Opera

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

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.</p><p>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 <em>Iphigenia</em>, a radical new take on Euripides’ ancient Greek play <em>Iphigenia in Aulis</em>. 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.</p><p>The fully staged work is performed by a

28-piece chamber ensemb<span>le; the rhythm section of Shorter’s venerated quartet (Shorter himself does not perform); </span>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 <em>Iphigenia</em> 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