Singer

Celebrate Kurt Weill with a screening of Susan Waterfall’s 2021 film, The Life and Music of Kurt Weill, followed by a live performance by mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen with pianist Sarah Cahill. We’ll see the uncut film (including the 21+ minutes missing from the abbreviated, 49-minute version that got 32,000+ YouTube views), and then enjoy a brief musical performance.

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Kurt Weill: His Life, His Songs

Preston Hall

Based on Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, Berg’s opera is a harrowing and brilliant critique of the cycles of suffering imposed by systems of power, laced with moments of wry humor that expose the absurdity of human folly. It reveals how decisions driven by war, greed, and disregard for human lives cascade downward, devastating the less fortunate while reflecting on universal struggles that resonate across time. Berg’s expressionist opera is acknowledged as the most important of the early 20th century.

Wozzeck

West Edge Opera

The musicians will reveal surprising new sides to Stravinsky through the years in these intimate concerts. Alexander Katsman will accompany mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen in Le Faune, a songs composed by Stravinsky during his honeymoon. Jensen will be joined a bit later by Alexander on “Cradle Songs for a Cat.” Susan and Julian Waterfall Pollack will play “Eight Easy Pieces” on one piano. Eric Kritz will take a turn on “Three Solo Pieces for Clarinet,” deeply moving and soulful Russian music. Following a brief intermission, Carolyn Steinbuck and Sam Weiser will play excerpts from Duo Concertante, Stravinsky’s important work for piano and violin. Sarah Cahill and Elizabeth Dorman will team up on Concerto for Two Pianos, considered one of Stravinsky’s major compositions for the instruments. Jensen and Katsman will return for “The Owl and the Pussycat,” Stravinsky’s final completed composition, which he based on a poem by Edward Lear.

Stravinsky at Home: Music for Family, Friends, Lovers

The final concert will open with Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem, with the Festival Chorus, and soloists Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano; Angela Moser, soprano, and Anders Froehlich, baritone. Fauré wrote of the 1888 work, “Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

After intermission, vocal soloist mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen will sing Ravel’s rich and voluptuous Shéhérazade song cycle. The Festival Chorus will join the orchestra in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, a choreographic symphony for orchestra and wordless chorus, sometimes described as Ravel’s orchestral masterpiece.

Festival Orchestra and Chorus

Mendocino Music Festival

Susan Waterfall will play Sonatine. Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano, will be joined by Daniel Lockert on piano for Deux melodies hébraïques. Harpist Anna Maria Mendieta will be joined by a small group of string and woodwind players to perform the chamber piece, Introduction et Allegro. On Chansons Madécasses, Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano, will be joined by Mindy Rosenfeld, flute; Stephen Harrison, cello; and Daniel Lockert, piano. In closing, Carolyn Steinbuck, piano, and Sam Weiser, violin, will play the Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major.

Ravel: The Attraction of Modernism, featuring Susan Waterfall

From the composer who created “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Ariane & Bluebeard is a fascinating symbolist examination of the psychology of violence and the obstacles of self-liberation. Dukas’ masterpiece is a follow up to our production of Pelléas & Mélisande and can be considered a prequel to that opera.

Mezzo-soprano

Silvie Jensen

Events

Past events

Apr 12, 2026

Kurt Weill: His Life, His Songs · Mendocino Music Festival

9 - 17 Aug, 2025

Wozzeck · West Edge Opera

Future and recently performed repertoire

Margret in Wozzeck by Berg

West Edge Opera

About

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