The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is laying out a provisional 2021 schedule. Any other year, August would be the downtime before the start of the concert season. But this month, with live performances postponed indefinitely, The Wallis is keeping its eye cautiously on the farther future.
The Beverly Hills arts center has set programming for January through July, though not in stone. Knowing that cancellations could well extend into next year, The Wallis is staying alert but hopeful with the season ahead.
2021 picks up with a handful of performances that couldn’t make it to the stage in 2020. The Violins of Hope residency in Los Angeles, cut short this year by the pandemic, finds new life in a January 2021 concert with L.A. chamber group Delirium Musicum. Likewise, two dance productions — from Heidi Duckler Dance and DIAVOLO/Architecture in Motion — make the move to next year. Violinist Johnny Gandelsman is also set to play his transcription of the complete Bach cello suites in April 2021, a program originally scheduled for spring 2020.
Two L.A. opera companies partner with The Wallis in the upcoming season. Veils of Desire, an LA Opera Off Grand production from composer Matthew Aucoin and collaborators, is on the calendar for March. And Long Beach Opera pairs two “one-act” works — Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices From the Killing Jar — for performances in April.
Underscoring the entire year is a collaboration with violinist Daniel Hope, announced as The Wallis’s artist-in-residence back in May. Hope plays a chamber concert in January 2021 and involves San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra, where he serves as music director, for an April performance. And if things can’t go live, Hope already has a serious and substantial streaming series under his belt, Hope@Home, perhaps part of The Wallis’s flexible vision for the season ahead.
Tickets for The Wallis’s 2021 season will only be on sale as health and safety circumstances allow. You can stay up to date with The Wallis online.
