The much-anticipated Chance of Alcatraz podcast, a work of maritime and canine fiction by the author of this column, is now ready for Bay Crossings readers. Please visit www.duclosculturalcurrents.com to check it out. James McKee of Earwax Productions made the compelling mix, working with author and actor Louis Parnell.
Parnell has directed and acted in over a dozen productions at San Francisco Playhouse. He’s also worked extensively as actor and director with numerous Bay Area companies including American Conservatory Theater, Center Repertory Company, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and smaller nomadic companies.
He has accumulated various awards for his work, including five San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle awards and nine SFBATCC nominations. Louis has performed in numerous film, commercial, and television roles and is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA.
The original score was composed by Rama Gottfried. Composer and sound artist Gottfried is a recent Ph.D. graduate from UC Berkeley, where he studied with Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, Adrian Freed and David Wessel.
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Live Organ Score to Keaton’s The General
The brilliant organist Cameron Carpenter improvises to a live screening of Buster Keaton’s 1926 silent comedy The General this month with the San Francisco Symphony.
Cameron Carpenter, a composer-performer unique among keyboardists, challenges the stereotypes of organ music. His repertory spans from the complete works of Bach and Franck, to his hundreds of transcriptions of non-organ works, his original compositions and his collaborations with jazz and pop artists.
He is the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy award for a solo album. He received the Leonard Bernstein Award in 2012, and in spring 2014 he launched his international touring organ, a digital instrument of his own design.
Carpenter performed Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” at age 11 before joining the American Boychoir School in 1992 as a boy soprano. While a high school student at the North Carolina School of the Arts, he made his first studies in orchestration and orchestral composition, and transcribed more than 100 major works for the organ.
He continued composing after moving to New York City in 2000 to attend the Juilliard School; he received a master’s degree from Juilliard in 2006. The same year, he began his worldwide organ concert tours, giving numerous debut performances at venues including Royal Albert Hall, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Melbourne Town Hall and Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow.
A regular guest at Davies Symphony Hall, Carpenter last appeared under San Francisco Symphony auspices in summer 2013 accompanying the film Battleship Potemkin with his own improvised score.
Finally, it should be noted that Carpenter is featured on the first-ever recording of Henry Brant’s Ice Fields, which is still available on the SFS Media Label. The piece was written specifically for Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony and Davies Symphony Hall. There is a digital-only release available for streaming and download in one-of-a-kind binaural headphones experience produced using the Dolby Atmos system.
Carpenter also participated in an exclusive interview, which can be found on www.duclosculturalcurrents.com.
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SF Ballet to Stage A Midsummer Night’s Dream
George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be part of SF Ballet’s 2020 Season, with performances March 6 to 15. The production features Esteban Hernandez, who was promoted to principal dancer last summer.
Hernandez trained at the Rock School for Dance Education and the Royal Ballet School before joining SF Ballet as a member of the corps de ballet in 2013; he was promoted to soloist in 2017. A native of Guadalajara, Mexico, Hernandez danced memorable roles in the 2019 season including the principal solo in the world premiere performance of Scarlett’s Die Toteninsel (a “delicate and muscular, sinuous and doomed” performance, according to the SF Chronicle) and his “outstanding, highflying” (SF Classical Voice) Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, in addition to principal roles in “. . .two united in a single soul. . .” and Peck’s Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes.
An exclusive interview with this outstanding dancer can be found on www.duclosculturalcurrents.com.
