Renée Fleming Headlines The REACH’s 2019 Opening Festival

Nicole Kuchta

The REACH has announced its “inclusive, multi-genre, multidisciplinary” 2019 Opening Festival, which marks its first-ever expansion to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. For the purpose of this article, we focus on opera-related events.

The Festival’s “Opening Day” will “illustrate the breadth of experience that the REACH is designed to foster,” according to the press release. More than two-hundred artists will take part in “The Future Is Now and I Am It: A Parade to Mark the Moment,” curated by Carrie Mae Weems and The MusicianShip.

Thomas Wilkins will lead the National Symphony Orchestra in an open-air performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring soloists from Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, the Heritage Signature Chorale, and Stanley J. Thurston’s Community Chorus.

The day’s performers will also include Bootsy Collins and The Chuck Brown Band, Underground Comedy, the Kronos Quartet, roots singer-songwriter Valerie June, soprano Larisa Martinez, performance poet Jacqueline Suskin, Speech and Arrested Development, and more surprise guests.

Additionally, composers Mason Bates and Daniel Bernard Roumain will “use themed projections and sounds to create an immersive, chill-out lounge space that will remain open throughout the festival.”