Atlas Happenings

From the Atlas:

There's a lot of happening at the Atlas this weekend, the US premiere of a contemporary Irish play, an enchanting musical piece featuring members of the Washington Ballet and Capital Hill's resident symphony opens its 40th season with a performance featuring Washington based composer Charlie Barnett's Blue Chevrolet.

Tickets for all these events can be purchased online or at the box office, 202.399.7993
The Atlas Performing Arts Center is located at 1333 H Street NE


THURSDAY
Solas Nua-DC's only Irish Theatre company opens Made in China
October 11 - November 4, 2007
Tickets $20 (call for group rates)
Fri-Sat 8pm; Sun 3pm

Set in a completely re-imagined Dublin underworld, MADE IN CHINA involves martial arts, rogue cops and savage low-lifes. A dreadful accident causes a violent tug-of-war between two criminal footsoldiers over the loyalty of a third. Self-loathing, guilt and loneliness emerge in this frenzied narrative, which culminates in a blistering battle for survival. Directed by Colin Hovde. Featuring Dan Brick, Joel Ruben Ganz and Danny Gavigan. Produced by Solas Nua. Written by award-winning Irish playwright, Mark O'Rowe.

Friday and Saturday 8pm
The In Series presents
Moon/Dance
Tickets $ $18-$33
Explore the magic of the moon with staged art song (Mozart, Schumann, Berlioz, Debussy), a splash of pop (Porter, Van Morrison), and a generous helping of dance!

Director Nick Olcott joins Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre, choreographer Jared Nelson, pianists Francis Conlon and Carla Hubner, singers Ingrid Cowan, Ole Hass, William Heim, Laura Lewis, Millicent Scarlett and Washington Ballet Studio Company dancers.

SUNDAY
October 14th 5pm
Capital City Symphony
Tickets $12-16 children under 15 free with a paying adult
***come early to chat with composer Barnett
To launch her 10th season with the Capital City Symphony, conductor and music director Victoria Gau contrasts the beautiful, classically-oriented Symphony No. 2 by Brahms with a modern example of the new symphonic form, Charlie Barnett's Blue Chevrolet: A Station Wagon Symphony.

Composer Charlie Barnett, who has written music for over 300 television and theatrical films, based his first symphony on his family's annual car trip from Virginia to Maine. Each year he and his four sisters would pile into the back of a Chevrolet, his mother and father in the front, and they would make a three-day journey full of the sounds of traffic and energetic children, a journey that could best be described as "agony," he note in an interview on National Public Radio.

The music Barnett composed to represent the trip is the furthest thing from agony; from the beginning we can hear the spinning wheels and passing scenery of a nation in love with movement. The composer notes, "As a film composer, I work to make musical sense of 35mm pictures every day. But the pictures I want to make sense of most are the black and white ones of my sisters, a nameless dog and a car."