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10 unusual facts about Great Performances


Andy Wolk

In 1989, Wolk won a Writers Guild of America Award for writing the Great Performances episode entitled "Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson".

Bessie Thomashefsky

In 2011, Michael Tilson Thomas hosted a concert stage show celebrating his grandparents and the music of American Yiddish theatre which aired in 2012 on the PBS series Great Performances.

Hanay Geiogamah

He founded the American Indian Theatre Ensemble in New York City and formed the widely acclaimed American Indian Dance Theatre, which toured the world and performed on PBS' Great Performances.

In 1990, the group was featured in PBS' Great Performances in the segment "The American Indian Dance Theater: Finding the Circle".

Jason Danieley

He also starred at Carnegie Hall, as Lt. Joseph Cable, in the Emmy nominated concert version of South Pacific, which was filmed and aired on PBS’ Great Performances.

Mischa Scorer

In 2003 he wrote and directed “Degas and the Dance” for PBS “Great Performances” series, a film in HD about the painter Edgar Degas and his obsession with dancers.

My Christmas Special

It first aired on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances series, on Thanksgiving night in the United States, and continued to be broadcast in the U.S. and Canada, throughout December 2009.

Sacred Arias: The Home Video

The PBS Great Performances program was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Classical Music-Dance Program during the 2000 Emmy awards.

Sandro Ivo Bartoli

His rediscovery of the concertos of Respighi (Bedford, 1991), Malipiero (London, 1994) and Casella (1995), was followed by the first modern performance in the United States of Ottorino Respighi’s Toccata for piano and orchestra, with the Johnson City Symphony under Lewis Dalvit; the concert was broadcast live by PBS and subsequently included in the station’s Great Performances series.

Viviana Durante

In 1995, she appeared in the title role of a ninety-minute version of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, which was telecast on Great Performances by PBS during the Christmas season.


Brian O'Doherty

For many years, O'Doherty was an influential member of the senior staff of the National Endowment for the Arts, first as director of the Visual Arts Program, and subsequently as director of the Media Arts Program, where he was responsible for the creation of such major public television series as American Masters and Great Performances.

Katherine Ciesinski

Her professional orchestra debut was at 16, but her first professional operatic successes came at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 1976 in La traviata and her first notable American performances were at the Spoleto Festival USA in 1978 as Erika in Samuel Barber's Vanessa, one of the very first operas broadcast by the Great Performances series.

Raggs

The crew included screenwriter Mark Valenti (Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, Totally Spies), lighting designer Alan Adelman (75+ episodes of Great Performances, Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards), music producers Fred and Becky Story (Concentrix Music & Sound), costume designer "Greyseal", and choreographer Hardin Minor (National Dance Institute).