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Day: January 20, 2020

FROM DARKEST TIMES TO BRIGHT LIGHTS

FROM DARKEST TIMES TO BRIGHT LIGHTS

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Explosions! Horror! Melodrama! Not your average story of a girl learning to play the piano, but there’s all this and more in “The Pianist of Willesden Lane,” a compelling work now showing at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in a four-week production by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. It all comes from one woman, a stage and a concert grand piano. “Pianist” features the multi-talented Mona Golabek telling the riveting, heart-warming story of her mother’s struggle to…

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Taking Chances on the Unpredictable Stage

Taking Chances on the Unpredictable Stage

A lively reprise of chance music that was in vogue six decades ago proved a surprisingly effective diversion in the Contemporary Music Players concert Jan. 17. In (aleatoric) chance music, players can make many musical decisions normally mandated by composers. This can mean selecting, on the spot, the sequence of spelled-out segments and movements, as in the score of Henry Cowell’s “Mosaic Quartet.” Or the players can gain wider latitude, getting graphs and sketches to interpret instead of musical scores,…

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