Re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center with fine performances of 14 new works. LIAISONS will eventually include short piano pieces written by 36 stylistically diverse contemporary composers, each work based on a Steven Sondheim song of the composer’s choice.

De Mare explains in his program note that Sondheim’s music has been a part of his own life as far back as he can remember, and that he had imagined something like this project for a long time. His comfort with and knowledge of Sondheim’s output is clear, not only in his well-crafted performances of the new works, but also in his refreshingly informal remarks from the stage between pieces. (By the way, can I just say here how much I appreciate the continuing trend of helping concert music audiences feel at home and relaxed with an informal attitude toward what performers wear and how free they feel to actually talk to an audience during a performance? Thanks to Anthony de Mare for keeping this trend going!)

The new pieces run the gamut from fairly straightforward presentations of the original tune (think Gershwin’s own arrangements of his songs) to clever de-constructions to  full-fledged virtuostic paraphrases (think Liszt).

Two standouts for me were the pieces by Bernadette Speach (“In and Out of Love” based on “Liaisons” & “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music) and Fred Hersch (“No One Is Alone” from Into the Woods). Proving the old adage that “simple is best,” these two inherently pianistic works treat the original material in a tender, thoughtful manner that honors their integrity while showing us something new about them.

I was also glad that in “The Demon Barber,” composer Kenji Bunch tackled The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, long one of my favorites of all Sondheim works. Bunch says he was trying to pay “homage to the seething, menacing” original: mission accomplished.

William Bolcom’s “A Little Night Fughetta” nicely combines the title song from Anyone Can Whistle as a fugal subject with “Send in the Clowns” as its countersubject. Steve Reich’s take on “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George provided a welcome change from the solo-piano texture with a two-piano work, rendered Saturday night by live Anthony de Mare playing along with pre-recorded Anthony de Mare.

I also can’t help but mention the very entertaining “You Could Drive A Person Crazy” (from Company) by Eric Rockwell. This clever piece of theater demonstrates several things that might drive a pianist crazy, including 14-flat key signatures, chords requiring more fingers than most humans possess, and the interference  of a clueless, possibly malevolent, page turner (wonderfully overplayed by Amir  Khosrowpour).The piece brings the best of Victor Borge into the 21^st century.

What I found so interesting about all the pieces is that, despite the compositional processes applied to the original Sondheim material (including some pretty strenuous melodic fragmentation, rhythmic re-thinking, and re-harmonization), there’s no mistaking that the original material is Sondheim. (And this is all without the lyrics, which I’ve always thought were as original and inventive as Sondheim’s notes.) How is this possible?

I don’t know. If you can answer that question, you’ve just explained the genius of one of America’s most gifted composer/lyricists of all time.

Scott Pender is a Washington DC-based composer.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Speak, Tony! Speak!

Happy 80th Birthday Stephen Sondheim

Anthony de Mare, Power Pianist

Clint Borzoni began studying music at age seven and wrote his first composition at age eleven. Now 29 years old, he’s composed more than 40 pieces, including a piano concerto, percussion quartet, a couple of sting quartets and chamber orchestra works and loads of songs.

A New York City resident, he received his bachelors and masters degrees at CUNY.  His musical theater work “My Life as a Bald Soprano” premiered in 2008 at the June Havoc Theater in New York.

Late last year the baritone Randall Turner premiered two of Borzoni’s songs on a recital program –  given in New York and San Francisco – that also  included music of Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie and Glen Roven.

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What are you working on these days?
Over the last few years I have found that I love writing vocal music. I am an emotional person and gravitate towards the voice because of its unpredictability and intimacy. So it’s no surprise that opera has called to me as well. Growing up, my mom took me to tons of movies, musicals, and operas. Afterward we would always chat about the plot holes and whether the work made us “feel something.” We still have the same discussions, but now it’s about my pieces.

At the moment I am working on the music for my second opera Antinous and Hadrian, with librettist Edward Ficklin, commissioned by operamission. It is a new full-length opera about the second century Roman emperor Hadrian and his love for the Greek youth Antinous. The story examines the mystery behind the tragic death of Antinous. Upon his death, the distraught Emperor declared his beloved a God.

How much do you travel for your work? Do you find it stimulating or a hassle?
I recently traveled to San Francisco for the premiere of two songs I wrote for baritone Randal Turner. I love traveling to new places and meeting new people, especially if it’s for work. As a composer, my visits are long enough to get some sightseeing in and short enough as not to disturb my routine.

Are most of your friends from the music world?
Actually, my closets friends are very far removed from the music world. I live and breathe music, so when I’m socializing for the pleasure of it I try to surround myself with people who let me put “Clint the composer” aside.

What do you like to talk about, say over drinks or dinner, if not music and the arts?
I like to talk about the person I’m speaking with. Everyone has a tale to tell and I am partial to hearing it. Getting to know someone intimately is one of the hardest things to perform. If you cannot make close connections with people, how can you write an honest character?

Do you watch TV?
I take a break from composing everyday at midnight to watch “The Simpsons.” I also love “The Golden Girls” and “Dexter”.

What’s the gayest musical thing you’ve ever done?
I would have to say it’s writing the love scene between Antinous and Hadrian for American Opera Projects’ Composer & the Voice workshop series.

Other than that, I have recently set seven of the twelve “Live Oak, with Moss” poems from the “Calamus” section of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”  Four were commissioned by bass-baritone Tim Hill and will be recorded and released in 2011. I hope to one day complete the entire “Live Oak, with Moss” sequence.

Do you like to cook?
I love to cook and my specialty is vegetarian lasagna.

Who was your most influential teacher and why?
I credit David Del Tredici for taking my music to the next level. We spent two years cultivating my passion for composing tonal music. He not only taught me technique, but to believe in my talent and instincts as well.

Creator Sean Griffin chose the title as a reference to the studies in human potential conducted in Cold Spring Harbor, Suffolk County, during the early part of the 20th century. The research, which he found published online, unexpectedly supported the Nazi’s efforts to build a master race.

Another examination of humanity’s strengths and weaknesses — by aliens from outer space — also plays a prominent part in the show, through the re-enactment of the famous alleged UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in 1961.

But the question that most comes to mind in considering “Cold Spring” isn’t about the genetics and breeding of humans as much as the cross-pollination of art forms that goes into the show itself. According to Griffin, the piece is a new kind of hybrid structure that weaves together the DNA of opera, theater, dance and performance art.

“I’m a composer, and this is a composition for actors and musicians and dancers” says Griffin. “It converts the theater into a big kind of organ. There are traditional notes, but also all these characters become notes who present the material in different modalities.”

Griffin spent the last two years working on the piece, and plotted its flow through the use of a spread sheet.

“There was a developmental process that we went through as a group, yet this is not improvised but highly structured. All of the performers are given the same structure and they all have to count the score as if they were playing an instrument,” explains Griffin. “It ‘instrumentalizes’ a lot of the interesting, unique qualities of the people who are performing.”

The cast of approximately 30 includes a half-dozen musicians and a few of Griffin’sregular collaborators, plus a number of local performers who auditioned at EMPAC earlier this year. Portions of recent theatrical productions — Curtain Call Theater’s staging of Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” and local playwright John Birchler’s “Good Fences,” as recently produced by Colonial Little Theatre in Johnstown — are performed in fragments in the balcony of the theater.

“The people who are in this represent (the Capital Region), and it’s a distillation of the area’s cultural behaviors,” says Griffin. “It’s a different kind of orchestration. Instead of writing for the flute, I have ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ up in the balcony, as if American community theatre were a sound.

“I organized the scripts with the idea that the characters and actors can travel back and forth and break the time-space barrier,” continues Griffin. “This is what I call narrative relocations. You have different time periods, regional things, things from far away, narrative and archival, all merged and forged together. It forces a kind of hybrid, or even a monster.”

Griffin cites the experimental period of the 1960s and ’70s and works of Robert Wilson and John Cage as precedent for his new forms. “Now people are a little more interested in this interdisciplinary large-scale works again,” he says. “I do films and other conventional things, but this is where I see myself as happiest.”

Among the local participants in “Cold Spring” are members of the female roller derby team Albany All Stars. According to Katie Dollard, the All Stars do appear on skates, but they don’t necessarily re-enact roller derby.

“We’re involved in a couple of different aspects, and it’s fantastic,” she says. “We’re meant to be the psyche of one character, repeating what she’s saying very sarcastically and mocking her. We do an homage to the suffragettes, and we also enact the alien semaphore. This character remembers an alphabet from the aliens and we do this interpretive movement to it.”

It’s a long journey from roller derby to the avant-garde, but even for the veteran local actor Michael Steese, “Cold Spring” is something new.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” says Steese, 76, who has performed regularly at the New York State Theatre Institute and many other regional companies over the last four decades. “Those of us of the local scene don’t have the national exposure and experience with this sort of thing that many of the other participants do, so we’re just trying to keep up.

“The whole concept does work from my point of view,” adds Steese. “But my part is a little drop in a big bucket. Still, anybody interested in a spectacular theater experience should come see this.”

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COLD SPRING
Saturday, December 4, 2010
EMPAC, RPI Campus, Troy, NY

It takes daring to have so many words mean so little, as they did in Sean Griffin’s unusual theater piece “Cold Spring,” which was commissioned by EMPAC, where it premiered over two performances this weekend.

Reams of pre-existing texts — from archives, plays, movies and seemingly countless other sundry sources — are fractured and recombined, jumbled up and layered upon each other, and at times even wadded up and thrown away by the performers onstage.  The principal themes were about eugenics and memory, but there was one lengthy section about rabbits, those enthusiastic breeders.

While texts may be a dominate component, the experience of “Cold Spring” is primarily musical.  Yet Griffin’s actual musical score, performed by a half dozen players in the pit, while effective, was almost negligible, mostly just atmosphere and gentle punctuations here and there.

Instead, it was the layering of those many texts that took on a symphonic sweep. At least that’s what can be experienced when one lets go of the need for an intelligible narrative.

Griffin is no pioneer in this realm of sonic collage.  John Cage made similar schematics and the radio documentaries of Glenn Gould also come to mind.  But Griffin’s sensitivity to texture, rhythm and density was often masterful, and was aided hugely by the alert and trusting performers and by EMPAC’s excellent mix and amplification.

There was plenty to look at as well.  The basic stage setup featured a tower of art and artifacts, loaned from the Schenectady Museum, on stage right and a huge grey shelving unit opposite.  At the start, most of the cast emerged from the shelves as if their bodies were some kind of inventory.

The stage blocking often felt as jumbled as all those words, but in the same grander sense it seemed to work. A trio of modern dancers in beige long johns was the only component that never rose above the banal.  It always helped when a performer took flight. The best was operatic soprano Juliana Snapper, who ended the first act perched above the stage like a snow owl.

Rowan Ian Seamus Magee was omnipresent as a kind of master of ceremonies.  Democco Atcher and Carolyn Shoemaker played Barney and Betty Hill, alien abductees from the 1960s.  Members of Curtain Call Theatre and Johnstown Little Theatre performed scenes in the side balconies and seven members of the Albany All Stars roller derby team were a kind of corps de ballet in long dowdy dresses. They opened the lively second act to disco music.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

During her visit to the Capital Region last month we shared lunch at Jack’s Oyster House in downtown Albany.  I thought the conversation would be  about opera repertoire and casting (and wondered if I’d be out of my league).  In an unexpected role reversal, I was the one being peppered with questions. Zambello wanted to hear about the local economic and culture scene and to learn where else she should go and who else she should talk to in order to build support for Glimmerglass.

“I’m the artistic director but also the associate development director,” she joked.

Beyond fundraising, another priority is building ties to other cultural and civic organizations with the goal of reaching new audiences. For this coming summer, Zambello is setting in place collaborations with regional groups as diverse as the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Fenimore Art Museum and the Ommegang Brewery, all in Cooperstown, as well as the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in Utica and even the local penitentiary (with the notion of getting inmates to help spruce up the grounds).

Opera also came up, of course, but Zambello didn’t give any hint as to what’s in store for future seasons. She said that the programming decisions for her entire three-year contract are in place and that more big name artists can be expected.  The headliner for this coming summer, of course, is Deborah Voigt in “Annie Get Your Gun.” Zambello’s close associations was such major artists was one of the reasons she got the job.

Though Zambello never suggested that the Cooperstown-based company is exactly on the ropes, she conveyed a palpable urgency and determination.  Tight finances, she said, are common throughout the field. “As a director,” she said, “at every company I work at, the question is how to do things better but for less money.”

You can hear more of Zambello’s history and plans for Glimmerglass at the company’s website, which has an audio recording of a talk she gave this summer in Cooperstown.

Photos courtesy Glimmerglass Opera.

Last month composer SCOTT PENDER attended a two-week summer music intensive known as the John Duffy Composers Institute, part of

But it may as well be called Opera Camp.

According to Pender, the sessions are for composers of opera and musical theatre to bring alive their works and get feedback from the collaborating artists and senior composers.  The musical staff consisted of founder John Duffy (formerly Mr. Meet the Composer), music director Alan Johnson, stage director Rhoda Levine, and vocal coach Patrick Mason. Also on hand were visiting composers Libby Larsen, Fred Ho, and Ricky Ian Gordon, and librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell.

Pender brought along his latest composition, the one-scene stage piece “Clever Elsie,” It’s based on his own translation and adaptation of a German tale originally collected by the brothers Grimm.

“I chose this story for two reasons: first, I couldn’t find any evidence that it had previously been set to music; and second, the repetitive structure of the story appealed to me,” says Pender.

Here’s a partial synopsis and a couple excerpts from the libretto”

Clever Elsie lives at home with her mother and father and two servants. As so often happens, especially in fiction, the story really takes off when a stranger shows up in town.

My name is Hans, and I’ve come a long, long way to ask for your daughter’s hand, but only if she’s really as clever as they say, clever as they say.

Mother & Father: Oh, she’s no fool: she’s so sharp, she can even see the breeze blowing down the street.

Ensemble: Oh, she’s no fool: she’s so sharp, she can even hear a housefly sneeze.

The central portion of the scene consists of a repeated litany expressing fear over what might happen. Clever Elsie sings alone the first time, other voices add on with each repeat so that a solo becomes a duet becomes a trio becomes a quartet becomes a quintet.

If I get Hans, and we get a kid, and it gets big, and comes down here to draw some beer, maybe this pickaxe might fall on his head and strike him dead, dead.

Now back at home in the Washington DC area, Pender admits to a post-camp let down.  It’s a feeling probably familiar to all who escape for summer intensives, whether boy scouts or composers.

“Most of my colleagues agreed with me that we all suffered from what I called ‘Duffy withdrawal,’” he says. “It left me feeling kind of lost for a week or two. Eventually, as is almost always the case, picking up the pencil and score paper made it better.”

At least that’s the impression given by the subtitle to a 2008 piece.

But the work’s name – “Kidnapping Water: Bottle Operas” – is actually deceptive. Rather than mass-produced take-home music, the piece is more about making audiences go the distance.

Like a musical Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the 39-year old Seattle-based composer created a series of 64 musical miniatures, each for a singer and a percussionist.  They’re mean to each be performed in a different body or pool of water.  It’s never actually been done in one continuous trek, but was debuted in eight installments, taking place in lakes, ponds and streams of the Pacific Northwest during the 2008 Bumbershoot Festival of the Arts. A concert version of excerpts is coming up on May 1 at Seattle’s Town Hall.

Raised on musical theatre and action flicks, I became interested in drama and martial arts. Classical music, avant-garde techniques and sacred ceremonies also inform my mix of lyrical melodies with surprising twists. Living in the Pacific Northwest, where the mountains, trees and water remain powerful, further inspires my approach to writing.

With his current theatrical work in process, Au Yong goes from the expansive outdoors to everyone’s worst nightmare of confinement. “Stuck Elevator” is based on the true story of a Chinese food delivery man in New York City who got trapped in an elevator – for three days!  The piece has been accepted for the Yale Institute for Music Theatre in June, which will culminate in two public performances, June 25-26.

As the son of Chinese immigrants in America, I search for ways music connects people with the places they call home. I listen to stories and sounds to find meaning in a world filled with beauty and terror…

Interested in the interplay between nature, architecture, sound, noise, chaos, and repetition, I find musical gestures in everyday actions. These gestures form the basis of ceremonial works created to honor the ritual of people who gather to listen.

But one classical pianist, Anthony de Mare, has come up with a fresh approach to celebrating Sondheim.  About five years ago, de Mare began talking with composer friends — and he knows lots of composers — about them making short (10 minutes or less) piano arrangements/reworkings/homages to selections from the Sondheim songbook.

There’s plenty of precedent for such a thing, starting with Gershwin songs for the piano by Gershwin himself, by Art Tatum and Earl Wild, among others.  De Mare can also be quiet the showman on stage — he’s talked, sung and even tap danced while playing at the keyboard — so there’s lots of potential for where the project, titled “Liasons,” could go as a concert/theater event.

De Mare first approached Sondheim with a letter in November 2006 and got a quick and positive reply.

“The opening line in his first response was ‘I’m flattered and delighted by your interest in my songs, and your project sounds intriguing indeed,’” says de Mare. “We still have not yet met in person but I have about 15 notes from him regarding his opinion, suggestions and excitement about the project.”

“He’s never put any restrictions on anything,” continues de Mare. “In one of our first exchanges, he said the project sounded enormously ambitious and he found it a bit hard to believe that the list of distinguished composers I was intending to approach would take the time to write variations or settings of someone else’s songs. And he often referred to my list of collaborators as ‘A-list composers.’”

The match-up of composers and songs, though still in development, is included at the end of this story.  At the top of the list is Sondheim’s former teacher, the 93-year old serialist master Milton Babbitt.  His selection? “I’m Still Here.”

Anthony de Mare

According to de Mare, more than a few composers from outside the classical music world were approached, including Elton John, David Byrne, and Elvis Costello among others, but they declined participation because of other commitments.  But the list does include jazzman Fred Hersch, theater/film composer Peter Golub and musical theater composer Eric Rockwell.

“Surprisingly, there were very few cases where two composers chose the same song,” explains de Mare. “There was always some discussion regarding their choice and many would offer personal reasons or insights as to why a particular song resonated with them.  Some actually surprised me with their choices.”

Generally speaking, getting composers on board was the easy part. Raising money for commissions has taken time. De Mare had hoped to have at least part of “Liasons” ready to debut during this birthday year but the economic downturn caused delays. Sondheim, though, has helped with fundraising by suggesting figures in the theater world who might contribute.  Arts centers in the U.S. and Canada, where de Mare will perform “Liasons,” have also pitched in.  Nearly $40,000 has been raised to date.

The first roll out of works will take place in March and April next year at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Like the old fashioned out-of-town try-out of a musical, de Mare wants to work with the material before bringing it to New York.  He ultimately envisions the songs filling three evenings and plans to engage a director to shape and add to it.  Recordings are also planned.

“And it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long long time,” he says. “And everybody seems to like the whole idea because it’s a different angle for his music.”

Milton Babbitt: I’m Still Here (Follies)

Mason Bates: song TBD

Eve Beglarian: song TBD

Derek Bermel: Sorry-Grateful (Company)

William Bolcom: song TBD

Kenji Bunch: The Ballad of Sweeney Todd

Michael Daugherty: song TBD

Peter Golub: Children and Art (Sunday in the Park)

Ricky Ian Gordon: Every Day a Little Death (A Little Night Music)

Annie Gosfield: A Bowler Hat (Pacific Overtures)

Jake Heggie: A Weekend in the Country (A Little Night Music)

Fred Hersch: No One Is Alone (Into the Woods)

Jerome Kitzke: Sunday, Lesson #8 & Move On (Sunday in the Park)

Ricardo Lorenz: Mrs. Lovett medley (Sweeney Todd)

Paul Moravec: Losing My Mind (Follies)

David Rakowski: The Ladies Who Lunch (Company)

Steve Reich: Finishing the Hat (Sunday in the Park)

Eric Rockwell: You Could Drive a Person Crazy (Company)

Daniel Bernard Roumain: Assassins (selection)

Frederic Rzewski: Assassins (selection) or The Frogs (selection)

Rodney Sharman: Beautiful (Sunday in the Park)

David Shire: Comedy Tonight (Forum)

Bernadette Speach: Liaisons/Send In The Clowns (A Little Night Music)

Nils Vigeland: Merrily We Roll Along (medley)