"The world lost our friend and former collaborator, the music producer Hal Willner, to Covid on April 7, 2020, a day after his 64th birthday. A lot has been said about Hal, and you can read all about his life and adventures in beautiful obituaries and remembrances published in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He was beloved and revered by a staggering number of people in the music and art worlds, from the famous (and infamous) to the obscure, for his exceptional talents as a producer and, more deeply, for the singular way he valued art and artists. Hal seemed to understand things about the bravery and vulnerability of performance and creativity that can’t be articulated, ineffable things that make art, and how it can make us feel, the closest thing to magic that exists in the world. He was a bit of a wizard himself--a goofy, flawed, hilarious, kvetchy, generous, badass one, with special powers to bring artists together and help them reveal their truest work. They loved him for that, and so did we...
"THE OFFICE was fortunate to work with Hal for more than a decade, mainly as producer of his unique multi-artist concept shows. These drew together diverse collections of performers to examine a single artist or some body of work--Leonard Cohen, Edgar Allen Poe, Bill Withers, pirate songs and sea shanties, etc--in a one-time-only performance. We produced around 25 of them (the real number is lost to history) between 2002 and 2012 around the world, from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House, the Queen Elizabeth Theater in Vancouver to the Southbank in London to St. Mark’s Church on the Bowery. These were affairs fraught with peril and the excitement of the unknown: highwire acts of live, in-the-moment interpretation, with disaster always looming and the sublime inevitably discovered. Planning these shows with Hal for months or longer and then spending a week or more with him and a group of like-minded musicians, singers, crew, hangers on, and friends to make them happen led to some of our finest art capers. At the end, he always said, “Well, what have we learned?” He got that from Harry Smith I think. We miss you, Hal."
— Olli Chanoff, June 2020
2001 Royce Hall – UCLA Live
2002 St. Mark’s Church On The Bowery | Royce Hall – UCLA Live
2003 Copenhagen | Celebrate Brooklyn!
2004 Carnegie Hall | Celebrate Brooklyn! | Royce Hall, UCLA Live | Brighton Festival
2005 UCLA | Sydney Opera House
2006 Dublin International Theatre Festival | Verve Forecast
2007 Celebrate Brooklyn!
2008 Celebrate Brooklyn! | Lincoln Center Out Of Doors Festival
2010 Lincoln Center American Songbook Series
2012 Park Avenue Armory
2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad
2011 Daily Motion Clinton Foundation Benefit | Celebrate Brooklyn!
2012 Meltdown Festival, Southbank Centre
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