Event Details
Marin Shakespeare Company presents SONETTO, an afternoon musical and poetic event featuring acclaimed vocalist and lyric fusion poet Lady Zen (seen in As You Like It) and internationally celebrated cellist Jonah Kim.
Blending Shakespeare's sonnets with contemporary lyric poetry, song, and live cello, SONETTO creates a conversation across centuries. Drawing from Shakespeare's enduring explorations of love, beauty, loss, memory, and transformation, the performance pairs selections from the sonnets and songs from As You Like It and Twelfth Night with original works by Lady Zen and music that spans traditions and generations.
At the heart of the event is a simple question: What do Shakespeare's words still have to teach us about being human? Through music, poetry, and storytelling, SONETTO discovers fresh answers in familiar texts, illuminating the emotional threads that connect us across time.
About the Artists
Lady Zen is an internationally acclaimed Fulbright mezzo-soprano, poet, librettist, and actor whose genre-defying "Lyric Fusion Poetics" blends music, spoken word, and storytelling into deeply personal performances. Their work explores memory, identity, longing, and liberation through a unique fusion of artistic forms.
Jonah Kim is a 3x Grammy awrd winning artist of great charisma and originality. His tone is immediately distinguishable by its signature sweetness. His work is praised by critics and fellow musicians alike for his thorough understanding and insight into the minds of composers, “[capturing] the very elusiveness that gives the music its substance” (Gramophone). Aside from his cellistic prowess, he is widely regarded as one of the finest musicians in the world today. The Korean International Arts Review called him “Pablo Casals reincarnate”.
Mr. Kim made his solo debut with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Philadelphia Orchestra at twelve years of age, and the Washington Post hailed him as “the next Yo-Yo Ma” at his National Symphony debut in the same season. He has since performed on the world’s most prestigious stages. Off the stage, his latest recording of the Kodaly Solo Cello Sonata was met with critical acclaim for “flawless delivery of Herculean technical demands” (The Strad).
Mr. Kim founded Trio Barclay in 2020 with childhood friends Dennis Kim (concertmaster of Pacific Symphony), and Sean Kennard, who has been his recital partner for decades, recording multiple albums for the Delos label. He also enjoys collaborating with partners like Van Cliburn winner Jon Nakamatsu, Martin Beaver, and Stefan Jackiw, as well as concertmasters and principal members of ensembles like Orpheus, the LA and NY Philharmonics, members of the Tokyo, Formosa and Dover Quartets, among numerous others.
In 2024, Mr. Kim was named artistic director of Festival de Música de Cámara in San Miguel de Allende, now known as the Music Society of San Miguel. He is also founder and director of the San Francisco Music Festival. Born in South Korea, American cellist Jonah Kim taught himself the cello watching VHS tapes of Casals before training at The Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music.
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