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UMS Programming Director Michael Kondziolka and UMS Technical Director Jeff Beyersdorf discuss the technical challenges of producing an epic-scale work like Einstein on the Beach.

Leslie Stainton covers the first night of UMS Night School, where she learned the meaning of “maverick.” VIDEO interview with UMS Head Usher Dennis Carter as he prepares to usher at the Einstein on the Beach preview performances.

On Saturday, January 21, Einstein on the Beach composer Philip Glass will join a panel of special guests to ponder the cultural significance of Albert Einstein at Saturday Morning Physics. Guests and physicists Sean Carroll and Michael Turner on what it means to be a “renegade” in the sciences, the influence of Albert Einstein, and his cultural impact.

Inside the Power Center 14 days before the opening of Einstein on the Beach, it’s not immediately clear that this is, “hands down, the biggest show ever” to hit this auditorium, as UMS programming manager Mark Jacobson told me shortly before we entered the theater. But after an hour or so of listening to production manager Will Knapp talk about the challenges of mounting the giant opera here in Ann Arbor, I began to see what Jacobson meant.

The next installment from inside Einstein on the Beach. Lindsay Kesselman, member of Phillip Glass Ensemble for the duration of the 2012-2013 international tour of Einstein on the Beach, guest blogs: “Every night in New York we left rehearsal feeling drained, mentally and physically, without an ounce more energy to give. And…it felt fantastic.”

Widely credited as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, the opera Einstein on the Beach launched director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to international success when it was first produced in Avignon, France in 1976.

In this video, featuring Einstein’s original creative team, Philip Glass remembers the first night of Einstein, Robert Wilson sits next to Arthur Miller, and Lucinda Childs recollects the “Supermarket Speech.”

Robert Wilson fans will have much to do in Ann Arbor this winter. Einstein on the Beach, a screening of Absolute Wilson, and Video 50 at UMMA, an exhibit of Wilson’s “smaller-scale” experiments in video, is “classic surrealism.”

What’s a renegade to you? How do you know when a work is truly game-changing, experimental or history-making? Give us your answer in 7 words to enter to win tickets!

UMS first presented Handel’s Messiah in December of 1879. Over several weeks, we released a series of Messiah Memories webisodes from everyone involved over the years. We couldn’t resist releasing these staff bloopers.