10th Anniversary of Days and Nights to be Virtual

Jerry Quickley at the premiere performance of Whistleblower with Philip Glass at the piano at the 2014 Days and Nights Festival (photograph by Arturo Béjar, courtesy of Sacks & Co.)

Ten years ago composer Philip Glass launched the Days and Nights Festival, a multidisciplinary event taking place in and around Big Sur. Today it was announced that the Tenth Anniversary edition will take place virtually, streaming films of performances at past Festivals. Full details will be announced soon, but three of those films were released for viewing today. Those offerings are the following:

1. Whistleblower was conceived by Jerry Quickley as an exploration of the leak of classified information by Edward Snowden, which took place in 2013. Quickley provided the text, and Glass composed the music. Quickley also served as narrator; and Glass performed with Tara Hugo, Alex Weston, Alex Weil, Miranda Cuckson, David Harding, Matt Haimovitz, and Lavina Meijer. The film documents the performance that took place at the 2017 Festival.
2. The Pattern of the Surface was created by Molissa Fenley for her dance company. Her choreography was set to music by Linda Bouchard, Tigran Mansurian, Andrew Toovey, and Frank Cassara, who, like Fenley, was one of the performers. The other performers were Harding and Christiana Axelsen. This film was also made during the 2017 Festival.
3. Heart Strings was a musical presentation of the story of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet. The work was created as a joint project by Glass and Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal, both of whom performed at the 2018 Festival. The other performers were Weston, Meijer, Tsering D. Bawa, Will Calhoun, and Jaron Lanier.

The Festival has created a Web page from which all three of these performances may be viewed. Each video is available for either rental or purchase with $5 as entry-level admission. Most of the money collected will go directly to the artists, and the rest will support the creation of future programs. Plans are already in place to add content on February 12, March 18, and April 15.