Days and Nights Update: April 15

According to the initial announcement of this year’s Days and Nights Festival, based on video streams of performances at past Festivals, today is when the final offerings of the season will become available. As of March 18, six of those films were available for viewing. The list will be updated with three additional offerings, meaning that nine films may be streamed as follows:

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  Philip 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.
4. Two Pianos: Glass was a recital by the husband-and-wife couple of Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa, each at his/her own piano keyboard, presenting a program consisting entirely of compositions by Glass during the 2018 Festival.
5. This was a retrospective account of Glass compositions originally performed by both the composer and the members of the Philip Glass Ensemble. The performers for this concert included Glass himself, joined by Lisa Bielawa, Dan Bora, Jon Gibson, Peter Hess, Ryan Kelly, Mick Rossi, Eleonor Sandresky, and Andrew Sterman. This film was made during the 2017 Festival.
6. Rehearsing Wichita is a “making of” documentary. In 1988 Glass composed solo music to accompany a reading of Allen Ginsburg’s poem “Wichita Vortex Sutra.” The documentary provides a behind-the-scenes look at Glass rehearsing for a performance of this poem, providing piano accompaniment for a reading by his first cousin once removed Ira Glass. This film was also made during the 2017 Festival.
7. María Irene Fornés’ play Drowning was reconceived as an opera with libretto and staging by JoAnne Akalaitis and music by Glass. The performers were Gregory Purnhagen, Peter Stewart, Tomas Cruz, Weston, and Meijer. The film documents the performance that took place at the 2017 Festival.
8. Opera Parallèle, the adventurous opera company based here in San Francisco, performed a one-act chamber opera based on Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony.” Glass created a score based on a libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer. The original staging was conceived by Akalaitis. The film documents a performance during the 2018 Festival.
9. The 2019 Festival featured a recital by the Third Coast Percussion quartet of Chicago-based percussionists Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore. Their program featured “Perpetulum,” which was written for them by Glass under a commission that was supported, in part, by San Francisco Performances (SFP). As a result of that commission, SFP presented the West Coast premiere of the composition in April of 2019. That performance also included an excerpt from Devonté Hynes’ “Perfect Voiceless,” originally composed for a 75-minute dance piece. That excerpt was also included in the Festival recital. The Festival performance also presented the premiere of “Percussion Quartet,” which Danny Elfman wrote for Third Coast.

Third Coast Percussion players David Skidmore, Peter Martin, Robert Dillon, and Sean Connors (from the Third Coast press kit)

As was previously announced, the Festival has created a Web page from which all 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.