General Director Nigel Redden has announced programming for the 36th annual Spoleto Festival USA, set for May 25 to June 10 in Charleston, South Carolina. Among musical highlights are the first fully staged production of Philip Glass’s opera Kepler, about astronomer Johannes Kepler, with resident conductor John Kennedy leading the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra; concerts featuring Stravinsky’s Petrushka; the U.S. premiere of John Cage’s orchestral trilogy Twenty-Six, Twenty-Eight, and Twenty-Nine; and Doghouse, an orchestral piece by Jonny Greenwood, lead guitarist and keyboard player of the band Radiohead. Other musicians scheduled to perform at the festival include MacArthur Foundation prize-winning cellist Alisa Weilerstein; clarinetist Todd Palmer; violinist Jennifer Frautschi; violist Hsin-Yun Huang; and pianists Inon Barnatan, Pedja Muzijevic, and Stephen Prutsman. Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Dublin’s Gate Theatre will be in residence, and the festival’s jazz series will feature contralto Virgínia Rodrigues, double-bassist Renaud Garcia-Fons, and ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro. The Gailliard Auditorium, one of several Charleston venues hosting Spoleto events, will close at the end of the festival for a major three-year renovation.
Posted January 12, 2012
