Three’s company: ‘Big Three’ gear for performing arts season

By Marilyn LaRocque

Thursday, July 25, 2002 | 8:18 a.m.

From Yo-Yo Ma to "Peter Pan," and Brahms to Virginia Woolf, the "Big Three" entertainment powers beyond the neon glow of the Strip, have assembled a stellar array of performers for the 2002-2003 performing arts season.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Performing Arts Center and Theatre Arts Department, the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Nevada Ballet Theatre have culled superstars and rising stars from a wide spectrum of traditional and avant-garde performers.

They will add sparkle to year-end holidays with the Las Vegas Philharmonic's highly popular "Yuletide Spectacular" (Dec. 14-15); Nevada Ballet Theatre's lavish "The Nutcracker" (Dec. 19 through Dec. 23), which returns to the Samba Theater at The Rio; the UNLV University Company production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" (late November through early December); and the Rockapella Holiday Show (Dec. 21).

The latter features the singing group that rocketed to fame as the house "band" for "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego" on PBS. Most of the performances happen at Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall and the Judy Bayley Theatre complex, both at UNLV.

Now in its 27th season, the Performing Arts Center's Charles Vanda Master Series will present world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his "Silk Road Project" on Oct. 30. The ancient Silk Road trade routes between the Mediterranean and Asia also "transported" ideas, science and culture, "serving as the Internet of antiquity," to quote Ma.

The routes also inspired him to create a contemporary "cultural mosaic" of those lands expressed in both traditional and commissioned music, often played on indigenous instruments.

Pianist Andre Watts will conclude the Vanda series on April 27. Watts debuted with Maestro Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic when he was 16. His illustrious career since then has taken him throughout the world to perform with the greatest orchestras and conductors, in recitals and at prestigious international festivals.

A talented young pianist, Orion Weiss, 19, will play Brahms' Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 in D Minor with the Las Vegas Philharmonic on Feb. 22.

"Brahms was about Orion's age when he composed the work," Philharmonic Music Director Harold Weller said. "It's one of his most dramatic and passionate pieces."

The Vanda Series is presenting rising stars, too. The Ahn Trio -- featuring sisters Angella (violin), Maria (cello) and Lucia (piano) -- are known for playing music by contemporary composers. On Dec. 6 they'll share the stage with another newcomer, American baritone Christopheren Nomura.

Nomura made his professional operatic debut in the boys' choir of San Francisco Opera when he was only 6. In 1992 he won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, a significant launching pad for many performers.

Already a bright star, bass-baritone Kevin Deas enjoys a multifaceted success. He is acclaimed for his superb Porgy in "Porgy and Bess," as well as for his rendition of sacred masterworks. He's also toured as leading vocalist with "Riverdance." Deas solos with the Philharmonic in its "All American" concert on Oct. 5, singing Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs."

"Kevin has a glorious voice, the kind needed for Copland," Weller said. "Some of the greatest works of a composer are songs, but they're not household words. These are absolute gems and fit Kevin like a glove."

At the opposite end of the vocal scale, lyric soprano Ana Maria Martinez will join the Philharmonic as soloist in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4, which, with Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" (1919 version), concludes the Philharmonic's fourth season on May 3. She was a sensational success in her Las Vegas appearances with Placido Domingo, with whom she records, and Andrea Bocelli, whom she has joined on worldwide tours.

Two very different singers, Audra McDonald and Patti Lupone, are part of the Performing Arts Center's "Best of the New York Stage" series. McDonald made her Carnegie Hall debut with Michael Tilson-Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. She has also sung with the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, the Boston Pops, and is a three-time Tony winner. On TV she displayed yet a different persona on "Law and Order" and in "Annie." Her concert is Oct. 6.

The multitalented Lupone has starred not only on Broadway, but also on the London stage and has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic. Her successes include "Les Miserables," "Anything Goes," "Oliver," "Sunset Boulevard" and the title role in "Evita," for which she won the 1980 Tony and Drama Desk awards as Best Actress in a Musical. Her solo concerts are sellouts, and she is a frequent performer on TV. She will appear March 30.

Shifting from vocal to instrumental, the trend-setting, inventive jazz and pop interpretations of The Herbie Hancock Quartet will resonate on Sept. 28. On Nov. 22 the Regina Carter Quintet, with violinist Regina Carter, transitions into futuristic jazz.

A violinist with local connections, De Ann Letourneau, concertmaster of the Las Vegas Philharmonic, will be soloist on Nov. 16 in Jan Sibelius' Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Letourneau was featured with the orchestra last season and was very well received. The entire program is devoted to "romantic" composers, including Saint-Saens and Tchaikovsky.

The Performing Arts Center is importing two international orchestras, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico (Oct. 25) and the Hungarian National Philharmonic (Jan. 17). They have also gone beyond American shores for ethnic flair in their World Stage series. On Oct. 22 Burhan Ocal and his Istanbul Oriental Ensemble are in town playing authentic Turkish Gypsy music.

Dance

Dancers, singers and musicians of Georgian State Dance Company will express their culture in colorful folk dances on Sept. 15.

The season takes dance beyond ethnic to parody, Twyla and the traditional.

The merger of classic ballet and comic parody by Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, "The Trocks," is unique. It's mind-boggling to see this all-male troupe leaping about in tutus, batting outrageously long false eyelashes and running rampant through treasured ballets. "The Trocks" are "en pointe" on Jan. 25.

For the more serious minded balletomane, the award-winning Shanghai Ballet dances "Coppelia" on Nov. 19.

On Feb. 7 Twyla Tharp Dance revs up the pace. Tharp has created more than 125 dances, has choreographed five movies, including "Amadeus" and "White Nights," and built a company that is acclaimed for its speed and intensity.

Lula Washington Dance Theatre appears March 1. This modern dance troupe is known for "themed" programs, many dealing with socially charged issues.

Certainly the hometown favorite for ballet is Nevada Ballet Theatre, now in its 31st season. The splashy show for NBT is "Salute to Richard Rodgers" on April 5-6, honoring the centennial of the composer's birth.

NBT Artistic Director Bruce Steivel and well-known choreographer Ann Marie DeAngelo are also generating new ballets.

"Somehow DeAngelo makes a cohesive whole out of circus arts, ballet, street dance and hip hop, gymnastics, performance art, environmental choreography and modern dance," NBT Executive Director Harris Ferris said. "She's creating ballets set to 'Little Girl Blue,' an arrangement of Rodgers' songs by Janis Joplin, and 'You'll Never Walk Alone' as sung by Aretha Franklin. Bruce (Steivel) is working on a ballet based on Rodgers' waltzes."

For its full-length ballet programs, NBT has chosen, in addition to "The Nutcracker," "Peter Pan" (May 16 to May 18), a great success last season, and Shakespeare's comedy-fantasy "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Oct. 4 to Oct. 6), with music by Felix Mendelssohn.

In contrast, Steivel will present three one-act ballets on Feb. 21 to Feb. 23, under the title "Vivaldi to Pink Floyd." Ferris described the Vivaldi, "Going for Baroque," as "very athletic," then added, "think 'go for broke,' because the dancers really push themselves to the limit."

Also on the program is the world premiere of Steivel's new classical ballet with music by Schumann. The third ballet features the music of rock band Pink Floyd.

Theater

Popular music has also found its way into the programming of the Nevada Conservatory Theatre (NCT) of the Theater Arts Department at UNLV. "FEVER! A Tribute to Peggy Lee" will play at UNLV's Judy Bayley Theatre (Aug. 25).

This is the Second Season for NCT.

"We decided we needed a professional theater so our graduate students could have a working relationship with professional actors," Robert Brewer, managing director of NCT, said. "Both professionals and students are cast in the plays."

Responding to audience taste, NCT has evolved a season formula of a classical play, a classical American play, a musical and a current work. "We found name recognition titles have value," Brewer said, "and we also decided we needed to do pro-family shows."

NCT will perform "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in late September, "The Road to Mecca," a drama by South African Athol Fugard, in association with the Nevada Shakespeare Festival, in mid-March, and "Six Degrees of Separation," described as "high comedy about the homeless, liberal chic, ghetto opportunity and rich people," in early May.

The all-collegiate University Company of UNLV has scheduled Moliere's comedy "Tartuffe" (early February) plus four plays Brewer termed "cutting edge."

They are "Our Country's Good" (early October), set in an Australian penal colony; "Savage" (mid-November), which explores the thin line between civilization and savagery; "Dance of Bees" (late February), a mystery; and, in April, the yet-to-be-determined winner of the Sarette Playwriting Award.

There's much more on the 2002-2003 performing arts horizon. News about other productions will appear in an upcoming Accent story."

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