Masterclass (TV series)

Masterclass is a nine-part documentary television series airing on Home Box Office (HBO). Each half-hour episode documents the experience of a small group of young artists working with a famous mentor. The series premiered on HBO on April 18, 2010 with opera star Plácido Domingo working with three aspiring young singers.^[1][2] The other mentors on the series are filmmaker Julian Schnabel, ballet dancer and choreographer Jacques d'Amboise, architect Frank Gehry, artist Olafur Eliasson, playwright Edward Albee, dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, actress Liv Ullmann, and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The students in the program are chosen from participants in the Miami-based organization, YoungArts, a program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, which supports emerging artists.^[3] The series is produced and directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon of the Simon & Goodman Picture Company whose films have received the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject ("Strangers No More") four additional Academy Award nominations and three Emmy Awards. The Executive Producer is Lin Arison. In July 2011 the series was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Children's nonfiction, reality or reality-competition program 2011".^[4]

Episode summaries

• Episode 1.1 (original air date: April 18, 2010) – Spanish opera star Plácido Domingo works with three young singers focusing not on technique but on how to convey feeling and emotion in their performances.

• Episode 1.2 (original air date: April 25, 2010) – Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann works with a group of young actors on scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire.

• Episode 1.3 (original air date: May 2, 2010) – American playwright Edward Albee, whose works include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Zoo Story, and A Delicate Balance, works with four budding playwrights to share his analysis of their work.

• Episode 1.4 (original air date: May 9, 2010) – American ballet dancer and choreographer Jacques d'Amboise helps a group of young dancers to create a dance in five hours and then takes the show to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.

• Episode 1.5 (original air date: May 16, 2010) – Danish installation artist Olafur Eliasson, whose works include New York City Waterfalls and The Weather Project at London's Tate Modern museum, invites 5 young artists to his studio in Berlin and works with them on an environmental art project.^[5]

• Episode 1.6 (original air date: June 9, 2010) – Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, whose buildings include Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, works with aspiring architects on a city-planning project.

• Episode 1.7 (original air date: June 13, 2010) – American dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, who founded the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and has choreographed for film, Broadway, and opera, works with seven young people (a writer/actress, a choreographer, three dancers and two actors) to create an original work in three days.^[3]

• Episode 1.8 (original air date: June 18, 2010) – Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and the New World Symphony Orchestra, works with three young virtuoso musicians.

• Episode 1.9 (original air date: June 27, 2010) – American artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel invites a group of young photographers, painters and sculptors into his studio for a critque of their work and a discussion of how he approaches his own work.

References

External links

• Masterclass on HBO (official website)
• Masterclass on Simon & Goodman Picture Company (official website)
• Masterclass (2010) at the Internet Movie Database