JENNIFER BRINDLEY
DANCE
“Moving Beyond the Battlefield”
“When you’re young, things can seem overwhelming,” said Lake Arts Project co-founder Karl von Rabenau. “So how do we focus on what’s good? How do we manifest that in ourselves so we can manifest it in the world?” His organization provides area high school students with immersive art experiences through the creation of original multidisciplinary performances. For its fifth annual spring concert, married co-founders von Rabineau and Jennifer Miller gathered young writers, musicians, visual artists and dancers together with dancer-choreographer Adam McKinney, a former Alvin Ailey Dance Company member and current co-founder of DNAWORKS, a service organization committed to healing through the arts; and with Milwaukee’s powerful Shakespeare company of post-deployment military veterans, Feast of Crispian. The vets brought classical performance practices to the creative process and McKinney brought storytelling through expressive and therapeutic movement. This show, which includes the McKinney premiere “From Shining See,” is the result.
The Milwaukee-born McKinney met Miller and Rabenau when all three were members of Milwaukee Ballet. An assistant professor of dance at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, he’s returned at their behest for this project. “As a choreographer,” he says, “I feel it’s my responsibility to create works that deal with important social issues. In dance, we deal with our bodies and our bodies naturally hold trauma. The arts can be a means toward healing and reconciliation. My vision for our communities is to use the arts for truth telling, sharing stories and creating allies in places that have disallowed connection.” (John Schneider)
7:30 p.m. May 12 and 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. May 13 at Danceworks, 1661 N. Water St. Free for active military and veterans, $15 general admission. For tickets, call 414-277-8480 ext. 6025 or visit lakeartsproject.com.
THEATRE
C’mon Get Happy: A Judy Garland Tribute
Born Frances Ethel Gumm, Judy Garland went on to a lifelong career as a singer, actress and vaudevillian. “Lifelong” is not the least bit hyperbolic; her performing career spanned 45 of her 47 years. Her film career included such timeless musicals as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls and Easter Parade. In 1997, Judy Garland was awarded a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Numerous Garland song recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classical American cinema.
Quite obviously, there is much to go on for a tribute concert dedicated to the legendary Judy Garland, and that’s what Sunset Playhouse has put together. Kerry Hart Bieneman—who, last season, gave a sold-out George Gershwin concert at Sunset—here takes on Garland’s repertoire accompanied by pianist Johnny Rodgers. Rodgers, himself, is no novice to this material by any means; quite the contrary, he was music director for Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli, for 18 years. (John Jahn)
May 12 and 13 at Sunset Playhouse, 800 Elm Grove Road, Elm Grove. For tickets, call 262-782-4430 or visit sunsetplayhouse.com.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
“Strings Attached”
Frankly Music’s season finale at Schwan Concert Hall amounts to a festival for stringed instruments. As the ensemble’s leader and founder, violinist Frank Almond, says, “Our final concert, ‘Strings Attached,’ features a string extravaganza with the rarely heard Grande Sestetto of Mozart, along with the much-loved Brahms Sextet No. 1.” Frankly Music welcomes back violist Toby Appel and cellist Nicholas Canellakis—the latter of whom makes his debut with Frankly Music in this concert.
Brahms’ String Sextet No. 1 in B-Flat Major, Op. 18 was premiered via an ensemble led by legendary Brahms enthusiast, violinist, conductor, composer and teacher Joseph Joachim. Brahms was (almost) breaking new ground with this string sextet for, prior to its composition in 1860, very few such chamber works existed; you have to go back to the 13 of such pieces by Luigi Boccherini several decades earlier. Mozart’s Grande Sestetto Concertante in E-Flat Major—an arrangement of his popular Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364—is a delightful, mature, three-movement work of the Austrian genius from 1779. (John Jahn)
Monday, May 14 at 7 p.m. at Schwan Concert Hall, Wisconsin Lutheran College, 8815 W. Wisconsin Ave. For tickets, visit franklymusic.org.
“Legends and Masters”
The historic Downtown Milwaukee Pabst Theater hosts the Festival City Symphony—under the baton of the orchestra’s new music director and conductor, Carter Simmons—for a concert of celestial music that brings folktales to life. Maestro Simmons, who concurrently serves as the artistic and music director of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, has been praised by FCS chairman and CEO Franklyn Esenberg for “bringing a long background of classical music knowledge [with him] that will help our orchestra maintain the high standards that it has demonstrated as Wisconsin’s oldest continuously performing symphony orchestra.”
Works on the program are the overture to Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber (1821); an orchestrated version of the solo piano Intermezzo, Op. 119, No. 2 (1893)—also known as the Black Swan—by Johannes Brahms; Engelbert Humperdinck’s prelude to Hänsel und Gretel (1893); and the magnificent, stunning and seamless Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 105 (1924) of Jean Sibelius. (John Jahn)
Sunday, May 13, at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St. For tickets, call 262-853-6085 or visit festivalcitysymphony.org.
MORE-TO-DO
“A New Day”
The Concord Chamber Orchestra asks us to join them “in celebrating the heroes who have lived and worked in our own lifetimes to embrace humanity and remind us that, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’” The concert, titled “A New Day,” contains a program of inspirational and uplifting pieces, which includes works of Aaron Copland, Sergei Prokofiev, Joan Tower and George Gershwin. Saturday, May 12 at 7 p.m. at Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church, 2366 N. 80th St. For tickets, call 414-750-4404 or visit concordorchestra.org.
Move It!
Express Yourself Milwaukee presents an exhilarating evening of multidisciplinary creative expression in their annual showcase, “Move It!” Bringing together music, dance, spoken word and visual arts, Move It! puts on display collaborative works created by young people still honing their respective artistic craft and seasoned local professional artists. The theme of this year’s event amounts to a challenge for all of us to work for positive changes in our community and move ideas into action. As event founder and executive director Lori Vance explains, “It is through movement (dancing, drumming, painting, singing) that we change the patterns of traumatic reactions on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. EXYO has always worked to bridge youth from challenges to opportunity; and healing comes when we engage in creative activity.” Thursday, May 17 at 6:30 p.m. (pre-show reception at 5:30 p.m.) at the Miller High Life Theatre, 500 W. Kilbourn Ave. For more information, call 414-272-3498 or visit millerhighlifetheatre.com. Admission is free!
