Monday, November 14, 2011

Randy Gener presents "Sondheim and After: A Listening Party," a conference and lecture for Europe's National Operetta Theatre "Ion Dacian"


The National Operetta Theatre “Ion Dacian”
Presents

"Sondheim and After: A Listening Party on America's Greatest Living Composer
 — a lecture and conference 
by Randy Gener

16.00
Tuesday, 17th of November 2011
at Hotel Intercontinental Bucharest

within the International Festival for Musical Performing Arts “Life is Beautiful”
4th edition
Bucharest, Romania

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA — Randy Gener — an internationally renowned and award-winning editor, critic and artist  will present a lecture and conference, entitled Sondheim And After: A Listening Party on America’s Greatest Living Composer, within the framework of the International Festival for Musical Performing Arts “Life is Beautiful.”  This forum and listening party takes place 4 p.m. Thursday November 17 at the Intercontinental Hotel Bucharest.


Taking Sondheim’s own comments and music as a starting point, and joined by several Sondheim specialists from A Medley of Sondheim, Gener’s lecture presentation Sondheim and After pulls aside the curtain on Sondheim’s creative universe to reveal the many influences that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century. 
“Sondheim styles himself as the maverick king of Broadway, the rebel genius who didn’t just write classic songs,” Gener states in his lecture. “He fashioned modernist scores that took advantage of dissonance and urban angst about love, sex, family and marriage to challenge the mind, not soothe it. For Sondheim, the art of writing smart lyrics rhymes with his restless search for dramatic and narrative truths.”

Gener will be joined by an impressive all-Filipino ensemble of Broadway stars who are traveling to Romania to perform A Medley of Sondheim, a concert of Stephen Sondheim’s iconic musical numbers.

Continuing the success gained during their 2010 international collaboration, the National Operetta Theatre “Ion Dacian” has once again partnered with Randy Gener to produce and present A Medley of Sondheim and Sondheim and After: A Listening Party, both of which will represent the USA in Eastern Europe this fall.

This international musical festival is unique in Romania, organized by the National Operetta Theatre “Ion Dacian,” a public cultural institution funded by that country’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. This fourth edition of the festival takes place November 10 to 20, 2011 in several locations in Bucharest. 

The diversified program includes musicals, operetta performances; ballets; concerts of international artists like The Tiger Lillies, Emma Shaplin (France), Richard Galliano (Italy), Ornella Vanoni (Italy); workshops for children; book launches; exhibitions and conferences, performed and presented by Romanian and foreign artists from more than 10 countries around the world.

In 2008 (the first edition), and now, perhaps more than ever, the International Festival of the Musical Performing Arts aims to offer the public a series of shows and events under the sign of Beauty in Music and Theater, proving that life is still beautiful.

Tickets are now on sale at the National Operetta Theatre "Ion Dacian" and online (www.opereta.ro), the sites www.eventim.ro and www.vandbilete.ro . For more information or to obtain press credentials, please contact us at the address madalina.matei @ opereta.ro or the number of phone 021/314.11.87.


RANDY GENER is the Nathan Award winning editor, writer, critic and artist based in New York City. He is the author of the plays Love Seats for Virginia Woolf, Wait for Me at the Bottom of the Pool, and other theatre works. His visual-art installation, in the garden of One World, recently debuted at LaMaMa La Galleria in New York. Widely acclaimed in the U.S. press as “an internationalist, a champion of cultural exchange and dialogue“ (New York Daily News) and as "unequaled among his contemporaries" (American Theatre magazine and Theatre Communications Group), Gener has received grants from the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Ford Foundation/Institute for International Education for his advocacy of U.S. performing arts in Eastern Europe. Gener's website is theaterofOneWorld.org.


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