Arts Alive

For 55 years the Bob Baker Marionette Theater has been delighting kids and adults alike with twirling puppets and post-show ice cream. But soon (the day after Thanksgiving to be exact), the theater will close its doors for good. The show will go on, though. First with a five week run of Bob Baker’s Nutcracker show at the Pasadena Playhouse, and later at a new permanent home yet to be named. Baker himself passed away in 2014 at the age of 90. But in 2012, we found him spry and still very much devoted to his puppets during an Arts Alive interview at the theater. In honor of the theater’s closing chapter, here is that interview.

Kenneth Turan and Gail Eichenthal review Julian Schnabel’s new film “At Eternity’s Gate” featuring Willem Dafoe.

Diverse musical worlds come together this weekend with the LA Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall. It’s a piece that brings together chorus, a Baroque orchestra, tabla, and a sitar; and bridges time and place and seven different major religious traditions. The music is by Los Angeles composer Reena Esmail and it’s called This Love Between Us: Prayers for Unity. Esmail tells me she wrote it in the throes of the contentious 2016 presidential election and one of the goals of the piece was to celebrate the idea that, as humans, there is more that unites us than divides us.

Willem Dafoe played the actor who played the vampire in Nosferatu, and he’s played more than one actual vampire. He’s been the Green Goblin, the good-hearted, ill-fated Sergeant Elias in Platoon… and even Jesus himself. Last year, he was the stern but caring motel manager in The Florida Project. Now, he’s Vincent Van Gogh. In the new drama, At Eternity’s Gate, Dafoe reunited with the painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel — whom Dafoe has worked with since Schnabel’s directing debut in 1996 — portraying the other famous painter in the last season of his life. The casting drew some double-takes, since Van Gogh died when he was 37, and Dafoe is… well, 63. But the actor has a good answer for that, which you’ll hear in our conversation. We also touched on avoiding the clichés about Vincent Van Gogh, how Dafoe learned to paint for real for this part, and why he gravitates towards outcast characters.

Experimental opera director Yuval Sharon talks about the mixed up opera he and the LA Phil are bringing to the Sony Pictures lot.

As Election Day comes and goes, Arts Alive is asking the question: what does it mean to be an American composer? In the 1890s, when composers in the United States were searching for a unique “American Sound” in their music, they turned to Antonin Dvořák…from Bohemia. Dvořák came to the U.S., met up with composer Harry T. Burleigh—the grandson of former slaves, who was writing art songs and spirituals. Together, Burleigh and Dvořák came to the conclusion that American composers didn’t need Dvořák to find an American sound in classical music—the American sound was already there.

Bill T. Jones is a true pioneer of choreography. For decades his work has asked questions and pushed boundaries. He recently stopped by the KUSC studio to talk about his definition of choreography.

Listen to John Van Driel’s extended conversation with composer Steve Reich.

This weekend bears witness to its pervasive impact of Minimalism our culture today. Steve Reich’s opera Three Tales opens the Long Beach Opera company’s 40th anniversary season on Saturday and Sunday at the Ernest Borgnine Theatre in Long Beach and the LA Phil is currently giving the world premiere of Reich’s Music for Ensemble and Orchestra. Just across the street at the Dorothy Chandler the LA Opera is presenting a work by another minimalist icon Philip Glass and his opera Satyagraha. In a recent conversation with KUSC’s John Van Driel, Steve Reich explains his unconventional introduction to music.

Morris Robinson recently sat down with KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen to discuss his incredible journey from playing football to office jobs to a life of singing opera.