Name: Jazz: WAYNE SHORTER & ESPERANZA SPALDING’S …(Iphigenia)
Start: 2022-02-12T20:00:00
Location: University of California, Berkeley

Esperanza Spalding

Clark Rundell

Brian Blade

John Patitucci

Danilo Pérez

Sharmay Musacchio

Jen Schriever

Lileana Blain-Cruz

Frank Gehry

Mark Grey

Montana Levi-Banco

Wayne Shorter Quartet

Cal Performances

UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra

A living legend of jazz collaborates with one of the brightest lights of the younger generation in the West Coast premiere of a Cal Performances co-commission that reimagines what opera can be, and asks us to reexamine the stories we have inherited and the choices we make as a society.Wayne Shorter, 11-time Grammy-winning composer and saxophonist, has written the music, and esperanza spalding, 2022 Grammy nominee for Best Jazz Vocal Album, four-time Grammy-winning bassist, composer, and vocalist, is the librettist and plays the title role in Iphigenia, a radical new take on Euripides’ ancient Greek play Iphigenia in Aulis. Classical and jazz forms collide in an expansive score that features Shorter’s groundbreaking method of symphonic improvisation, lifting up Spalding’s artfully poetic and fractured libretto.The fully staged work is performed by a 28-piece chamber ensemble; the rhythm section of Shorter’s venerated quartet (Shorter himself does not perform); a cast of nine vocalists; and a chorus of 10 singers; with set design by icon Frank Gehry and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. As spalding explains, “Our Iphigenia has at its core a sense of autonomy—in this adventure of life, you have freedom of choice. The overarching sentiment is one of humanistic love, of wanting to re-awaken the dreams of youth free of the pressures of adulthood.”

EPSG:4326

Jazz: WAYNE SHORTER & ESPERANZA SPALDING’S …(Iphigenia)

University of California, Berkeley

Iphigenia