Peter Glazer’s Heart of Spain


Peter Glazer’s Heart of Spain
Monday, March 30, 2015, 8:00 pm (doors open at 7:00pm)
$16 adv / $18 door
Purchase tickets online

Please join us for a concert performance of Heart of Spain: A Musical of the Spanish Civil War, co-written by Peter Glazer, the creator of Woody Guthrie’s American Song, and Eric Bain Peltoniemi, who has played the Freight with his band Trova. The musical combines classic songs from the time of the war with Peter and Eric’s original compositions, and follows a diverse group of American volunteers across the Atlantic, over the Pyrenees, and into battle. The cast includes San Francisco Mime Troupe veterans Velina Brown and Eduardo Robledo, and recent Cal grad Lauren Hart. The musical director is Malcolm Ruhl, who served as musical director of two Chicago productions of Woody Guthrie’s American Song.

Peter, a professor of Performance Studies at Cal, grew up listening to songs from the Spanish civil war. “In 1942 a group of folksingers, including Pete Seeger and my father, recorded an album called Songs of the Lincoln Battalion, which was the first American recording of songs sung by the American volunteers in Spain,” Peter says. “The songs from that period are so passionate and so remarkable.” The musical was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, with support from the Berkeley Rep, and was first staged at Northwestern University. “The real meat” of the show, said the Chicago Reader, “is the songs.” They “capture the camaraderie and the loyalty of the soldiers.” Tonight’s concert performance will feature an outstanding cast performing those stirring songs!